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


Andrew Reid
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Just now, mercer said:

I noticed it more in lowlight shots, dimly lit interiors and ext. night so I guess noise reduction could be kicking in more aggressively at higher ISOs?

It does, also motion in lower exposed areas triggers it and causes some crazy artifacting which isn't codec related.
We're all waiting for a patch but at least Panasonic knows about it.

Workarounds atm. Don't shoot above ISO1250 or 4000, ETTR, don't touch the 6K codecs (more noise reduction) or even avoid using V-Log which is a pity since color science and dynamic range are fantastic.

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32 minutes ago, deezid said:

It does, also motion in lower exposed areas triggers it and causes some crazy artifacting which isn't codec related.
We're all waiting for a patch but at least Panasonic knows about it.

Workarounds atm. Don't shoot above ISO1250 or 4000, ETTR, don't touch the 6K codecs (more noise reduction) or even avoid using V-Log which is a pity since color science and dynamic range are fantastic.

Are we sure they know about it? If you or anyone has contacted them, can you share the best contact method so we can all flood their inboxes? I don’t need any internal noise reduction ever, if I want to use it I’ll do it In post. If it’s an option turn on or off, that’s best of both worlds. Panasonic needs to be near perfect with their full frame venture as their competition is stiff and they can’t afford this issue to linger and become more of a thing. Turn off noise reduction, put out a firmware update, let’s move on. End of Next year or 2021, put out an S2H with phase detect and then we are all happy campers and roasting marshmallows together and singing songs of celebration. 

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1 minute ago, crevice said:

Are we sure they know about it? If you or anyone has contacted them, can you share the best contact method so we can all flood their inboxes? I don’t need any internal noise reduction ever, if I want to use it I’ll do it In post. If it’s an option turn on or off, that’s best of both worlds. Panasonic needs to be near perfect with their full frame venture as their competition is stiff and they can’t afford this issue to linger and become more of a thing. Turn off noise reduction, put out a firmware update, let’s move on. End of Next year or 2021, put out an S2H with phase detect and then we are all happy campers and roasting marshmallows together and singing songs of celebration. 

Talked about it with some engineers at IBC a few weeks ago, how it affects the image.
Also in contact with some ambassadors who forwarded the samples I took with the S1 and S1H and they are aware of it.
Also many ambassadors want the same option: To turn off NR entirely.

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1 hour ago, deezid said:

Talked about it with some engineers at IBC a few weeks ago, how it affects the image.
Also in contact with some ambassadors who forwarded the samples I took with the S1 and S1H and they are aware of it.
Also many ambassadors want the same option: To turn off NR entirely.

Sweet. Thank you for communicating with them. I haven’t seen the issue yet, but I haven’t really shot low light yet and I only shoot 4:2:2 4K. Seems like it affects the higher res more so, especially with low light. But, just because I haven’t seen it yet, doesn’t mean it’s not there and I’m sure I’ll see it sooner or later. Let’s hope they are quick to fix this issue. 

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21 minutes ago, crevice said:

Sweet. Thank you for communicating with them. I haven’t seen the issue yet, but I haven’t really shot low light yet and I only shoot 4:2:2 4K. Seems like it affects the higher res more so, especially with low light. But, just because I haven’t seen it yet, doesn’t mean it’s not there and I’m sure I’ll see it sooner or later. Let’s hope they are quick to fix this issue. 

Glad you didn't see it yet. Because once you did you can't unsee it :(

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On 10/7/2019 at 3:57 PM, helium said:

Or, when using a camera like the C200 or BMPCC 4K, or any other capable 10 bit 4:2:2 camera, you could just expose using the traditional approach, as do most cinematographers.  It's ironic, because ETTR was suggested above as a way to avoid getting the bad results of youtube posters.  And yet ETTR, at youtube levels of competence, is more likely to destroy images than "proper" traditional exposure techniques.

This preoccupation with noise is also a bit strange, for a so-called cinema camera.  Cinema, after all, is full of noise, commonly known as grain.  

I wish it were that simple, "just expose using the traditional approach" ? I guess I'm not like most cinematographers then. I do my research, find the best possible way to expose the different cameras so I get the most information in the recorded files, and then take it from there. Unfortunately, different cameras require different techniques. C200 for example introduces a lot of digital ugly noise if you go with CLOG3 and expose like it says in the manual. If you ETTR after doing research about IRE-levels that are safe for color and exposure in CLOG3, then it's a different story. 

Cinema and noise.. Well, who's saying we are all after the "cinematic" look in everything we do? This is 2019 after all and we live in a digital world. I would not recommend using digital noise as "cinematic noise" for anyone using compressed codecs, it's much easier introducing that kind of noise in post. And if it's going up on youtube/vimeo/instagram etc, maybe adding noise isn't a very good choice at all.

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5 hours ago, Jonathan Bergqvist said:

Well, who's saying we are all after the "cinematic" look in everything we do? This is 2019 after all and we live in a digital world. I would not recommend using digital noise as "cinematic noise" for anyone using compressed codecs, it's much easier introducing that kind of noise in post. And if it's going up on youtube/vimeo/instagram etc, maybe adding noise isn't a very good choice at all.

Aspirations to cinema drive most of the posts on this site, but that aside, if your delivery is to youtube or instragram, what's the point of this endless dispute over cameras and methods?  What does it matter?  Why this endless torture and inquisition, when nobody goes to these delivery services for their technical excellence?

It's this constant inanity, where folks post to youtube, and everyone else is supposed to swoon over one camera or another, when all you're looking at is a crude representation of color correction, production value and compression quality, calibrated to who knows what standard of display, which could be approximated by dozens of other cameras.

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I find a lot of blotchiness on skintones and really harsh gradients in SH1 Vlog footage like this, I have the same issue with GH5. It looks really bad:

 

image.png.752a1dbc574f9ff7be96fcf22bcc8b35.png

image.png.a8ab00a690c623dae306d1ac68e8b801.png

 

It is also present with Prores external recording. Do you see it too, or is it a problem from my players ?

You can download original clips here (thanks to Cosmic dog for providing it):

 https://vimeo.com/363023270

and the first one:

https://vimeo.com/366026486

 

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2 hours ago, wildrym said:

I find a lot of blotchiness on skintones and really harsh gradients in SH1 Vlog footage like this, I have the same issue with GH5. It looks really bad:

 

image.png.752a1dbc574f9ff7be96fcf22bcc8b35.png

image.png.a8ab00a690c623dae306d1ac68e8b801.png

 

It is also present with Prores external recording. Do you see it too, or is it a problem from my players ?

You can download original clips here (thanks to Cosmic dog for providing it):

 https://vimeo.com/363023270

and the first one:

https://vimeo.com/366026486

 

Do you use Premiere?

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1 minute ago, deezid said:

In the source footage?
The footage you provided was edited already.

Exactly, are you talking about s1h footage you have already on your computer or what you see on the web? Web video has a lot of compression, so you cant base it off that. I havent seen any on my source footage.

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1 minute ago, crevice said:

Exactly, are you talking about s1h footage you have already on your computer or what you see on the web? Web video has a lot of compression, so you cant base it off that. I havent seen any on my source footage.

I mean I managed to break GH5 and S1H footage in Premiere quite easily, basically by inserting it into.
In Resolve on the other hand I can go completely crazy and rather make macro blocking visible than banding lol

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12 minutes ago, crevice said:

Exactly, are you talking about s1h footage you have already on your computer or what you see on the web? Web video has a lot of compression, so you cant base it off that. I havent seen any on my source footage.

In the source footage i downloaded on vimeo: https://vimeo.com/363023270

 

the one called "original" 133 mb in the download section, but maybe it's not the source footage but already compressed in vimeo

 

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1 minute ago, wildrym said:

Ok !! "original" does not really mean "original" ?

I was not expecting vimeo compression to make such nasty artifacts!

Thanks

No, I mean not edited. Like straigt out of camera. The actual file.
The "Original" file is what you got out of your NLE.

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14 minutes ago, deezid said:

No, I mean not edited. Like straigt out of camera. The actual file.
The "Original" file is what you got out of your NLE.

Yes i get it, I don't own a S1H yet, i've just found that some footage i've seen online had this kind of artifacts.  Do you see it too on the the link i provided (not my footage, i dont have out of camera files) ?  Maybe wrong choices in compression settings from his NLE ?

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Just now, wildrym said:

Yes i get it, I don't own a S1H yet, i've just found that some footage i've seen online had this kind of artifacts.  Do you see it too on the the link i provided (not my footage, i dont have out of camera files) ?  Maybe wrong choices in compression settings from his NLE ?

Oh ok. Not compression settings. Just putting 10 bit footage into Premiere will do.

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