Panasonic S5 User Experience

[Thpriest]

I used to like flip out screens but I think I enjoy using the screen on the S1 a lot more than the one on the S5.

I hope you can get yours fixed easily.

[MrSMW]

1 hour ago, Thpriest said:

I hope you can get yours fixed easily.

Well I checked this morning as it happens and Panny France use a company called Nexxen or something (the name I forget) and they have a proper procedure as of course they should do.

The only problem is no timescales and this also being France… just saying… 😜

Unless it actually stops working, it’s going to have to last 2 more months…

I tried some electrical tape but then the screen won’t fold in so even more likely to get completely knocked off.

Hate the sticky out the side things with unbridled passion. Like onions, they are the work of the devil.

On another note, I finally decided on a long(er) lens after going back and forth between the Sigma 90mm f2.8 and the 105mm f2.8 macro and went with the latter.

Why did I not do this sooner?! Had a kit rework as a result and I think that finally, after around 30 or so Lumix based full frame weddings, I have it sorted.

With a single Sony interloper (the ZV1).

[Thpriest]

Sounds like you've had a good wedding season!

[MrSMW]

Define ‘good’…. 

A bit mental is the term I would use.

Since 8th April, other than 2 family days off, I have worked every day min 12 hours, whether that be shooting, traveling to or from, or editing/doing admin.

I am currently 4.5 weddings behind on the editing side.

By the end of this month, I will be 9 weddings behind…

I am never behind. Well rarely by 1 or 2 max and I quickly catch up during the season, but this one is the mother of all seasons.

And then there will still be the Sep jobs and 1 in early Oct.

Some great events and couples. Some less so…

It will take me up until the end of Nov at least to catch up and then I can breathe once more.

The downside has been that in 2021 when I shifted to L Mount, I had a more limited kit but made the best use of it.

This year has added more (needed) kit and I have juggled various combos around but the problem has been I have had to shoot another 2-3 weddings before I fully know the result of any prior wedding where I have made changes.

Only a few blips along the way and a couple of bits of kit I intended to sell, I have kept and I don’t miss anything I have sold.

Sold the Panny 85mm f1.8 and the freebie Sigma 45mm f2.8 with zero regrets.

Not yet sold the DJI Action 2 which is the only bit of kit I am not using.

Back on the fence over the VND EF to L Mount adapter and Meike cine lens and it’s the other bit of kit I have shelved. Just can’t find a place for it now I’ve moved a few lenses around. Pity because the quality it produces is great.

[webrunner5]

I don't envy you. Weedings were usually the most stressful stuff I shot on average. It was worse at the time because of film. I did my own developing for a while and gave that idea up pretty quick. Just too time consuming and the person I had doing it for me was great at touchups which I wasn't good at. Good money but a pretty lousy way to make a buck both time wise and stress wise, not counting missing out on family time. But somebody has to do it I guess.

[MrSMW]

Oh definitely pros and cons to being a full-time wedding shooter, but then there are with all careers.

On balance, not much else I would or even could switch to.

I wouldn’t start up today though knowing what I know as trying to become established as a start up in 2022 is far more than just producing pretty pictures.

My first 4-5 years in the game was exclusively film and I’d never go back to that, even as a side option.

[webrunner5]

What shocks me today is how many frames people shoot for a wedding. I used a Hasselblad and I never shot over 3 rolls of 220 so around 60 to 66 shots, 4 maybe if it was a huge weeding.  I might have a 3rd body loaded with B&W at times. Now people shoot hundreds, hell maybe thousands. Yikes. How things change.

We were sort of limited about how long our battery lasted on the strobes.

[MrSMW]

My first wedding and from then on until I went digital was 8 rolls of 36 exp, 4x colour and 4x B&W in 2x Nikon F3 bodies, each with a 50mm, so 288 max poss.

I then had a cost option to go to 10 or 12.

Developed and printed the first one (B&W) at home. Never again.

Today I shoot an average 2000-3000 frames at a wedding depending on whether it's 1, 2 or 3 days coverage (with those days either side being 1/2 days and often limited in material) and typically 500-700 make the cull to edit and then present to clients.

I do double tap most shots and may take 5-6 of the same scene from slightly different angles or more as it develops.

Could I go back to 'shoot 300, provide 300'?

Probably, but the safety net would have been removed as would a large chunk of creativity because whilst some may machine gun for no reason other than a lack of confidence, the biggest bonus of digital has been we can be more creative without it costing us anything.

How much is a typical buy/expose/scan/cheap print roll of 36exp film today? 25 dollars/euros/pounds?

That would be 200 gone today, every job.

To shoot what even I do on film today, cost per job would be an average 1736 dollars/euros/pounds with an average 69 roll changes and would require large stocks of all kinds of different film speeds.

What. A. Frikkin. Nightmare.

I think there is a market for film photography for weddings, but it's not shooting it like digital because that would be insane.

[MrSMW]

Actually, about 4 years ago I was having coffee with a wedding planner and she was gushing about 'Mr Bigshot film photographer' and how he used film and was "the best" so could charge so much more than anyone else. In her words, "he's on another level".

So later, out of curiosity, I looked him up and his wedding work at the same venue I have worked at. And then fell about the floor laughing as at least 1/4 of his work was out of focus or had so much motion blur, it was obvious he was using far too slow a film stock in lower light conditions.

On "another level"?

On "another planet" more like. The little known planet called Delusion.

His portrait stuff was good, but he was and still is a one trick pony. The rest of his wedding coverage was below average in my opinion. But hey, what do I know...

[webrunner5]

Yeah, you have to nearly shoot wide open using film that you are bound to get X amount out of focus. Film is not easy to use in any aspect of it. Although if you have ever seen some of Ansel Adams B&W stuff in person it is pretty special. But using an 8x10 negative sort of helps lol.

Largest view camera I ever had was a 5x7. Had lots of 4x5 ones. I loved shooting with them. A Toyo field camera is a treat also.

[TrueIndigo]

Yeah, first camera I ever used (in a studio setting) was a Sinar 4x5, and you could only clearly see the image under a dark cloth (with your head to one side, of course, because the image was upside down). Punch-in focus in those days meant using a stamp magnifier on the ground glass screen, and the exposure check was a Polaroid back slotted in to give some idea of what the exposure (usually measured in seconds) might actually look like. 

[newfoundmass]

Honestly the more I use this camera the more I love it. After filming a couple events I'm really impressed. I am considering selling my entire M43 kit, or at least most of it, to get another one. I'll maybe keep the GH5 and the 12-35mm and 35-100mm, and sell the rest. 

I really like the sooc colors I get using the natural profile. Sometimes I will tweak it just a little, but most of the time it looks really good without any kind of corrections. 

I'm glad that more people are taking note of the S5. I really don't know that you can beat it for the price. 

[JAB D]

On 4/12/2021 at 3:08 PM, herein2020 said:

 

That is correct, I use it with a VMOUNT adapter and battery all the time, with 1 VMOUNT I can run for about 6hrs or more non stop. A PC USB port probably doesn't have anywhere near the required level of amperage.

 

 

please tell me what im doing wrong i use vmount battery with usb-c pd and my camera still drains.

[herein2020]

On 9/15/2022 at 4:11 PM, JAB D said:

please tell me what im doing wrong i use vmount battery with usb-c pd and my camera still drains.

 

When you connect the camera to the VMount battery does the LCD screen show the charging icon? Also, are you sure that you are using a USB-C charging cable and not just a data cable? You mentioned USB-C PD out of a V-Mount battery, the S5 does not need PD, have you tried a USB-A to USB-C cable instead?

Also, if you plug your S5 into a wall USB-C adapter, does it start charging? If not then its possible something is wrong with your USB-C port on your S5.

[Geoffrey]

Anyone know any good tutorials on colour matching? I did a shoot with the S5 and a Fuji camera recently and am really struggling to match them. I use Premiere which has some good colour tools and have reasonable experience in using Lumetri colour but I go round in circles trying to match them, getting reasonably close but not knowing what the next step is to really crack it. This is mainly due to inexperience and having little sense what the best method is / best way to start.

[kye]

2 hours ago, Geoffrey said:

Anyone know any good tutorials on colour matching? I did a shoot with the S5 and a Fuji camera recently and am really struggling to match them. I use Premiere which has some good colour tools and have reasonable experience in using Lumetri colour but I go round in circles trying to match them, getting reasonably close but not knowing what the next step is to really crack it. This is mainly due to inexperience and having little sense what the best method is / best way to start.

You're probably already doing this, but in case not, my preferred order of operations is to take two images and try and make a general match first:

1. Make both images black and white and then match levels of white points, black points, grey levels, and then contrast (in that order)
2. Go back to colour and match WB of white points, black points, and then grey levels (in that order)
3. Then using hue curves, match the hue v hue, hue v sat, and hue v lum curves (in any order - sometimes it takes a few passes)

Then I apply that correction to a second pair of images and fine tune anything that doesn't look like it matches.

Then I apply it to all the shots, and then just look at the whole lot together (or if you can't do that then just watch it on a fast speed) and stop to correct any shots that stand out.

[newfoundmass]

This advice doesn't help you for anything you've shot already, but I definitely recommend custom white balancing your cameras and using a color checker for each shot. Then you can easily take your footage into whatever editor you use and easily match them. 

Calibrite ColorChecker Classic Classic https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1649331-REG/calibrite_ccc_colorchecker_classic.html

I haven't used Premiere in years, but I'm pretty sure there's a similar feature like this

 

[Geoffrey]

17 hours ago, kye said:

You're probably already doing this, but in case not, my preferred order of operations is to take two images and try and make a general match first:

1. Make both images black and white and then match levels of white points, black points, grey levels, and then contrast (in that order)
2. Go back to colour and match WB of white points, black points, and then grey levels (in that order)
3. Then using hue curves, match the hue v hue, hue v sat, and hue v lum curves (in any order - sometimes it takes a few passes)

Then I apply that correction to a second pair of images and fine tune anything that doesn't look like it matches.

Then I apply it to all the shots, and then just look at the whole lot together (or if you can't do that then just watch it on a fast speed) and stop to correct any shots that stand out.

Thanks for this, it sounds like a good method.

The problem I have is that I want (need really) to stick to the look of one camera, the S5, as I use the CineD2 space and the rest of the film, all shot with the S5 only, uses it. So what I am actually trying to do is match the Fuji to the S5 footage which I don't want to change (much). I have tried the auto colour match feature in Lumetri but it is very ballpark, so stopped using that and went manual as it were but then ran into a wall of ignorance. I have made some progress with the hue curves and the match is much better but not right by some distance.

One of the problems I had in the field was that the Fuji white balance feature did not work - it is stupidly sensitive to light and kept coming up with 'fail' and there is only so much time you can fiddle around before you have start shooting (I was filming a small music ensemble outdoors). The S5 has no such problem and I did a manual white balance no problem and when I reviewed the footage I pretty much liked the S5 material straight out of the cam with only some minor tweaks needed (and this is true for the rest of the film material). The annoying thing is I like the Fuji material but it just looks so different (and I am sure some of that difference is not colour related though all the basic stuff, shutter, frame rate etc., is the same of course). I guess another approach is to actually embrace the difference (it is from a quite different angle and both cameras are static).

[Geoffrey]

11 hours ago, newfoundmass said:

This advice doesn't help you for anything you've shot already, but I definitely recommend custom white balancing your cameras and using a color checker for each shot. Then you can easily take your footage into whatever editor you use and easily match them. 

Calibrite ColorChecker Classic Classic https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1649331-REG/calibrite_ccc_colorchecker_classic.html

I haven't used Premiere in years, but I'm pretty sure there's a similar feature like this

 

Thanks for the advice, for next time though.

[newfoundmass]

1 hour ago, Geoffrey said:

Thanks for this, it sounds like a good method.

The problem I have is that I want (need really) to stick to the look of one camera, the S5, as I use the CineD2 space and the rest of the film, all shot with the S5 only, uses it. So what I am actually trying to do is match the Fuji to the S5 footage which I don't want to change (much). I have tried the auto colour match feature in Lumetri but it is very ballpark, so stopped using that and went manual as it were but then ran into a wall of ignorance. I have made some progress with the hue curves and the match is much better but not right by some distance.

One of the problems I had in the field was that the Fuji white balance feature did not work - it is stupidly sensitive to light and kept coming up with 'fail' and there is only so much time you can fiddle around before you have start shooting (I was filming a small music ensemble outdoors). The S5 has no such problem and I did a manual white balance no problem and when I reviewed the footage I pretty much liked the S5 material straight out of the cam with only some minor tweaks needed (and this is true for the rest of the film material). The annoying thing is I like the Fuji material but it just looks so different (and I am sure some of that difference is not colour related though all the basic stuff, shutter, frame rate etc., is the same of course). I guess another approach is to actually embrace the difference (it is from a quite different angle and both cameras are static).

Cinematch might be something that can help you, given it has profiles for all these cameras. It might be able to get you closer than Lumetri.