This is the Panasonic S5 mark II, and it might just be the Panasonic camera that everyone
has been waiting for.
It has a new sensor, new engine, new phase detect autofocus system, higher resolution
record modes, and a whole lot more.
We are going to break down and test each of those areas in turn, but my main takeaway
from trying this out for a few days which I wanted to start this video with, is that
this is Panasonic back on their top form.
This is an incredibly feature rich camera, designed to be practical and convenient, at
a price point that offers pretty incredible value for money.
There’s a lot to cover here, so lets just make our way through it section by section.
Now, its not a subject I normally start with, but I think its justified here.
Every Panasonic launch for the last few years has been met with cries of “please just
give us a phase detect autofocus”.
Their previous contrast based AF system was good for a contrast system, but because it
was contrast based it hunted when tracking a subject.
This new Phase Detect hybrid system does none of that.
Its important though for me to get across that from a technology point of view, it’s
not throwing out all their hard work in pushing that contrast based AF system forwards, its
just now adding the phase detect technology to that same system enabling the camera to
sense depth which is the part that is just so important for video autofocus tracking.
Here are some of our tests, S5 on the left, S5 mark 2 on the right.
And as I lean backwards and forward in my chair the difference is day and night obvious.
The S5 hunts a lot and flickers in the background, while the S5 II performs really well.
This is really obvious when we crop me out of the frame and just focus on the Bokeh in
the background.
This makes the flickering on the original S5 really obvious.
We also explored how the camera behaved in different picture profiles as well, as on
the S5 you definitely got better autofocus performance in contrastier picture profiles
compared to when you are using a log format.
Here the difference is much smaller, as you can see it is working well on both log and
in cinelikeD.
However the cinelikeD does seem to perform slightly better, so there is still a slight
difference, perhaps this is due to the contrast side of the Hybrid system having the same
performance as we saw on the original S5, but the addition of Phase technology has made
that difference which was quite noticeable on the S5 really minimal here on the S5 II.
So, we are all very happy here.
The days of compromising on autofocus performance by choosing a Panasonic camera are now well
and truly behind us.
With the S5 mark II Panasonic have raised their autofocus performance up to meet the
Canon’s and Sony’s of the world and levelled that playing field.
Which I am incredibly happy to finally see.
This is an autofocus system you should definitely be able to really rely on for professional
video work.
So the S5 mark II isn’t using the same sensor as the S5 before it, its a completely new
sensor and a completely new processing engine as well.
Panasonic say it has 14+ stops of dynamic range, and it also has a dual native ISO which
is fairly rare to see at this price point from other brands.
In V-Log the native ISOs are 640 and 4000 and in regular picture profiles it is 100
and 640.
That V-Log recording is full V-Log not V-Log light and it also uses the full V-Gamut colour
space as well.
I have the original S5 here with me, so lets put them side by side and do some over and
under tests to see what some of the differences are as thats obviously the main question here.
S5 on the left, S5 mark 2 on the right.
The first thing you notice is that the new mark 2 has much nicer skin tones in my opinion.
This is graded using a colour space transform in resolve with some exposure correction before
hand to correct each exposure back to normal.
The skin tones and actually just the overall colours on the mark 2 stay consistently nicer
I think.
Up to 4 stops over both cameras perform fantastically, and at 5 stops over they both break with very
similar clipping on both the original and the mark 2.
So I would expect them to have the same amount of highlight exposure potential.
However when we go under exposed we start to see much more difference.
The original desaturates with strong magenta noise blocks, while the mark 2 keeps its colour
but has very strong green noise blocks.
Now, the original was in its 4.2.2 H.264 codec while the mark 2 is in its 4.2.0 H265 codec
because we used the 6K recording mode, so that could be why we are seeing this difference.
But its interesting to note.
As for which does better, I think at 1 and 2 stops under the mark 2 looks better because
it keeps the overall saturation and not too much of that extreme chroma noise has krept
in yet, but once we go past that the original looks better.
All cameras look pretty bad by this point though.
So overall here, I think the main takeaway is that we shouldn’t expect too much difference
in image quality with the mark 2 over the mark 1, apart from in your colours and skin
tones.
However the S5 always performed well in any comparisons we did so this is no bad thing.
Before we move on to recording modes lets first quickly look at our High ISO tests and
how it compares to the S5.
They both have the same native ISOs of 640 and 4000 when in V-Log.
And the noise performance seems similar, even up at 12800.
Once you get as high as 25600 though the mark 1 started to go green while the new mark 2
keeps its colour nicely.
The headline new recording modes on the S5 mark II are the 6K options.
Using the full width of the sensor you can record 6K in either DCI 17:9 or 16:9 or even
3:2 aspect ratios.
This 3:2 mode will be great for anamorphic users, but also for cropping for social media.
Crop off the top for regular video, crop off the sides for vertical video.
It helps you get better framing for vertical video as if you just crop a vertical segment
of a regular 16:9 video your framing will often feel very tight and cramped.
You don’t have to use the 6K modes though, you can also use 4K DCI or UHD up to 30p or
HD up to 120p.
Crop in to APSC and you can get up to 60p in 4K.
We tried the 6K and 4K 25p side by side to see the differences, and as you can see the
6K is definitely sharper and more detailed.
Interestingly the 4K from the original S5 is slightly sharper than the 4K from the S5
II, but not as detailed as the 6K.
So the original S5 does seem to be doing a better job of downsampling the sensor down
to 4K.
However to be honest, for the file size difference between the 6K and 4K modes, I would just
be using the 6K.
Its 200 Mbps compared to 150 when in 4K, which is well worth it for the extra quality in
my opinion.
This is not one of those large bloated and difficult to work with formats just because
it is 6K.
If you have a modern computer like any of the Macs with an M1 or M2 chip inside this
footage will edit perfectly for you.
All of these options can record for an unlimited amount of time because of their new “Hidden
fan” design.
This is really clever, rather than bolting a fan onto the back like they did with the
GH6 and S1H or Canon did with the R5c.
They have built the cooling fan into the top viewfinder section.
The intake vent is tucked away under the logo at the front, and the hot air comes out either
side by the dials.
So you notice it a lot less than you do when its on the back as that can make the whole
camera feel thicker and bulkier.
You really don’t notice it is there at all.
All record modes in the camera are based around long-gop compression, and everything is 10
bit.
Every mode can be 4.2.0 10 bit, and basically everything apart from the 6K modes can use
4.2.2 10 bit.
Once we did some digging though, we noticed that everything in that 4.2.2 10 bit is using
H.264 and everything in 4.2.0 10 bit is using H.265, even though they both use the same
data rate.
So this is a bit strange, because it leaves us wondering which one has the best image
quality, the more colour information of 4.2.2 10 bit, or the more efficient compression
of using H.265 even though its 4.2.0.
Here is the two side by side and as you can see the sharpness and detail looks identical.
If we introduce a ridiculous grade in order to try and break them we still can barely
see any difference.
Especially in graduated areas from one colour to another which is somewhere you would expect
to see a difference, but at the end of the day both are 10 bit so there isnt much extra
colour information.
Perhaps in greenscreen or chroma keying you may see something, but here I don’t.
There is a compression difference though, even though they are the same data rate, the
4.2.0 H.265 has slightly larger compression blocks while the 4.2.2 H.264 has more noticeable
but finer compression blocks.
However you only really see these once you push a grade to this point which is a very
extreme situation.
For a regular grade you will never really see a difference between these modes.
There are a few other new features Panasonic have included here as well.
The first is a new image stabilisation algorithm they are called Active IS in the presentation
we received but in the camera menus nothing has changed, its just part of the regular
IBIS system . Panasonic say though that this is aimed at shooting video while walking handheld,
apparently it predicts movements and compensates for those movements around 200% better than
the S5 did, and the S5 was pretty good.
This is a hard thing to really test out scientifically in a video like this but we did some walking
shots handheld which you can see here and it does perform well.
Panasonic has always had one of the better IBIS systems in the industry and any improvements
to an already great system are always welcome.
They also have a new way of working with LUTS called Real Time LUT.
This is essentially just a cleverer way of burning in a LUT while recording.
You can load in up to 10 LUTS as .vlt or .cube files, which is an increase over the 4 slots
we got before.
Then you can use them as your View Assist on your monitor just like before.
Or you can burn them into your footage with Real Time LUT.
You find this in the photo style menu, it starts off as V-Log and then you choose the
LUT you want, it applies it and you are now recording that instead of log.
So its essentially a more customisable way of giving you a quick turnaround rec.709 profile
which looks good like Canon have done with WideDR and Sony have done with S-Cinetone.
Interestingly you can also apply it to other profiles like Cine-D so im sure we will see
a huge amount of LUTS of all kinds being made for this camera to tweak the image in all
kinds of ways which is quite exciting.
There are also some physical changes.
The screen is the same flip out screen as on the S5, but the OLED viewfinder has had
a quality bump up to 3.6 million dots.
The HDMI port is now a full size one.
It can’t output raw at launch, but that is coming in a firmware update although it
will require their paid SFU2 licence upgrade unfortunately.
The card slots are now both the same speed, taking UHS II SD cards.
And we now get 4 channel audio via the XLR 1 adapter just like we saw on the GH6.
Then, if that all wasn’t enough for us to talk about here.
They have also announced an X version, the S5 mark II x which will be available in May
and about £300 more expensive than the regular model.
We don’t know a huge amount about it yet but I’ll talk more about my thoughts on
this in its own Up to Speed video which i’ll put a link to in the comments of this video
to.
But essentially it is the same camera but adding some pro video features like All-I
recording, 5.8K prores over the USB-C port, RAW out over the HDMI without a paid licence,
and some streaming and tethering options.
Plus a really nice blacked out finish to the camera as well which is an interesting move
and gives it quite a unique look.
So, all in all, the S5 II is a really fascinating camera.
It improves upon everything we loved about the original S5.
Which I always said would be one of my favourite cameras on the market if it only had phase
detect autofocus.
Well… now the mark 2 has it.
And just that one change makes this such a more well-rounded professional tool, let alone
all the other improvements to the camera as well.
This is a lot of camera, but it sits as one of the most affordable modern full frame cameras
on the market.
Which makes this one of the best value for money options that we sell.
If you want to order one for yourself of course head over to Proav.co.uk and let me know what
you think in the comments section.
Can you think of a camera on the market right now that offers quite so much value for money
as this one does?
Let me know.
Thanks for watching, and i’ll see you in the next one.