Panasonic S5 II (What does Panasonic have up their sleeve?)

[newfoundmass]

More tests with EF lenses.

 

 

[John Matthews]

On 1/20/2023 at 7:34 PM, newfoundmass said:

More tests with EF lenses.

Is there a way Canon could break this compatibility? They would if they could.

[newfoundmass]

1 hour ago, John Matthews said:

Is there a way Canon could break this compatibility? They would if they could.

Not really. It's pretty much out of their hands at this point. They COULD release firmware updates for lenses, but it'd be pointless and they'd never actually do it. Why bother when hardly anyone would actually install the updates? At this point the only thing that'll impact compatibility is the adapters and cameras themselves. 

[Emanuel]

Without mention the more it works the more they sell their glass. Looks like a most value than cameras BTW:

https://1kcreatives.com/camera-sales-statistics-market-share/

https://www.cined.com/three-million-cameras-sold-canon-and-nikon-shine-with-financial-results/

 

When imaging sector sells a way less than a half, printing market segment is still their core business though:

https://global.canon/en/ir/library/results.html

 

Canon stands as a colossal giant :- )

 

[ade towell]

Wex in the UK has stock for S5ii next day delivery, unfortunately for me it is still showing as pre-order for the kit with the 2 lenses - has anyone got their hands on one yet?

Am interested to see how good the internal audio is - 96khz 24 bit and line level in with supposedly decent pre-amps should hopefully make recording seperate audio a thing of the past, at least for me. Pairing the Canon R6 with my Sound Devices Mix pre-d was quite disappointing and poor quality compared with the mix pre into Sony PCM M10 audio recorder. Panasonic seem to take audio a bit more seriously in their mirrorless cameras so fingers crossed their pre amps will be more comparable to the audio recorder.

 

[hyalinejim]

I'm just on the way home now and look what I've got in my bag 🙂

For me, the clincher was that phase AF works with my old EF lenses with the MC21

[FHDcrew]

Our man @Andrew Reid is back at it!  Also the lighting looks GREAT this time too!

 

[Django]

hmm.. but doesn't the Sigma MC-21 adapter kinda invalidate his point? As a Canon user myself, the above AF results on EF adapted lenses are rather impressive and could bait me to switch. I've said it before but the S5ii is the first ever Panasonic camera I've got on my radar.

As for GH6, I think its target remains M43 lens lovers. Most of them use manual glass so AF is maybe not as important, and the camera still has some exclusive features such as internal ProRes and the dual gain sensor.

I do suspect the very delayed release of S5iiX to be calculated in an effort to avoid cannibalising S5ii & GH6 sales. I find this strategy kinda sneaky. For only $200 extra why would you go with S5ii over S5iiX once both are available?

Anyways I look forward in testing out some S5ii Vlog footage. How it grades is really the main question mark I have regarding switching. Hopefully maybe someone here can provide some! 😉 

[TomTheDP]

The GH6 needs PDAF. 

[ade towell]

1 hour ago, Django said:

hmm.. but doesn't the Sigma MC-21 adapter kinda invalidate his point? As a Canon user myself, the above AF results on EF adapted lenses are rather impressive and could bait me to switch.

Yes I agree and I'm a Canon R6 user who is switching - the S5ii sorts a lot of the issues I had with it that the Canon R6ii still has, but a big reason the move back to Panasonic should be fairly painless is because the Sigma adaptor seems to work really well on my EF lenses.

hyalinejim congratulations, early days but how are you finding your new toy?

[zerocool22]

2 hours ago, Django said:

hmm.. but doesn't the Sigma MC-21 adapter kinda invalidate his point? As a Canon user myself, the above AF results on EF adapted lenses are rather impressive and could bait me to switch. I've said it before but the S5ii is the first ever Panasonic camera I've got on my radar.

As for GH6, I think its target remains M43 lens lovers. Most of them use manual glass so AF is maybe not as important, and the camera still has some exclusive features such as internal ProRes and the dual gain sensor.

I do suspect the very delayed release of S5iiX to be calculated in an effort to avoid cannibalising S5ii & GH6 sales. I find this strategy kinda sneaky. For only $200 extra why would you go with S5ii over S5iiX once both are available?

Anyways I look forward in testing out some S5ii Vlog footage. How it grades is really the main question mark I have regarding switching. Hopefully maybe someone here can provide some! 😉 

Yeah was a S5 user (with lots of EF glass with the sigma adapter), but was thinking about getting an A7S III just because of the AF performance (vlogging). But now the S5 II just fixes all my problems, I can keep my EF lenses and don't need to buy any sony lenses. So in my opinion Panasonic just converted a lot of Canon users to panasonic.  

[newfoundmass]

It's so hard to know if a camera will be "enough" to lure away users of other brands/lens mounts, but I DO think we'll see enough people switching that it WILL make a difference on Panasonic's bottom line, especially among "content creators" (I hate that term) and video pros that do marketing for companies.

The ability to shoot in 3:2 is a big selling point for the people I know in that realm, because they're creating content for multiple platforms that all favor different aspect ratios and resolutions. For those types, the combination of that, the IBIS, and the autofocus, is a really compelling combination. And the thing about them is, a lot of them aren't heavily invested in lenses for the cameras they are currently using. A lot of them may only use two or three lenses. 

My friend Josh is a A7s III shooter. He primarily uses a Tamron zoom and a few primes. He is considering jumping because he can get close to $3000 for the body alone, which would be more than enough for him to get the S5 and at least one lens, not to mention what he'd get for the E mount lenses. At the end of the day he'd probably end up with close to $4000 to work with after selling everything? In all likelihood he'd end up with more money in his pocket when all was said and done, plus have a camera that is better for his social media marketing work he does. He told me he'd miss not having 120 fps in 4K but that he also hardly ever uses it. It's one of those things he wanted badly, but in practice found he really didn't need 4x slow motion for non-profit marketing videos (shocker, I know!) and doesn't really use it much. 

When it comes to M43, I'm a little more conflicted. I think that there probably are a significant number of M43 users that see the S5 ii and feel kind of burned if they'd just purchased the GH6 last year. People can make arguments for why they shouldn't, but there absolutely are people that do feel that way and, if they'd known, probably would've held off buying the GH6 in favor of finally switching to full frame and the S5 ii when it came out. Do I think though that the S5 ii will completely cannibalize the GH line or M43? No, because there are still a lot of people that are not interested in full frame, and are very, very partial to M43. If we're being honest, Panasonic put that user base on ice for several years. Those that stuck around are their most loyal users, and I'd argue the majority of them will continue using M43 for as long as companies support it. 

I agree with @Andrew Reid though that the promise of M43 has kind of been lost. In many ways it was necessary to make the cameras bigger to support the advanced features that for a long time only M43 was capable of, but now everyone is on a pretty even playing field. To me, the way forward for M43 is to focus on making the cameras (and lenses, if possible) smaller while still maintaining the capabilities and the quality that we've come to expect. I just don't know that Panasonic sees value in that direction, given they've seemingly axed the GX line of cameras. Even today, if you could put all the capabilities of a GH5 but with updated color science and autofocus in the body of a GX camera I'd buy one. 

[hyalinejim]

54 minutes ago, ade towell said:

how are you finding your new toy

Well, as you can imagine, I spent the afternoon running towards and away from the camera like a fool, trying to figure out if phase AF work for the EF lenses I own (it does). I would guess at this stage that every EF lens will work with the MC21 and, who knows, possibly with other adapters too. But the important variable is how noisy are they going to be.

Up to now, I had been using an old Sigma EF 70-200 2.8 as my main interview lens for corporate/promotional vide. The phase AF works very well on the S5II but the noise of the motor is too loud and distracting to be usable for my work. My other workhorse lens, the Tamron EF 24-70 2.8 is not too noisy, and in APSC mode gives me roughly the field of view that I Iike for interviews. The Canon 24-105 is not too noisy, but I don't really like it (low light transmission and weird non-constant aperture behaviour when stopped down). My only other EF AF lens is a nifty 50 which we already knew works fine from Kai or somebody.

This was my motivation to get the S5 II. I had noticed that occasionally I missed focus in interviews if the subject moved a little and I felt that wasn't good enough. Now I don't need to hover near the lens quite so much, sweating bricks if the subject leans forward or takes a half step back.

The other thing I began to have a look at was  if it would change how I shoot B roll. I was fairly happy with how I pull focus manually previously. Nevertheless, I now have the option use human tracking when shooting B roll of people, and normal tracking when shooting objects.

I'm also looking forward to putting phase AF through its paces in trying to nab some shallow DOF shots of my kids running around the place.

[Django]

29 minutes ago, newfoundmass said:

The ability to shoot in 3:2 is a big selling point for the people I know in that realm, because they're creating content for multiple platforms that all favor different aspect ratios and resolutions. For those types, the combination of that, the IBIS, and the autofocus, is a really compelling combination. And the thing about them is, a lot of them aren't heavily invested in lenses for the cameras they are currently using. A lot of them may only use two or three lenses. 

That would be me. The 6K 3:2 is the number one appeal. Mainly for multi aspect ratio purposes but also anamorphic use.

I am invested in Canon but mostly EF. I'd only need to sell 2 RF lenses, none L so minor financial loss. 

The IBIS, PDAF and video assist tools all check boxes too so really on paper its a very tempting option.

Again, for me, it is how the files are going to look and be treated that concerns me. 

I can grade Clog & Slog in my sleep but Vlog is a mystery and even threads like this don't inspire confidence:

https://www.eoshd.com/comments/topic/70778-how-are-you-converting-v-log-to-normal-colour/

[hyalinejim]

14 minutes ago, Django said:

Vlog is a mystery and even threads like this don't inspire confidence:

Don't be put off by that! I would assume that the observations I make there regarding V-Log colour are the same for other flavours of log, ie: that different methods of gamut conversions (or non-conversions) will be more or less accurate to objective colour.

I don't see how working with V-Log would be more difficult than C or S Log.

[independent]

Would be interested in how the image stabilization is on non native lenses, i.e., EF lenses with and without optical stab. 

 

[ade towell]

Yes working with 10 bit v-log is easy, no problem getting a lovely look, clog3 is also easy to grade as it's not very flat, but will be good to work with decent DR again and be able to push the shadows a bit - I didn't like how the Canon R6 seemed to cut off the lower stops.  

[Django]

1 hour ago, hyalinejim said:

Don't be put off by that! I would assume that the observations I make there regarding V-Log colour are the same for other flavours of log, ie: that different methods of gamut conversions (or non-conversions) will be more or less accurate to objective colour.

I don't see how working with V-Log would be more difficult than C or S Log.

You are the one in that thread that stated the official V-Log to V709 LUT was "half-assed" and that in Resolve color space transform, the conversion brought issues.

The rest of thread is people saying how exposing V-log is tricky..  and that "REC709 monitoring is trash on Panasonic".

All of that seems very specific to Panasonic / Vlog. Never heard such issues with C-Log / S-log.

All Log footage doesn't grade the same, so I'd like to see for myself. Perhaps you could provide some S5ii Vlog footage to test?

[newfoundmass]

52 minutes ago, Django said:

You are the one in that thread that stated the official V-Log to V709 LUT was "half-assed" and that in Resolve color space transform, the conversion brought issues.

The rest of thread is people saying how exposing V-log is tricky..  and that "REC709 monitoring is trash on Panasonic".

All of that seems very specific to Panasonic / Vlog. Never heard such issues with C-Log / S-log.

All Log footage doesn't grade the same, so I'd like to see for myself. Perhaps you could provide some S5ii Vlog footage to test?

All log profiles take some time to get used to, but I really don't think Vlog is any more difficult to work with than other log profiles. I don't mean to downplay anyone's opinion in that other thread, but they're just that: someone's opinion and there's only a couple of people giving them in there. You'll find tons of folks who have differing ones. 

[Django]

6 minutes ago, newfoundmass said:

All log profiles take some time to get used to, but I really don't think Vlog is any more difficult to work with than other log profiles. I don't mean to downplay anyone's opinion in that other thread, but they're just that: someone's opinion and there's only a couple of people giving them in there. You'll find tons of folks who have differing ones. 

No doubt, which is why again I'd love to get my hands on some footage and test it out myself!

Switching systems is way too big of a deal to simply rely on someone else's opinion. 

By the way it's not just Vlog but overall colour science I'm also curious about.