Panasonic S1H review / hands-on - a true 6K full frame cinema camera

[deezid]

10 minutes ago, Mike Mgee said:

@deezidsavior S1H 

you clearly didn't read through this thread.
The S1H has the same issues even a GoPro or your everyday smartphone has - temporal noise reduction.
An issue the Pocket 4K/6K don't have. 

Argh. I just wish I could afford RED and ARRI cameras. (Image-related) problems solved.

[CaptainHook]

3 hours ago, deezid said:

nor is BMD Film V4 properly calibrated on the Pocket 4K

Incorrect.

And we provide our colour science data to 3rd party apps, post houses, and studios like Netflix on request so they have the data to transform to ACES outside of Resolve if needed.

[deezid]

1 hour ago, CaptainHook said:

Incorrect.

And we provide our colour science data to 3rd party apps, post houses, and studios like Netflix on request so they have the data to transform to ACES outside of Resolve if needed.

But why is there no IDT or lets call it automatic transformation anywhere else but when using cDNG/Braw in Resolve? E.g. ProRes footage cannot be used inside an ACES workflow at all - even in Resolve - since no input transformation for BMD Film V4 is provided.

Also is it possible to get the saturated red highlights fixed in the future?
Color cast honestly isn't an issue using the UMP/G2 in BMD film V4 at least. My complaint is spefically about the Pocket 4K using the ACES transformation.

[Tyler Hansen]

Man Premiere really is garbage. Just exported a frame from Davinci and Premiere at the same time. Bit depth maxed out on Premiere. 

Full 4K exports here shows the banding even better.

[CaptainHook]

2 hours ago, deezid said:

But why is there no IDT or lets call it automatic transformation anywhere else but when using cDNG/Braw in Resolve? E.g. ProRes footage cannot be used inside an ACES workflow at all - even in Resolve - since no input transformation for BMD Film V4 is provided.

That's an oversight on the Resolve teams part, I alerted it to them last week when a user reported that some options are also missing from the ACES ResolveFX plugin too.

2 hours ago, deezid said:

Also is it possible to get the saturated red highlights fixed in the future?

We are looking into it. It's not specific to the Pocket 4K, is happens with the G2 and other cameras. Its how gamut mapping is done - I've seen the same artefact on footage shot with ARRI/Red/Sony/etc from test files with saturated red highlights clipping and also seen it on publicly broadcast tv shows and movies with huge budgets shooting Alexa etc where the gamut mapping is not handled by the colourist (its very common on TV series on Netflix, HBO, Amazon, etc). FYI, Arri Wide Gamut is very similar in size and location of primaries as BMD Wide Gamut Gen 4.

The issue is its a non-linear transform to address the problem so if you apply that correction to footage it's not easily reversible anymore in standard colour science workflows like ACES. So if you applied it on camera to ProRes footage and then transformed it to another colour space "technically" it would be wrong. Same if it were an option in Blackmagic RAW decode and you took that output to VFX workflow etc that requires linear or some other transform. So the user has to be careful about when to use this. But we are looking into it to make it easier. Otherwise for problem shots people can decode into another space and handle the gamut mapping themselves (I personally think this is preferable when possible so it can be tailored to each shot and target gamut but it does require the user to have a certain amount of knowledge and time to address it in post which is not reasonable to assume).

[Yurolov]

This whole discussion is absurd. Why do we need Netflix to determine the value of a camera based on some unknown and abstruse criteria. The whole thing is speculation. Make up your OWN MIND by looking and testing the images. 10 bit is still 10 bit though.  The traditional Japanese companies won't give you internal raw, and that's why most people will pick the blackmagic at half the price. If you pick a camera based on what Netflix says, you are in a dream land, and to suggest it is some arbiter of quality is even more fanciful - cause no one here can say what the criteria is. Not to mention that some of the best cameras ever made aren't on the list. 

[ntblowz]

Meanwhile bm fan get so offended by this Netflix approval of S1H

[Lux Shots]

5 hours ago, Yurolov said:

This whole discussion is absurd. Why do we need Netflix to determine the value of a camera based on some unknown and abstruse criteria. The whole thing is speculation. Make up your OWN MIND by looking and testing the images. 10 bit is still 10 bit though.  The traditional Japanese companies won't give you internal raw, and that's why most people will pick the blackmagic at half the price. If you pick a camera based on what Netflix says, you are in a dream land, and to suggest it is some arbiter of quality is even more fanciful - cause no one here can say what the criteria is. Not to mention that some of the best cameras ever made aren't on the list. 

You can't make up your own mind, unless you own your own a billion dollar streaming service.

Besides, if I quote a job to an agency, and they ask what camera I'm using, I'll lead with "...it's a 6K camera that's been approved for Netflix original content, but I can run it 4K if you guys can't handle that.", and I don't have to say another word.

Netflix is a proxy to the uninformed for quality. The name carries a lot of influence, and everyone knows who they are. If you go and say my camera is approved for original content from Pluto TV, people are going to say "WHO THE FUCK IS THAT?" Oh, yeah, they are a free streaming service, and they're great!

You would be bodily thrown out the creative director's office and banned for all future jobs!

We don't make the rules, but we have to play by them.

[crevice]

7 hours ago, CaptainHook said:

That's an oversight on the Resolve teams part, I alerted it to them last week when a user reported that some options are also missing from the ACES ResolveFX plugin too.

We are looking into it. It's not specific to the Pocket 4K, is happens with the G2 and other cameras. Its how gamut mapping is done - I've seen the same artefact on footage shot with ARRI/Red/Sony/etc from test files with saturated red highlights clipping and also seen it on publicly broadcast tv shows and movies with huge budgets shooting Alexa etc where the gamut mapping is not handled by the colourist (its very common on TV series on Netflix, HBO, Amazon, etc). FYI, Arri Wide Gamut is very similar in size and location of primaries as BMD Wide Gamut Gen 4.

The issue is its a non-linear transform to address the problem so if you apply that correction to footage it's not easily reversible anymore in standard colour science workflows like ACES. So if you applied it on camera to ProRes footage and then transformed it to another colour space "technically" it would be wrong. Same if it were an option in Blackmagic RAW decode and you took that output to VFX workflow etc that requires linear or some other transform. So the user has to be careful about when to use this. But we are looking into it to make it easier. Otherwise for problem shots people can decode into another space and handle the gamut mapping themselves (I personally think this is preferable when possible so it can be tailored to each shot and target gamut but it does require the user to have a certain amount of knowledge and time to address it in post which is not reasonable to assume).

While we have you...are there plans to get prores raw support in resolve? Once the S1H gets support and Nikon (not holding my breath) gets it as well, it’s going to really suck to not have native support for prores raw in resolve. I think that an NLE of this popularity should support all possible codecs, regardless of politics, etc. I don’t want to have to use final cut just for prores raw and I’m sure many others feel the same way. 

[Jonathan Bergqvist]

8 hours ago, Tyler Hansen said:

Man Premiere really is garbage. Just exported a frame from Davinci and Premiere at the same time. Bit depth maxed out on Premiere. 

Full 4K exports here shows the banding even better.

Premiere sure do have some hoops to jump, I give you that! But that kind of banding is pretty sure all on you I'm afraid. 

[Jonesy Jones]

10 hours ago, CaptainHook said:

We are looking into it. It's not specific to the Pocket 4K, is happens with the G2 and other cameras. Its how gamut mapping is done - I've seen the same artefact on footage shot with ARRI/Red/Sony/etc from test files with saturated red highlights clipping and also seen it on publicly broadcast tv shows and movies with huge budgets shooting Alexa etc where the gamut mapping is not handled by the colourist (its very common on TV series on Netflix, HBO, Amazon, etc). FYI, Arri Wide Gamut is very similar in size and location of primaries as BMD Wide Gamut Gen 4.

I posted about this not long ago with a screenshot. Hook is right. This clipping is everywhere. 
 

 

[Rinad Amir]

Yah same issue here blue clipping on S1H i hope Panasonic engineers are aware!  

Rec709.tif V-Log.tif

[Jonathan Bergqvist]

28 minutes ago, Rinad Amir said:

Yah same issue here blue clipping on S1H i hope Panasonic engineers are aware!  

Rec709.tif 7.92 MB · 0 downloads V-Log.tif 7.92 MB · 0 downloads

When looking at the V-Log file in waveforms, sure the blue channel is very high but not clipping? 

I'm trying out the "Agressive 709"-LUT from the varicam LUT-library, and it seems like the results are somewhat better, especially when lowering the saturation in the blue channel and fiddeling with some curves.. Not so much blue left though.. =D 

Maybe they can release a LUT that handles the problem better? Wasn't there a similar problem in the ACES workflow that was fixed in post..? 

V-Log-curvesetc0.tif

[Tyler Hansen]

6 hours ago, Jonathan Bergqvist said:

Premiere sure do have some hoops to jump, I give you that! But that kind of banding is pretty sure all on you I'm afraid. 

How so? All I did was add the Panasonic Nicest LUT in both programs. Premiere gives crazy banding and Davinci has zero banding. 

[Jonathan Bergqvist]

2 minutes ago, Tyler Hansen said:

How so? All I did was add the Panasonic Nicest LUT in both programs. Premiere gives crazy banding and Davinci has zero banding. 

With the wrong settings, Premiere will do that for you.Try doing in/out on the one frame you want to export in the timeline, file->export->media...->format: PNG -> be sure to select "Render at Maximum Depth" -> export 

Did it fix the banding?

[Tyler Hansen]

30 minutes ago, Jonathan Bergqvist said:

With the wrong settings, Premiere will do that for you.Try doing in/out on the one frame you want to export in the timeline, file->export->media...->format: PNG -> be sure to select "Render at Maximum Depth" -> export 

Did it fix the banding?

Just tried that out and it worked, thanks for the tip. Weird that I see banding in the Program Monitor and when I use the export frame button, pretty frustrating. 

[Jonathan Bergqvist]

13 minutes ago, Tyler Hansen said:

Just tried that out and it worked, thanks for the tip. Weird that I see banding in the Program Monitor and when I use the export frame button, pretty frustrating. 

Its very wierd and not very user friendly.. If you go to Sequence->Sequence settings-> Select "Maximum Bit Depth". Then the banding will go away in paused mode in Program monitor. 

If you also want to get rid of banding while doing playback, render or select "High quality playback" in the menu by the program monitor. It will slow down speed quite a lot though.

[deezid]

5 hours ago, Rinad Amir said:

Yah same issue here blue clipping on S1H i hope Panasonic engineers are aware!  

Rec709.tif 7.92 MB · 3 downloads V-Log.tif 7.92 MB · 5 downloads

ehm, ok?
There's nothing wrong with the source file. No oversaturation or even clipping in your example.

4 hours ago, Jonathan Bergqvist said:

With the wrong settings, Premiere will do that for you.Try doing in/out on the one frame you want to export in the timeline, file->export->media...->format: PNG -> be sure to select "Render at Maximum Depth" -> export 

Did it fix the banding?

Also in sequence settings. At least in CC2019 the issue with both settings being set should be gone.

19 hours ago, CaptainHook said:

That's an oversight on the Resolve teams part, I alerted it to them last week when a user reported that some options are also missing from the ACES ResolveFX plugin too.

We are looking into it. It's not specific to the Pocket 4K, is happens with the G2 and other cameras. Its how gamut mapping is done - I've seen the same artefact on footage shot with ARRI/Red/Sony/etc from test files with saturated red highlights clipping and also seen it on publicly broadcast tv shows and movies with huge budgets shooting Alexa etc where the gamut mapping is not handled by the colourist (its very common on TV series on Netflix, HBO, Amazon, etc). FYI, Arri Wide Gamut is very similar in size and location of primaries as BMD Wide Gamut Gen 4.

The issue is its a non-linear transform to address the problem so if you apply that correction to footage it's not easily reversible anymore in standard colour science workflows like ACES. So if you applied it on camera to ProRes footage and then transformed it to another colour space "technically" it would be wrong. Same if it were an option in Blackmagic RAW decode and you took that output to VFX workflow etc that requires linear or some other transform. So the user has to be careful about when to use this. But we are looking into it to make it easier. Otherwise for problem shots people can decode into another space and handle the gamut mapping themselves (I personally think this is preferable when possible so it can be tailored to each shot and target gamut but it does require the user to have a certain amount of knowledge and time to address it in post which is not reasonable to assume).

That's great news.

Still not sure about keeping my S1H.
Postives: Great color, works perfectly fine in ACES, no clipping issues, great DR and roll-off, IBIS and battery life, ease of use
Meh: Mediocre Codec choices which may cause issues, but all good so far
Bad: Temporal Noise reduction ruining many shots - barely usable honestly. Even recorded externally to ProRes HQ (tried an Atomos Shogun and Odyssey 7Q+)

Pocket 6K:
Positives: Organic looking image With grain and no artifacts, good dynamic range, great screen, great codec choice with flexibility and no macro blocking nor banding which is also speedy on older machines
Meh: build quality, will put it into a cage anyway
Bad: Battery Life, no viewfinder - needs rigging and can't really use it in ACES atm due to clipping issues and color looking - one dimensional and brown?

On a yRGB timeline I can fix many issues by myself but it's quite time consuming and the next big project coming up soon will rely on many VFX shots, so ACES would be great - like it has been on my other projects before.

On the other hand the temporal noise reduction resulting in ghosting and smearing on the S1H made tracking a nightmare already in another project I'm working on atm. Basically have to do everything manually because the tracker gets confused.

Maybe I should just switch back to the GH5 lol

[deezid]

Apparently it was firmware 1.1 on the GH5 which fixed the ghosting issues.
Let's hope Panasonic will be as fast this time as well... 

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?353763-GH5-High-ISO-Vlog-disaster-(motion-artifacts-etc)

[crevice]

2 hours ago, deezid said:

ehm, ok?
There's nothing wrong with the source file. No oversaturation or even clipping in your example.

Also in sequence settings. At least in CC2019 the issue with both settings being set should be gone.

That's great news.

Still not sure about keeping my S1H.
Postives: Great color, works perfectly fine in ACES, no clipping issues, great DR and roll-off, IBIS and battery life, ease of use
Meh: Mediocre Codec choices which may cause issues, but all good so far
Bad: Temporal Noise reduction ruining many shots - barely usable honestly. Even recorded externally to ProRes HQ (tried an Atomos Shogun and Odyssey 7Q+)

Pocket 6K:
Positives: Organic looking image With grain and no artifacts, good dynamic range, great screen, great codec choice with flexibility and no macro blocking nor banding which is also speedy on older machines
Meh: build quality, will put it into a cage anyway
Bad: Battery Life, no viewfinder - needs rigging and can't really use it in ACES atm due to clipping issues and color looking - one dimensional and brown?

On a yRGB timeline I can fix many issues by myself but it's quite time consuming and the next big project coming up soon will rely on many VFX shots, so ACES would be great - like it has been on my other projects before.

On the other hand the temporal noise reduction resulting in ghosting and smearing on the S1H made tracking a nightmare already in another project I'm working on atm. Basically have to do everything manually because the tracker gets confused.

Maybe I should just switch back to the GH5 lol

Your positives about the S1H are everything I would want in a camera. Your negatives, which I have yet to encounter, should be fixed in a firmware update as they seem to be directly tied to VLOG, which is a positive since its something that could be fixed, similar to the GH5. With that said, you have brought up a valid concern - but  you have brought it up over and over and over, to the point where we get it, but we are not Panasonic - you should be voicing this to them at this point in order to actually get it fixed. If you have already and they are aware, then you should give them time to fix it. There has yet to be a first real firmware out yet to even see if its addressed. To be clear, I have no issues at all with you voicing concerns that need to be fixed, nothing will get fixed if we are all silent. But you made your point and now you are just stating the same thing over and over again, in this forum, on facebook, on review sites, etc. I am not sure what you want out of it. Are you hoping Panasonic read and fix it? If so, why not just contact them?

Lastly, I disagree with your notion of the pocket 6k or any of these mirrorless cameras, including the S1H, having an "organic" image. An organic image to me, would be an original Blackmagic pocket, Blackmagic micro, Blackmagic cinema 2.5. Those actually used a Fairchild sensor and had a nice organic look to it. You didn't need to add grain to those those cameras to make them look organic, it was organic out the box.