Panasonic S series battery problems (including S5 II)

[PannySVHS]

I can relate to that. @MrSMW After I purchased, drooled over, set up and used my newly acquired S1H I felt connected and have been enjoying this camera so much. My S1 will have to go. I never liked to used it. The gnarly swivel screen felt so uncomfortable to use with its sharp edges and unpleasant tactility. The S1H was love at first touch and the process of purchasin felt like love and exitement at first sight. Somehow the S1 felt hollow, though a heavy beast and rock solid. It is not hollow at all but that was just the feel I associated with it despite the reality of rough and heavy bulit. The hollowness could be described as lack of soul. My plastic fantastic G6 had soul injected and so does my S1H. Feels, like the menues are much more straigth forward that the ones from the S1. I don´t even want to bother to compare.

Handling is awesome. It is a joy to look at and it was so much fun to use it with a Canon 24-104 L zoom, which I choose for a little paid gig leaving the native 24-105 at home. Soul, silly thing with cameras and tools. 🙂

[kye]

4 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

Soul, silly thing with cameras and tools. 🙂

The more I learn about colour grading and human vision, the more I understand why such a thing might exist.

Human visual perception doesn't see in even remotely the same way that cameras and displays work.  It is both infinitely more sophisticated than the current state of the art in tools we have now, and also very flawed and easily duped with optical illusions of almost infinite number.

Cameras and monitors/projectors are also radically less capable than it (although HDR is partly closing that gap) and so almost all the images we view are enormously processed (the sun is 16,000,000 times brighter than white in rec709) and in colour grading we rely on various tricks to make things feel less artificial.  

Humans are wired to stay alive and the human visual system plays a large part in this, detecting movement in our periphery so we react to predators/prey, and even motion sickness (which compares our inner ear movement to what our eyes see) makes us feel ill when it thinks we have been poisoned and are hallucinating, etc etc.  Our vision is for much more than just walking around - all these incredible distortions in video are all bound to have a feeling of some kind, some sort of aesthetic quanta that go with them.  How could they be a completely pristine experience when we sit and watch a 2D pattern of dancing lights impersonate a 3D environment, where it jumps from place-to-place, it moves and the perspective changes when the whole time our body is continually aware we're sitting down and motionless, it takes us to places that are warm and cold and where the wind is blowing and our body tells us we're on a couch eating snacks, etc etc, there is infinitely more.

We can do this because we evolved the ability to look at a scene through a window / gap / mouth of a cave, and understand that what we see out the window might be a different white-balance / brightness / etc than the environment we are currently in.  If we hadn't evolved this ability then TV would just look like a glowing object in a room and would make no sense at all.

[MrSMW]

10 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

The S1H was love at first touch

Same here and as someone who has had a lot of cameras over the years, that is a rare experience.

No DSLR did it for me. My various Nikons were just bulky blobby tools other than perhaps the D700, but at the time I was transitioning to mirrorless Fuji.

The first and most impactful camera that I really felt a connection with, I felt was ‘just right’ for me, was the original X100. I bought and sold 3 or 4 of those things, mostly because the reality was it couldn’t actually do what I needed it to do as a working tool.

The original X Pro1’s were equally frustrating as enjoyable playing off speed (crap) with image output (if you didn’t miss anything too fast paced).

The X Pro2’s had ‘it’, ‘it’ being not what I’d call soul, but character.

The XH1 had it for me and so did the XT3 but both were flawed for my needs, the former not having the video spec I wanted and the latter lacking IBIS.

Might any later and more recent Fuji have had ‘it’ for me?

Maybe… Came close with either XH2 or XH2s and maybe the XT5 as with any of these we have the spec I need to do my job, but too late on my case as I’d taken a punt on switching to L Mount starting with the S5.

And it’s been mixed…

I’ve gained in outright video quality output and marginally also in stills, both of which enhanced due to year on year experience both at the capture stage and in the edit, but something has been missing and that has been outright enjoyment.

The tools have equally aided me and at the same time, got in the way.

I can’t really fault the output, as in got there in the end, but the process to do so has been somewhat strained.

The original S5 was pretty much a step sideways from the XT3. Other than the lack of IBIS, I preferred the XT3.

I never had an S1 so cannot comment but nothing about it inspired me to ever try one.

The sensor in the S1R did inspire me. There was and is magic in that thing for both stills and video, but not quite the video spec I wanted at the time and I just could not get on with the ergos of the thing because…

…because S1H. After the X100, the next in line for the crown of ‘character’.

It’s impossible to point at any one single thing and say, “it’s because of that” 👉 because as is usually the case with these things, it’s the sum of it’s parts.

It’s only flaw for me…though it is not really a flaw as such, is I wish it was 10% smaller and 20% lighter which is about what the Leica pairing of SL2/SL-S are, albeit without any kind of tilting screen or I would have gone there 100%.

And the S5ii…? As already mentioned, a lot of hope, but less reality. A solid workhorse, but falling short in various areas, principally how it is to use in reality and the simple fact is, I just don’t enjoy it. It’s close, but no where near the cigar.

So I am going to try something now that on paper is in most regards, pretty much equal. Slightly better in some specs, equal in most, behind in others, but will almost certainly have that X Factor that is missing from the S5ii.

But I am not going to rush headlong into it burning all my Lumix bridges without confirming my beliefs, but do it in stages.

Mostly because I am sick to death of chasing something that is now attainable from any of the brands re. specs, re. my needs, so it’s a case of ensuring I now make choices that will tick the box of enjoyment at the same time and ‘enjoyment’ for me is the spirit of that original X100.

A small(ish), compact little box, most of the time with a single fixed focal length, albeit this time as fast as I need and with all the specs/ability I want.

I’m going back to my future.

[PannySVHS]

A polish test site found the HD coming from the S1H to be pixel perfect in S35 mode. I imagine @kye would love the thick 200mbit HD coming from this camera.😊

[kye]

3 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

A polish test site found the HD coming from the S1H to be pixel perfect in S35 mode. I imagine @kye would love the thick 200mbit HD coming from this camera.😊

But not it's size!!

[MrSMW]

2 hours ago, kye said:

But not its size!!

200 or the unit physically?

I like the former. It’s enough for me but not too much. I’ll call it Goldilocks.

Re. the size & weight, as a hybrid shooter, I would prefer slightly smaller, but mainly lighter.

However, if I was just a videographer, it’s just about right (for me) as it’s a nice stable platform.

[kye]

1 hour ago, MrSMW said:

200 or the unit physically?

I like the former. It’s enough for me but not too much. I’ll call it Goldilocks.

Re. the size & weight, as a hybrid shooter, I would prefer slightly smaller, but mainly lighter.

However, if I was just a videographer, it’s just about right (for me) as it’s a nice stable platform.

Physically... the 200Mbps is just about right for bitrates 🙂 

[PannySVHS]

I also liked the HD mode of the GH5 very much like you have been a supporter of. @kye Would love to see some HD glory from you with your color grading approach and passion for the thick image. I have used it in its 200mbit All Intra mode and it looked thick. Grading was a pure joy. Textures, colour transitions, motion just felt right. Just, people I did the cinematography for never wanted HD, when filming with the GH5, but always 4K, so I will give my newly acquired S1H a good run in the supposely perfect S35 HD mode.

[kye]

11 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

I also liked the HD mode of the GH5 very much like you have been a supporter of. @kye Would love to see some HD glory from you with your color grading approach and passion for the thick image. I have used it in its 200mbit All Intra mode and it looked thick. Grading was a pure joy. Textures, colour transitions, motion just felt right. Just, people I did the cinematography for never wanted HD, when filming with the GH5, but always 4K, so I will give my newly acquired S1H a good run in the supposely perfect S35 HD mode.

Just upscale it - people can't see the difference anyway!

[PannySVHS]

That would be the least exiting takeaway from a conversation about a thick S35 HD image from the S1H.😂 @kye

[PannySVHS]

S1H is offering me the slightly larger S35 sensor gate besides the APSC. S1 only offers the latter. Tasty!:)

[salvagedcircuitry]

Does anyone know if either the GH6 or GH5II have this same battery drain issue?

Thanks!

[TomTheDP]

On 10/14/2023 at 6:56 PM, PannySVHS said:

A polish test site found the HD coming from the S1H to be pixel perfect in S35 mode. I imagine @kye would love the thick 200mbit HD coming from this camera.😊

I had always noticed the HD was subpar coming from the S1H but maybe that is only in full frame mode.

The GH5 HD looked just as good as the 4k. Which is something I have noticed when downsampling 4k to HD, even zooming in its hard to tell a difference. 

[Caleb Genheimer]

I use a Nitze mini v-mount plate with my S1H that they came out with last year, it has a USB-PD output to directly charge the camera. The OEM battery always sits in there, fully charged. It’s great power “insurance,” it can’t run the whole rig but in a pinch it means I can still power the camera for a half day if something happens to the v-mount system, which in my book makes it better than a dummy battery setup. It is very compact with 99WH mini batteries, I have it right up against the closed rear screen, which is too small for any critical work anyway, and while the viewfinder is nice, it’s built for stills, not cinematography, so I don’t use that either. 

[John Matthews]

Are start-up times and battery drain better on the S5ii after this most recent update?

I think the idea is that Panasonic wants you to just leave it plugged into your computer when it's not being used (with the battery in it). If you do, it charges all the time. However, I'm not actually sure if it'll charge again when it's full and drains more.