Panasonic S5 User Experience

[Geoffrey]

16 hours ago, herein2020 said:

It works perfect on the GH5. I'm not an audio person, so to me the audio sounds fine.  I've never had a problem with noise from the module and anything minor I've been able to clean up in Fairlight; but since I'm not an audio person it is possible what sounds good to me isn't actually that good. The XLR module was one of my favorite GH5 accessories, and the fact that it worked with the S5 was a major selling point for me. 

I do wonder if maybe the lav mics I am using is causing the issues. But I remember I had a problem with the module and my Sennheiser wireless receiver as well. Very annoying problem to say the least. I am going to do a lot more testing before my next job to see if it is something that is my fault.

Personally, I've always found audio the most difficult part of videography, between placing the mics, dealing with room treatment or lack thereof, trying to keep the audio from peaking, trying to keep the mic from rubbing against clothing, trying to block ambient noises like the wind; etc......its very obvious why it is a whole specialty in and of itself.

Yes, audio is as much of a discipline as video and of course normally it is done by a dedicated person, so having to do both is a tall order for anyone. Plus what you have to do is taxing of itself - having to pick up intelligible and clear speech from various individuals, ambience etc. It is one of those truisms too that bad sound will be rejected by the public much more readily and quickly than dodgy images. I don't think the sound on the Panasonic module is bad btw, I just have a much lower tolerance as a sound person. I suspect most people would not notice what I do. One test you could do if you haven't done it so far is to plug headphones into the cam (in a very quiet environment) and ride the audio outputs on the cam and XLR module and find the settings that produce the least hiss which I very much expect would mean lowering the cam record input.

[Geoffrey]

8 minutes ago, Geoffrey said:

Yes, audio is as much of a discipline as video and of course normally it is done by a dedicated person, so having to do both is a tall order for anyone. Plus what you have to do is taxing of itself - having to pick up intelligible and clear speech from various individuals, ambience etc. It is one of those truisms too that bad sound will be rejected by the public much more readily and quickly than dodgy images. I don't think the sound on the Panasonic module is bad btw, I just have a much lower tolerance as a sound person. I suspect most people would not notice what I do. One test you could do if you haven't done it so far is to plug headphones into the cam (in a very quiet environment) and ride the audio outputs on the cam and XLR module and find the settings that produce the least hiss which I very much expect would mean lowering the cam record input.

I mean audio inputs, not outputs above!

[herein2020]

11 hours ago, MrSMW said:

I will try this soon!

 

On 4/14/2021 at 7:23 PM, Mark Romero 2 said:

Back button focus works great on the S5 and S1. I set the AF switch to MF, and leave the AF switch ON for my Canon EF 16-35 f/4 L. Hitting the AF on button then focuses the lens. I have it set up so that rotating the focus ring on the lens then brings up picture-in-picture for fine tuning focus.

No idea about sigma lenses and linear manual focus.

I have the exact same setup for all of my lenses and the S5.  Typically this feature is called one shot hybrid AF. I half press the shutter to get initial focus, once it locks you are still free to fine tune with MF, or leave it where it locked. I use all EF lenses and have noticed that the PIP box doesn't work for all of my lenses. I think some of the lenses don't report to the camera when the focus ring is turned.

My biggest problem is that lately it seems like the one shot AF part of the hybrid focusing is having a hard time focusing.  I've had to go to pure MF for both the Canon EF 25mm lens and the Sigma EF 50mm lens in different situations even when there was plenty of contrast and good lighting.

[herein2020]

8 hours ago, Geoffrey said:

Yes, audio is as much of a discipline as video and of course normally it is done by a dedicated person, so having to do both is a tall order for anyone. Plus what you have to do is taxing of itself - having to pick up intelligible and clear speech from various individuals, ambience etc. It is one of those truisms too that bad sound will be rejected by the public much more readily and quickly than dodgy images. I don't think the sound on the Panasonic module is bad btw, I just have a much lower tolerance as a sound person. I suspect most people would not notice what I do. One test you could do if you haven't done it so far is to plug headphones into the cam (in a very quiet environment) and ride the audio outputs on the cam and XLR module and find the settings that produce the least hiss which I very much expect would mean lowering the cam record input.

I will need to try that, the hardest part of that test is finding somewhere actually quiet enough to be able to isolate the signal noise. I tested my lav mics with my MixPre and couldn't believe how hard it was to find a truly quiet place to test the circuit noise. I ended up in the bedroom closet with the AC off and clothes stacked against the door.

You are so right about audio too, it is more noticeable to people when it is bad audio vs bad video. You can get away with slightly out of focus or under exposed or over exposed video; but if the audio has a pop or hiss or too much wind noise its far worse.

My biggest problem right now is figuring out how to get the XLR module to consistently turn on when mounted on the S5. I feel like its something in the pins in the hotshoe that is causing the issue. I had to toggle the Phantom power switch before it finally started working; this is obviously not always an option if you are plugged into something that doesn't need phantom power (like my Sennheiser wireless receiver). I'm going to check the S5 manual, maybe there is a startup sequence or something that you are supposed to do to make the module startup every time that wasn't required with the GH5.

[ac6000cw]

On 4/12/2021 at 12:25 AM, herein2020 said:

Ok, its official....the XLR module combined with the S5 is a finicky setup. I had a shoot today, very important to nail the audio and the XLR module just wouldn't turn on. The talent was already mic'd up, I ran an XLR cable because I didn't want to fiddle with wireless in addition to the XLR module....and it took a good 5-10min of fiddling to get the XLR module to even turn on.  I never had these problems with the GH5.

I double checked my connection in the hotshoe, the XLR cables, the XLR jack for the mic....absolutely nothing. I then unplugged the XLR cable from the XLR module...and it turned on immediately. I turned off the camera, plugged back in the cable, turned on the camera....XLR module dead again. I then toggled the phantom power switch on the module to off and the module turned on. I turned it back to +48V and it stayed on. It turned off one more time, I toggled the phantom power switch and it then stayed on for the rest of the interview.

This is not good, I just don't have that kind of time on set to fiddle with an XLR module. 

(Speaking as an electronics engineer) the turn-on problems sound like the extra 'startup' current drawn by the phantom power circuitry on power-up (if it's on when the XLR module powers up) is 'tripping' some protection system - which then cuts off the power to the XLR module because it thinks it's faulty.

'Staging' the power up by first turning on the module (with phantom power off), then turning on the phantom power probably keeps the peak 'startup' current draw low enough to stop the protection tripping.

Unfortunately I think the only way to find out if it's the XLR module or the S5 having a problem is by trying another XLR module or S5.

[Geoffrey]

15 hours ago, herein2020 said:

 

I have the exact same setup for all of my lenses and the S5.  Typically this feature is called one shot hybrid AF. I half press the shutter to get initial focus, once it locks you are still free to fine tune with MF, or leave it where it locked. I use all EF lenses and have noticed that the PIP box doesn't work for all of my lenses. I think some of the lenses don't report to the camera when the focus ring is turned.

My biggest problem is that lately it seems like the one shot AF part of the hybrid focusing is having a hard time focusing.  I've had to go to pure MF for both the Canon EF 25mm lens and the Sigma EF 50mm lens in different situations even when there was plenty of contrast and good lighting.

This will seem like a stupid question but I cannot get the combination of menu actions / button settings right to get the press half shutter to focus in video mode - how do you set it up? It works in the other modes (e.g. M) but not in video - nothing happens.

[herein2020]

21 hours ago, ac6000cw said:

(Speaking as an electronics engineer) the turn-on problems sound like the extra 'startup' current drawn by the phantom power circuitry on power-up (if it's on when the XLR module powers up) is 'tripping' some protection system - which then cuts off the power to the XLR module because it thinks it's faulty.

'Staging' the power up by first turning on the module (with phantom power off), then turning on the phantom power probably keeps the peak 'startup' current draw low enough to stop the protection tripping.

Unfortunately I think the only way to find out if it's the XLR module or the S5 having a problem is by trying another XLR module or S5.

I was thinking something along those lines, like the phantom power should be turned off first. That's why I think I should read the manual to see if there is a startup sequence. I just don't remember these problems with the GH5 but of course there could be different tolerances with the S5.

 

10 hours ago, Geoffrey said:

This will seem like a stupid question but I cannot get the combination of menu actions / button settings right to get the press half shutter to focus in video mode - how do you set it up? It works in the other modes (e.g. M) but not in video - nothing happens.

I have the Sigma EF adapter and EF mount lenses so it may work slightly differently with L mount lenses. But for me, I keep the dial in Movie Mode (M with the little camera beside it), the EF lens is set to AF on, and the back button focus selector is set to S(ingle) or C(ontinuous). Continuous AF doesn't work with the adapter, so when you have the adapter mounted and an EF lens attached S and C does pretty much the same thing. You can also use M but then you can't use the half press method to AF. So the three different ways you can use Hybrid One Shot AF with the S5 that I have found is:

 

• Focus Mode Dial set to S or C- The EF lens has to have AF turned on (switch on the lens) and the top dial in Movie mode. With it set this way I can then half press to AF both while recording or before starting to record. I typically pick 1 area for my focus mode.
• Focus Mode Dial set to M - The EF lens has to have AF turned on and the top dial in Movie mode. This is where it gets interesting. With this combination of settings. half pressing the shutter button doesn't do anything, the only two options are to turn the focus ring to manually focus, or you can tap the screen where it says AF and it will focus one time for you. What I like about this mode is for the EF lenses that support it, the camera will automatically punch in to help you MF when you turn the focus ring on the lens (as long as you set it up to do this in the menu and as long as you haven't yet pressed record). For the other two modes, if you want to punch in to check focus you have to press the center button on the focus mode selector switch. 
• Lens AF Mode Off or Fully Manual Lenses - If you switch the lens AF mode to off, then you are 100% responsible for pulling focus. What is pretty cool about this mode is that the focus selector switch doesn't matter anymore. S/C/M all automatically punch in to help you set focus as long as you have it set that way in the menu and as long as you haven't yet pressed record and as long as the lens reports to the camera that the ring is being rotated (most of my lenses do).

I'll admit I've gotten kind of lazy with focusing now that I have the S5. With the GH5 all of my lenses were manual so I used to have to focus everything by hand. With the S5, the focus peaking is so hard to see (IMO worse than the GH5), that I've found manually focusing much harder so I tend to rely more on the hybrid method. The only problem is the camera completely fails to focus sometimes in this mode so then I still have to do some manual focusing.

 

I like many others truly hope Panasonic does something to improve their AF. I would literally buy an S5II if the only improvement was a working AF system.

[zerocool22]

I need to shoot a bunch of interviews (3 hours in total) but if I shoot C4K 10bit 422 25fps longgop I only get 30mins on a 256GB card. In FHD 10bit 422 longgop I get over 5 hours on a 256GB. I have not checked with the client if FHD is sufficient. But I guess this is the best solution, or does anybody else recommend something else? (Like C4K 8bit)

 

Thanks,

[herein2020]

27 minutes ago, zerocool22 said:

I need to shoot a bunch of interviews (3 hours in total) but if I shoot C4K 10bit 422 25fps longgop I only get 30mins on a 256GB card. In FHD 10bit 422 longgop I get over 5 hours on a 256GB. I have not checked with the client if FHD is sufficient. But I guess this is the best solution, or does anybody else recommend something else? (Like C4K 8bit)

 

Thanks,

 

For an interview I would just shoot in 8 bit. I would much rather 8bit than lose the ability to punch in and recompose in post. I shot tons of content with the GH5's 8bit and clients never cared or noticed. My C200 also shoots 8bit and somehow it looks just as good as the 10bit out of the S5.

[newfoundmass]

29 minutes ago, herein2020 said:

 

For an interview I would just shoot in 8 bit. I would much rather 8bit than lose the ability to punch in and recompose in post. I shot tons of content with the GH5's 8bit and clients never cared or noticed. My C200 also shoots 8bit and somehow it looks just as good as the 10bit out of the S5.

Agreed. I can't imagine you would need to push the colors around very much for interviews, so 10 bit shouldn't be necessary. 

I love that 10 bit is becoming regular but I think people overestimate how much they really need to use it. 

[Mofalck]

Transition Lines Artefact in S5 Stills

I was wondering if anyone else has this curious issue. I zoomed in to some stills I had taken and found what seems to look like stitching or a transition line in my photos. I've never seen this on my GH5, so I'm wondering if this is caused by the bigger sensor - perhaps the processor does not cope? I downloaded some raw files from a review site of the S5 and found the same issue. Here is a zoom in from my own photo: 

[Geoffrey]

On 4/17/2021 at 5:58 AM, herein2020 said:

I was thinking something along those lines, like the phantom power should be turned off first. That's why I think I should read the manual to see if there is a startup sequence. I just don't remember these problems with the GH5 but of course there could be different tolerances with the S5.

 

I have the Sigma EF adapter and EF mount lenses so it may work slightly differently with L mount lenses. But for me, I keep the dial in Movie Mode (M with the little camera beside it), the EF lens is set to AF on, and the back button focus selector is set to S(ingle) or C(ontinuous). Continuous AF doesn't work with the adapter, so when you have the adapter mounted and an EF lens attached S and C does pretty much the same thing. You can also use M but then you can't use the half press method to AF. So the three different ways you can use Hybrid One Shot AF with the S5 that I have found is:

 

• Focus Mode Dial set to S or C- The EF lens has to have AF turned on (switch on the lens) and the top dial in Movie mode. With it set this way I can then half press to AF both while recording or before starting to record. I typically pick 1 area for my focus mode.
• Focus Mode Dial set to M - The EF lens has to have AF turned on and the top dial in Movie mode. This is where it gets interesting. With this combination of settings. half pressing the shutter button doesn't do anything, the only two options are to turn the focus ring to manually focus, or you can tap the screen where it says AF and it will focus one time for you. What I like about this mode is for the EF lenses that support it, the camera will automatically punch in to help you MF when you turn the focus ring on the lens (as long as you set it up to do this in the menu and as long as you haven't yet pressed record). For the other two modes, if you want to punch in to check focus you have to press the center button on the focus mode selector switch. 
• Lens AF Mode Off or Fully Manual Lenses - If you switch the lens AF mode to off, then you are 100% responsible for pulling focus. What is pretty cool about this mode is that the focus selector switch doesn't matter anymore. S/C/M all automatically punch in to help you set focus as long as you have it set that way in the menu and as long as you haven't yet pressed record and as long as the lens reports to the camera that the ring is being rotated (most of my lenses do).

I'll admit I've gotten kind of lazy with focusing now that I have the S5. With the GH5 all of my lenses were manual so I used to have to focus everything by hand. With the S5, the focus peaking is so hard to see (IMO worse than the GH5), that I've found manually focusing much harder so I tend to rely more on the hybrid method. The only problem is the camera completely fails to focus sometimes in this mode so then I still have to do some manual focusing.

 

I like many others truly hope Panasonic does something to improve their AF. I would literally buy an S5II if the only improvement was a working AF system.

Thank you that has clarified things a lot.

One thing to add - the dedicated button 'AF ON' on the back is very handy I find (instead of the touch screen version) and also the this one-shot focus still works in scenario three with the lens switched to MF.

[herein2020]

2 hours ago, Geoffrey said:

Thank you that has clarified things a lot.

One thing to add - the dedicated button 'AF ON' on the back is very handy I find (instead of the touch screen version) and also the this one-shot focus still works in scenario three with the lens switched to MF.

 

Good point. I've actually never once since owning the camera pressed that button; didn't realize it worked like that in MF mode.  It's almost comical that this camera has so many focusing settings and buttons yet focusing is its biggest weakness.

[Geoffrey]

44 minutes ago, herein2020 said:

 

Good point. I've actually never once since owning the camera pressed that button; didn't realize it worked like that in MF mode.  It's almost comical that this camera has so many focusing settings and buttons yet focusing is its biggest weakness.

Ha, yes interesting point. Tbf it actually works pretty well until you want the tracking kind and then it is variable. Fortunately for me I rarely need to use this and was aware when I bought the camera. The challenge for me at the moment is not so much focussing but what to focus on - the depth of field variations are pretty good but the small screen / viewfinder is too small and so actually being totally clear what you are doing is problematic. An external screen just isn't practicable for me. Much of this is getting used to the screen though, and being more careful!

[Thpriest]

23 hours ago, Mofalck said:

Transition Lines Artefact in S5 Stills

I was wondering if anyone else has this curious issue. I zoomed in to some stills I had taken and found what seems to look like stitching or a transition line in my photos. I've never seen this on my GH5, so I'm wondering if this is caused by the bigger sensor - perhaps the processor does not cope? I downloaded some raw files from a review site of the S5 and found the same issue. Here is a zoom in from my own photo: 

Very strange. Do you only notice it when cropped in? Are you looking at this on a computer or in camera?

[Mofalck]

1 hour ago, Thpriest said:

Very strange. Do you only notice it when cropped in? Are you looking at this on a computer or in camera?

Yes, it is only visible when you crop in a lot. I did this on my computer and zoomed in all the way on Windows Photos app. I've tried various SD cards including a V90, but all have the same line, though it is not always in the same place. It is most easy to see when the image is busy - ie branches and such-like. It is mostly vertical, though in the example I posted, near the bottom where the flower is, you can see it horizontally too.

[Thpriest]

Maybe it's a problem with the software, not the photo. 

[zerocool22]

Whats your favorite picture profile shooting S5. I changed V-log to portrait mode accidently and surprisingly I liked the footage when viewing in post. Have not toggled the other picture profiles yet. 

I will be shooting in 8bit, so V-Log is perhaps not the pp for most shoots.

[MrSMW]

Raw for stills and Natural for video.

I just tried log again today, back to back with the Natural profile and nah, it just confirmed that log still is not for me.

Maybe in someone else’s hands maybe but my tweaked settings version of the Natural profile looked better SOOC than anything and everything I tried with the log version of ‘the same’ footage.

Because 90% of my work is hybrid, I start with the stills and have created an import preset unique to me. No you can’t buy or have it, it’s mine 😘

I’m 90-100% there with most pics straight away and it’s only minor fiddling with each from that point onward, then hi res Jpeg export and I am done.

For the video side of things, I made a .cube LUT or whatever it’s called, from a typical stills image and I slap that onto an adjustment layer over my entire footage at 25% intensity and as a creative LUT.

I then fiddle with the clips so they look like I want them to look et voilà, finito, export a 4K version and the stills and video match as closely as they are ever going to.

I enjoy ‘editing’ almost as much as I do shooting but I don’t want to spend much time on it so I always:

A: shoot with intent in the first place

B: try and get it as right in camera as poss

C. only spend the time necessary to finish what has mostly already been achieved at the time of capture.

KISS 💋

[Thpriest]

7 minutes ago, MrSMW said:

B: try and get it as right in camera as poss

This is how I work. Unless you are doing really high end stuff nobody pays enough to grade everything and many times it's just not necessary.