The year is 2025, and there are too many cameras trying to do the same thing with the same image quality. Most of them look like work tools or office paraphernalia rather than artistic tools or cameras. I am a bit bored of it all to be honest.
The S1R II is YET another Sony a7 series clone with no soul. The image is lovely, the specs are fine, the price is lower than an Sony A7R V or Nikon Z8, yet Panasonic have lost what made them unique in a sea of alternatives.
I was an influencer in Lumix land and I remember it fondly, especially during the GH4 / GH5 days and even as far back as the GH1. I eagerly bought my own S1 and later S1R as soon as they came out, to welcome Panasonic’s entry into full frame after so many years of 2x crop sensors.
For the S1 had little competition from Canon at the time, none from Nikon. Likewise the GH5 before it felt like it had a reason to exist. The first 10bit codec on a mirrorless camera.
Above: The Lumix S1R Mark II
The groundbreaking Panasonic GH4, first 4K video mode on an affordable mirrorless camera, with cinema-level image quality. And the earlier cameras, we know and remember fondly. GH2 hacks! GH1, a new “hybrid” concept of stills/video camera. All this had a clear reason to exist, a reason to invest in them – they were DIFFERENT.
With the S5 cameras, this is when Lumix started to lose their magic for me. I think they were trying to do cut-price want-to-be Sony a7 clones.
The features were pretty good but mid-range mediocrity was not what I needed to see after waiting 5 years for an S1H Mark II.
The recent S5 Mark II (and to an extent the S9) just looks so dorky. It doesn’t have the brand appeal. It doesn’t have the skilful marketing. The physical controls aren’t at the Sony a7 IV level of feel and quality. Neither is the autofocus. The sensor is old. The EVF is middle of the road, nothing about it stands out as making you want to shoot with it. To this extent they succeeded in copying Sony magnificently!
Contrast this to the Sigma BF which has just been announced – a truly different kind of tool with a huge fun factor. It aims squarely for a niche of artists, photographers and filmmakers rather than a nebulous blob of “creators”. It also has a realism over price that Leica will never comprehend!
Different is what an L-mount camera needs to be because L-mount does not compete with Sony, Canon or Nikon. It has lost.
It does not have the critical mass behind it, the momentum from previous mounts, or the history.
There’s just not really the need for it. I’d have been even happier to see an E-mount Sigma BF with the same Sigma ART lenses.
If you had told me at the launch of the S1R in January 2018 that we would be waiting until 2025 for a Mark II, and that it would sit in a tweaked body design of a mid-range camera, I would have politely suggested that Panasonic go fuck themselves.
Panasonic need to decide what they are doing in this market.
Are they chasing Sony-Canon levels of market share? Is this even realistic? (I don’t think it is. So don’t compete like for like… do something else, something more innovative).
Or are they in a niche – like Sigma and Leica of making “thinking man’s” artisan tools which offer something unique and something Sony will never understand – something cultured. Yes? Then why does the S1R Mark II look and feel like an amalgamation of every boring full frame worktool of the past 20 years?
Lumix need to decide what they want to be.
And another thing – 2018 was the launch of a brand new system, with a new mount, and this as so often is the case in the camera industry – is one of the most important things a company can ever do.
Yet Panasonic after all that hard work giving us the S1, S1R and later S1H, basically left them for dead. As late as last week I thought they might have even exited the flagship camera market altogether.
These first cameras were so crucial. These and the S5 range would kill Micro Four Thirds, Panasonic’s main breadwinner and go toe-to-toe with their biggest rivals Sony and Canon in full frame.
It was important to get it right.
But Panasonic, despite the great specs of the S1R Mark II have completely mishandled their entry into full frame cameras.
This is a shame, because the underlying image and technology has always been so good.
The S1R II has an exceptional new sensor with dual gain and superb low light performance, 4K/120p with a minimal crop, great selection of codecs, so it performs like a flagship – maybe not with the latest stacked sensor technology or best rolling shutter performance, but also not with the associated price of it.
So in that sense, there must be room for a $3000, soon to be $2500 on eBay camera with 8K, phase-detect AF, great low light, very high resolution stills, and a useful amount of speed just not the absolute fastest, or absolute highest numbers on the box and an expensive Canon or Sony badge on the front.
There must be room for that right?
Sadly not.
This camera will be a failure, Panasonic might have no choice but to exist the market soon after.
It’s all about the wrong mount, wrong timing, and poor marketing.
Ask any Sony user, whether he prefers to shoot professional work on this or an A1 Mark II.
Ask any Sony enthusiast whether he will sell his E-mount lenses and A7 IV for the S1R II.
Go and ask any Canon EOS R5 owner, whether their next upgrade will be a Panasonic S1R II.
And finally go and ask me as a Panasonic user what I thought of the last 7 years since the original S1R and the complete lack of any new flagship cameras.
One can only keep the faith for so long, even the most loyal of customers.
