That’s when the Lumix S5IIX entered the picture. Ross admits his purchase was partly for the all-black design, but the camera quickly impressed with its full-frame quality, superb stabilization, and equally strong performance in photo and video. The smaller Lumix S9 soon became his everyday camera, and the Lumix S1II replaced the S5IIX for bigger professional jobs.

For Ross, the main difference between Fujifilm and Lumix comes down to color workflow. Fujifilm’s recipes are tied to fixed film simulations like Classic Chrome or Provia. Within each, you can adjust contrast, saturation, white balance shift, and a few other parameters—but you can’t go beyond the inherent limits of that simulation. Want to push blues into the shadows or tint highlights toward green? You can’t, unless you edit after shooting.

With Lumix, Ross can load any custom LUT into his camera—whether it’s his own creation or a downloaded file—and immediately use it for stills and video. The possibilities are endless: replicate Fujifilm colors, create cinematic tones, or design something entirely unique. Even better, Lumix cameras offer an in-camera opacity slider for LUTs, allowing fine control over how strong the effect is applied—something Fujifilm cannot match.

Ross has even developed “Fujifilm Fake” LUTs for Lumix, designed to mimic film simulations like Classic Chrome so closely that side-by-side shots are nearly indistinguishable. His process is trial-and-error: shooting the same subject with both cameras, comparing in Lightroom, and adjusting the Lumix file until the match is close enough.

Beyond creative flexibility, Ross also appreciates Lumix’s workflow tools. Shooting RAW+JPEG lets him use in-camera RAW processing to tweak white balance, exposure, or even swap LUTs before sending images to his phone via the Lumix Lab app. For wedding work, he can process select images during dinner and deliver them to clients the next day without touching a computer.

Gear mentioned in Ross’s setup

• Lumix S9 (B&H, Amazon EU, Adorama, Foto Erhardt, Foto Koch, Calumet, Wex UK)
• Lumix S1II (B&H, Amazon EU, Adorama, Foto Erhardt, Foto Koch, Calumet, Wex UK)
• Lumix S5IIX (B&H, Amazon EU, Adorama, Foto Erhardt, Foto Koch, Calumet, Wex UK)
• Fujifilm X-H2S (B&H, Amazon EU, Adorama, Foto Erhardt, Foto Koch, Calumet, Wex UK)

Takeaway

Fujifilm recipes remain fun and can produce great results, but Lumix LUTs offer more creative freedom, better control, and faster workflows. For professionals who want both full-frame performance and limitless color possibilities, the Lumix system is hard to beat.