ita149

I bought the S1RII for 3250€, I think it's a good price for this camera, not sure I would have bought it at 3600€. By the way, I spoke with someone who said he was able to remove most of the noise reduction inside of the V-log footage of the S1RII, if it's true the camera will be much more interesting. The A7RV is a great camera for still, but for video I would prefer to use Panasonic, just for IBIS and Open Gate. Yes both the 28-45mm and 45-90mm would make a killer combo. And why not the rumored 200mm f1.8 to get the perfect trio ...

Got my S1RII and like I thought, I'm a bit disappointed. Stills are great with very good resolution, the Dpreview studio test is odd because the camera is very sharp even when using not so sharp lenses like the 28-200mm. But there are better cameras for photography, AF implementation is weird, AF-S is only DFD and the buffer is a joke when shooting high fps pictures. Video quality is the same than S5II, a bit less sharpening but still the same video engine, it still looks worse than the old gen, the resolution just feels not as good, no matter the mode or resolution used the image doesn't look really sharp in a good way, lines are not straight, some details are missing like if a filter or blur in some part of the image was added. The image looks like there is a slight oil painting touch softening the image at the core. Like on the S5II the rec 709 profiles are worse than V-log. So it is a bit ironic from Lumix to say "discover unseen details" for their S1RII tagline. Because of this the moire is not too much prononced. Some will like this tradeoff. I tested Prores Raw 6K Pixel to Pixel and the image is much better, the weird processing is gone. But I can't get the image right when using Premiere Pro, colors are off, I don't think Prores Raw is really fully supported by Premiere. The crop and the data size also makes this mode hard to use and it is not supported at all by Resolve. Using the Canon R5 or Z6III for raw is much easier as the files are better supported and there is no crop. The rolling shutter is just bad when using the DR boost, I didn't think I could see it but I can see jello even with relatively slow movements. In addition 24fps is the max fps we can use with DR boost and Open Gate. I can't select 30fps, maybe a bug. I think the best modes are 6k or 4k 60fps, there is only a slight crop, worse DR because no DR boost and the image quality becomes even slighltly worse but there is not a big difference with the 30fps and the rolling shutter is better. I quickly tested the 4k 120fps and as if it isn't enough that the 4k30fps was not great, the 120fps is even worse : blurry, bad details, just unusable. When selecting Pixel to Pixel, the quality is better but again these crop make these Pixel to Pixel modes hard to use and feel like we are using a S35 camera. Stabilization is the best in the market and for me it's the main reason I still use Panasonic (with Open Gate too). But the S5II is as good ... The S1RII feels like it was created for people taking mostly photography of still subjects. And for this the camera is good, not the best DR performance but nice colors and impressive 177MP handheld mode (the image makes a very long time to create though, much longer than on the S5II). For video it comes with marketing bait as 8k and 4k 120fps. The 8k like every other modes except raw is too much processed, it has high rolling shutter when the DR boost is enabled and the 4k120fps is not good at all. Yes we can do a lot of things with this camera but with big penalties most of the time. The added Prores Raw is questionable too, the files are not supported in Resolve and the crop is really disappointing. The fact remains, however, than the S1RII is the only affordable high resolution camera with acceptable autofocus for L mount. However, I don't see anything which could attract new users to Lumix or L mount, the S5II is a much better value for Youtube and other social media creators. And the A7RIV is much cheaper and has better AF for stills. 3600€ is a lot of money but I would have happily spend a bit more to get better video engine, better rolling shutter and 8k raw. As things stand at the moment with the current firmware, I think the right price should be more about 3200€. About the reviews available online like the one from Northrup, I think the best is to always wait for some Chinese or Korean reviews, they provides much more informations and are much more unbiased than any Northrup or Undone reviews. Here is an exemple of a good and accurate review :

Even High-Res mode looks weird : https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/image-comparison/fullscreen?attr18=daylight&attr13_0=panasonic_dcs1r&attr13_1=panasonic_dcs1rii&attr13_2=panasonic_dcs5&attr13_3=panasonic_dcs1&attr15_0=raw&attr15_1=jpeg&attr15_2=raw&attr15_3=raw&attr16_0=100&attr16_1=80&attr16_2=100&attr16_3=100&attr126_0=2&attr126_1=2&attr126_2=2&attr126_3=2&normalization=full&widget=1&x=0.3414324606472479&y=0.0861985472154965

3600€ with average DR for a non stacked sensor, cropped Prores-raw and 2s only H-Speed burst, it's disappointing to say the least. Mine has been shipped today and yet I have not pre-ordered the camera in the first days. I hope at least the video engine has improved since the S5II.

I just tried Capture One with the files from DPreview above ISO 3200 and it shows the same smoothed out details than with LR, maybe even worse. "It trounces the A7RV at high ISO which can't even match the A7RIII. It's cleaner than the Z8 at high ISO and the A1 too". It seems the cheating of Panasonic works great and there is little doubt the camera is doing the same in video.

Yes I hope it is just a bug with ACR. Here is the link :

Yet, it's clearly an issue for me and for a lot of people. The difference in resolution is maybe due to the lens. But I think they used the 85mm Sigma f1.4 DG DN, which is not a bad lens at all. There is still a possibility than the S1RII uses some processing at low ISO to reduce noise even more, it could explain why the resolution is worse. On the Slashcam video, the Z8 seems much sharper in 8k than the S1RII.

I'm ok with 24MP as long as the video is not over processed like on the S5II. The thing is I have not the money to buy both cameras. Beside, I have zero brand loyalty and cameras like the R5, R5II or Z8 have high resolution and still good rolling shutter and very good detail in video since they have internal raw with no crop. I just want to make the good choice, I wanted to cancel my pre-order but Panasonic seems to have delayed the S1RII shipments, so for now I kept the preorder in hope to get the spec of the new camera before the S1RII shipments.

According to Manny Ortiz, LR doesn't support entirerly the S1RII,the files have much more noise at low ISO than with C1. Maybe the NR issue at high ISO on Dpreview is also related to LR ? About video, I saw a post on Reddit where 55M said the S1RII has better detail rendering than the S5II (closer to the first gen) but with some chroma NR left. Maybe I should just cancel my pre-order and wait for the new camera in April.

Interesting.

I don't know, the S1RII has Open Gate, much better IBIS and Prores Raw. I would not sait the A1 is a better option but it's a strong one if the advantages of the Lumix mentionned above are not essential.

Indeed, it's also why I kept my pre-order, the files from the S1RII look much better in 4K than on the S5II. I agree about the Z6III, and the IBIS looks really better on the S1RII too. Anyway it seems some people totally missed my point, of course most clients don't see the difference but if you want the best quality, by example to extract stills or viewing your footage on a big screen, even for family stuff, the S5 and S1 internal recording is just much better than on the S5II. I loved Panasonic before the S5II because their camera had a video IQ very close to stills. But if the aim is to shoot only for clients (and most of them can't see a difference between 2k and 4k resolution), yes the S5II is clearly the better choice, especially because of the much better AF and IBIS in video.

I disagree, I really think the video engine is worse, of course much more when using the standard profiles. In 4K the level of details is low but yet these details are over-sharpened. In 5,9K/6K, there are more details but the bad sharpening is annoying. Of course most clients don't see the difference but they can't really see the difference between 4k or 1080P either ... So if use high resolution video modes I want the best quality for cropping, for extract stills etc. If not, even an old GH2 is largely enough to create beautiful images. From my point of view, lowering image quality is never a great thing, I just hope the S1RII will be closer to the S1 and S5 than the S5II.

No, I'm not sure, this is the first thing I will test when I receive the camera. Since I like to crop and extract picture from my videos I can see a big difference between the image processing of the S5II and the S5, I agree V-log is a bit better than the standard profiles, even more in 4k. The S1RII at least seems to keep good quality when using the High stabilisation mode in 4k thanks to the 8k sensor. About the green tint, the last firmware fixed it for me or I was lucky ... Yes I hope they will add 8k raw internal though.

Chinese review : Like in the Manny Ortiz's review, the S1RII seems really noisier than the last Sony cameras for stills. It's interesting because most ambassadors said the noise is very low in video. I think the S1RII will suffer from the same temporal noise reduction and detail filtering than the S5II in video, it's certainly why the fine details look worse than on the Z8 or R5II. The only way to get the best details will be to use the 5,8K Prores raw, but even then the image will be cropped, so less details. Really disappointing to only have the Pixel to Pixel mode for internal Prores raw. I'm very close to cancel my preorder, I keep it only because of the 44MP and my collection of L mount lenses.