- All right, happy new year.
We are kicking off 2023 with a camera launch.
And we are unloaded.
So this is the Panasonic S5 II, or Lumix S5 II,
or Panasonic Lumix S5 II, whatever you want to call it.
But this is interesting because
I've been a big fan of Panasonic cameras
for a really long time, for two big reasons.
One, they feel like they really make the camera for
cinematographers in mind.
And also they have really, really good image stabilization,
but I feel like their biggest shortcoming
has always been in the autofocus,
with their contrast-based autofocus, which basically sucks.
But now, phase detect autofocus,
not face detect, phase detect.
And the way I see it, without the autofocus holding it back,
this really has the potential to be my daily driver.
It's under $2,000, full frame 6K H265 Codex
with the good vlog, good dynamic range,
180 degrees shutter that I can lock on.
It's got anamorphic modes and Ibis
and digital image stabilization that uses the gyro sensor,
a fan so it doesn't overheat,
but enough of this technical talk,
let's just go out and take it for a spin.
The mount is L mount, so the lens lines up down here.
This is kind of a lens alliance between Leica,
Panasonic, and Sigma.
And they're all kind of making lenses together,
which is pretty smart.
Now you have more lens options to choose from.
So I wanna test out the autofocus with this 50 mil prime.
And I'm gonna MD it down so I can shoot wide open.
Panasonic told me that there's a recommendation
for their autofocus mode and video,
which is the full area autofocus.
And also with full- (Dylan coughs)
- [Dylan] Sorry. - Did you just sneeze
and ruin my audio Dylan?
- [Dylan] No, I coughed.
- You son of a (censored).
Full area autofocus, human detection on.
Focused on the camera right now.
Okay, move the camera slightly out of the way.
All right. And now it's focused on you.
- Yeah. - Cool.
And we're at F18.
And there's Carrie over there.
Hi, Carrie. Oh, it missed you for a second,
but it caught you right back.
But it seems a lot more locked on here.
Now this is a 50 mil outta F18, so definitely a good test.
Check it out, it's even detecting the hockey player.
So here we have an option to turn on Ibis,
as well as E-image stabilization,
which is digital for references to gyro,
so I have that on as well.
And then there's Boost I.S.
Now I'm gonna go ahead and turn off all image stabilization,
so this is with zero image stabilization,
so all those micro jitters coming through.
And if I try to walk, ugh, looks terrible.
All right, I'm gonna come back this way.
Yeah, just really shaking. It's hard.
I'm trying my best to hold it steady.
So now I'm gonna go ahead and turn on Ibis.
So much better.
So this is purely Ibis.
So that sensor is wobbling around in there,
counteracting my movements and I'm gonna do a little walk.
So just the Ibis alone makes a big, big difference.
I've always really liked the Ibis out of Panasonic cameras.
Now I'm gonna go ahead and turn on e-image stabilization,
which does crop in slightly.
And that is gonna use the gyro information
to help digitally stabilize on top of the Ibis.
Now I'm gonna walk a little bit. Not bad.
All right, now let's go ahead
and just go even crazier with boost image stabilization.
Pretty much looks like it's on a tripod here.
Compare this to no image stabilization.
Way different.
So here, check this out.
We have multiple subjects in the frame.
And I'm just gonna go ahead
and use the joystick to toggle to this lady back here
and then that guy back there
and then back to that guy in the middle.
And then let's go back to Carrie.
I can slide in and out
and it's holding its focus all right.
Panasonic finally coming through with good autofocus.
The true test will be if I can slide down this
and if this can hold my focus.
Friction's starting to hurt my butt.
Is it losing it?
It's probably losing it here, huh?
- [Carrie] Yeah, when you step back fast,
but when you go slow it holds onto you a little better.
- Dylan, you wanna try to slide?
- [Dylan] Yeah, okay.
- [Gene] Oh! - What's up?
- Good job, Dylan.
- [Carrie] I'm impressed. That was a good slide.
- That was a good slide.
How'd you get so much slide?
I got stuck.
- I don't know. - My ass is sticky.
Actually, I shouldn't say that.
And let's review that.
The autofocus actually stuck, F18. Not bad.
So now that we actually have decent autofocus on here,
could this be a good vlog camera?
Check it out, I got the 16-35 on here.
Now this is an F4.
They don't have a 2H version,
which is something I would like to see in the future.
I'm gonna go ahead and slap this on the mantis pod.
So now we're vlogging on the S52.
I have the e-image stabilization as well as the Ibis.
And the thing about ultra wide angle lenses with Ibis,
is that sometimes you could get that wobble, right?
So if I shake it, you could probably see.
I'm kinda giving it a nice quick shake.
So are you seeing some wobble? Probably.
But if I just use it normally, how does it look?
Do you know that song by Red Hot Chili Peppers
"Under the Bridge"?
(guitar plays)
This is where that bridge is supposedly.
Found the bridge. - Found it.
Ah, it's the guy
taking in the view of the concrete up close.
(rock music)
- How is the Ibis wobble and how's the focus been?
So there are some limitations with slow mo on this camera.
And there's also a 150 where you lose the autofocus.
I'm reading an article saying
that actually wasn't the Anthony Kiedis bridge.
- [Dylan] Oh! - So we walked all the way
over there for that?
- What I like about Panasonic
is that it feels like a cinema camera
rather than a photography camera that can also shoot video.
For example, you can shoot at a shutter angle,
so 180 degree shutter.
But one of the big things I'm noticing is that
I'm accidentally doing this a whole bunch.
So accidentally changing my shutter speed.
So I actually swapped the aperture and shutter speed around,
so now my shutter's here and my aperture's here.
But in general, this dial being right here at the corner,
I'm constantly accidentally sweeping it.
Carrie's not such a big fan of the city, huh?
- There's no bathrooms.
(Gene laughs)
- Yeah, so Carrie needs to go now.
- You wonder why the street smells like piss.
- You gotta go to Chipotle and buy something.
Chips and guac, I'm down.
- Yeah, can you get that so I can get the code?
- Oh, you got some chips? Okay, cool.
How's this footage coming out?
It's too bad it's so gloomy.
It would've been nice if we had some sun
but I did get a bunch of shots with this yesterday
when it was a beautiful sunset.
So insert B-roll here.
I thought the dynamic range looked really good.
I really like the colors
and overall really satisfied with the image quality.
Plug in the DGI mics into this camera right now.
So we have a mic jack, obviously,
with a limiter which is nice so that
even if you clip on the microphone
it should still help lessen the blow.
We do have the option to add XLR inputs on that hot shoe.
Oh, look at this.
See these bars right here?
That's because these lights are flickering.
See these bars that kind of like roll across?
But luckily there's this thing called synchro scan.
If I turn it on,
I can actually adjust my shutter speed by one degree
and I could find that sweet spot where it matches
up with the light and I don't get the flicker.
Sometimes you're at a concert venue
and you can't get rid of it.
It's a really nice feature to have.
Now that it's starting to get a little bit darker
I may need to boost the ISO.
And we do have a dual native ISO.
So right now I'm on the low setting,
so I have a ISO range between 640
and I can get up to 5,000.
But if I switch that dual native ISO setting to high,
it starts at 4,000 ISO
and I can go all the way up to 51,200.
But by default, the dual native ISO setting is just on auto.
So right now I'm at 3,200
but I think if I hop to 4,000, things should get cleaner.
And for 4,000, I mean this is looking pretty clean.
Dual card slots for SD cards
and I program this exposure comp button over to waveform.
Check that out.
I personally would much rather
expose to waveform than histogram,
so really love that I have that built in.
That's something that I wish my Sonys had.
A lot of these buttons you can press
and hold to assign it to be a quick function.
So focus peeking, stuff like that.
And the USBC port on here has power delivery
so I can plug it in
and have this camera rolling for really long.
Apparently, there's a tiny little fan right here.
Oh, I actually, I can see the vents right here,
so it cools through there.
And I did do the incubator torture test
where I threw it in there over a hundred degrees.
It it went about two hours before the battery died,
but it wasn't overheating.
Now I did adjust the thermal management
so you could have the recording max temperature
to standard or a high.
Usually with these cameras I just throw it on high
and let it cook.
Not sure if that's a good thing, but yeah.
All right, so now that it's getting pretty dark,
I want to switch over to some prime lenses
so I can get some faster speed.
They all seem like the same size
and they're all 67 mil up front
which makes it easier to switch around
with different lenses.
All F1.8 and what's nice is that
they're actually pretty lightweight.
And we're on a 24.
And I will say now that I've had a decent amount of time
with this camera, the autofocus seems pretty good.
We're at F1.8.
We got Dylan and then back to me
and then let's go over to Carrie.
By default, the camera doesn't autofocus all the time.
It only autofocuses when you start recording,
but that is a setting that you can change
so that it's always autofocusing.
So I wanted to compare the lowlight capabilities
to the king of lowlight, the A7S III.
And at 4,000 ISO, the Panasonic definitely looked better
but that makes sense because the A7S III didn't
have a chance to jump into its higher base yet.
So I took them both up to 12,800
which is the A7S's sweet spot.
And I'm still actually kind of liking the Panasonic better.
It's kind of a preference thing 'cause on the Panasonic
you see more grain, but gammas on the Sony cameras
tend to be a bit darker
even compared to like Canon, Panasonic.
So naturally, even if you have the same ISO
and exposure settings,
it's still gonna look a little bit darker on Sonys.
So I'm kind of digging the S5 II here.
So low light, really good.
So one of the big issues with the contrast based autofocus
that Panasonic used to have
was that if you had a very shallow depth of field
and you had that really thin
shallow depth of field bokeh in the background,
then you could see a pulsing.
But now with phase detect it shouldn't have to do that
hunting pulsing bokeh in the background.
So I'm gonna go ahead and throw 85 prime on here
'cause I don't see any pulsating
of the bokeh in the background.
This is definitely a big improvement
over what we used to have.
Obviously if I scoot in, the bokeh would get bigger.
Dylan always gets the best shots.
(sirens blare)
Yeah, I mean this auto focus is pretty solid.
This audio, we're trying to film a YouTube video here.
Your house can wait.
Guy doing a wheelie and then focus onto Dylan.
Well, Dylan's just so out of focus that
it doesn't even recognize that there's a head there.
Let me back up a little bit.
All right, now I got him. Hold on.
Right there. There is a box around Dylan.
It does recognize that there's a head there,
but it hasn't focused on him yet.
So that's a little weird. See that?
But if I kind of move it around a little bit.
Oh, okay and now it's got him.
Once in a while I'll see something where I'm like,
okay, they could probably improve on this or that.
But honestly, I think I would trust this
more than I do Cannon's autofocus at this point.
I'm gonna take the same lens and put it on the original S5,
just so you can see how far things have come.
Yeah no, oh no background.
Oh, oh it's got him.
And then now that it's got him,
if I move in a little bit, oh gosh, yeah, look at that.
Oh my goodness.
And if you look closely at the bokeh in the background,
you can see a pulsating.
Contrast based autofocus.
So, oh look, I take one step.
(Gene burps)
I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.
That's how disgusting this is.
The original S5 was still impressive when it came out
because it gave us a full frame 10 bit
with a lot of these cinema features in here
for under $2,000.
But there were some very sad things about it
like this micro HDMI, oh no, new one.
Full size HDMI, yes please.
No time code though on S5 II.
(Gene cries)
Why did they remove the time code? I don't know.
The previous ones had it,
but no time code on this S5 II. Boo.
Got a little cage here from Kondor Blue.
Ooh, this one has a top handle.
Oh nice, they actually include the required tools
to assemble and disassemble this.
Ooh. So when you attach it really goes on there.
It attaches to where the lens straps usually go
and it is on there good.
Let's go ahead and throw on this top handle.
Record button here,
so I believe we got some run stop from the top handle.
Sweet. We got a rosette mount here,
which is great for a handle.
We've got some quarter inches, three eighth,
with some airy locking pins.
Now the S5 II will have an option to
add on a $200 software update,
which will give you raw output through HDMI
if you wanna record it externally.
And there is also gonna be a S5 II X version.
$200 more than the S5 II,
but it will have the raw out capability included
as well as some pro res options.
Also pretty big fan of the user interface
of Panasonic cameras.
So if I pull up the quick menu here
this is gonna gimme 12 items that I can quickly adjust.
And of course you can customize it
to the settings that you use the most.
So right here is different exposure modes.
So I'm usually on manual,
but sometimes I'll hop over to shutter priority.
And then we have our MP4 and MOV.
And depending on what format you are,
you're gonna have access to different record qualities.
And there is also a 6K three by two,
kind of like an open gate setting.
So open gate records basically the whole sensor
and that's traditionally been useful for being able to
get the maximum amount of pixel density
in an anamorphic lens.
But now with the popularity of vertical video,
it's also just a useful format
so you can extract vertical clips easier
without having to crop further into the image.
And then if we go here,
notice that it is telling us that
we are using the full frame image area of the sensor.
So let's say we wanna hop into APS-C,
we can do that and even pixel to pixel.
We have our sound recording level adjustment right there.
Now if I switch the dial over to SNQ,
or slow and quick mode for slow motion or time lapse stuff,
now I can go ahead and select this
and I can choose the different frame rates I want to record.
And now let's say if I change this over to full HD
and then I go back to SNQ,
notice I have higher frame rates.
If we want to go 150,
you'll notice that it tells you that it's
manual focused only.
So after 120, you lose that auto focus.
We could even go all the way up to 180, which it tells us,
of course manual focus, but also a slight crop in.
And then we come here
and I like the option to be able to turn the lot on
and off out of my HDMI.
And I have independent control from the HDMI lot
to the monitor back here, which is a nice thing to have.
Sometimes you don't have independent control.
I also threw the wifi on here.
It's a quick way to connect it to the app.
You can do remote control and wirelessly preview the shot,
which is kind of handy sometimes.
And we do have dual card slots, so we can choose
which card slot that we are gonna record to.
And I like to have the bottom row be my
three modes of image stabilization.
So this is the boost on and off
and I love how I can just kind of go to a box
and just use the dial to switch it on and off real quick.
E-image stabilization on or off.
So you can see that the crop being adjusted.
Love the button layout too.
Very obvious to adjust your white balance, your ISO.
And of course I always recommend with most of these cameras
you go in and customize your favorite menu items.
This is also a pretty cool exposure tool
that Panasonic gives us, which is luminance spot meter.
If I turn that on, I can actually take this box
and drag it around to different parts of the frame
and see what kind of exposure I have there.
So I'm like minus three stops here.
I'm pretty good here, minus 0.3.
And then if I go up to the sky, I'm hop.
I'm personally, I'm more interested in this camera
for the video capabilities.
But there are some interesting photo things
like 24.2 megapixel sensor.
You can put it on a tripod
and have it do the high resolution mode
where basically it goes and takes a bunch of photos
and the Ibis moves just slightly enough
to where it can compile several photos together
and give you I think like 96 megapixels.
So super high res by using that Ibis.
Pretty clever stuff.
If you love anamorphic,
we have all these different options,
0.5, 2.0, and things in between.
So when you're shooting anamorphic,
you can actually preview the anamorphic D squeeze right here
on this screen by itself, which is awesome.
And the image stabilization has anamorphic modes.
Ibis on an anamorphic lens is definitely different from
a standard spherical lens
because there's certain corrections that it shouldn't do
or else your lens flares
or your bulk in the background might skew around.
Battery life seems pretty decent
and it is the same type of battery
that we got out of the GA6,
as well as the original S5s
so there is a little bit of rolling shutter in here
that I have noticed.
You know, in most cases,
it's not something that you're gonna notice
but if you're constantly doing all kinds of whip pans
then you will start to see those vertical lines
just jello-ing around.
All right, so bottom line,
this S5 II that I'm recording on right now,
can it be my new daily driver?
Crap, I'm just realizing now that
it keeps going out of focus,
especially when I use my hands like this.
Like, oh, like look at that.
Huh? Lemme try switching some settings real quick.
Okay, so it was on human detection,
so I think it was trying to detect my whole humanness.
Now that I have it on just face only mode
is it better than that?
Hmm. Or is it still gonna get distracted by my hand
and just, oh look at the hand.
Are you gonna focus on the hand instead?
Oh, it's still kind of did it.
I wonder if there's any other settings I can change in here
like the animated hand talker mode.
This definitely points against it because I know that
the Sony doesn't typically do that with the hands
unless I'm like this with the Sony,
but this is still pre-production firmware
and they are still improving on it.
And the good news is that
the hardware of phase detect sensor is in there.
So you know, if they just add in a little bit more
firmware updates with some hand ignoring algorithms,
then maybe this will go away.
'Cause it knows my face is here,
but then if I just kind of do a little bit of,
oh, ooh it gets a little thrown off.
Okay, now it's doing good.
Wa, my face, then it's gone. Wa.
Do my hands.
I feel insane.
Anyways, back to the video.
I think the biggest thing that's tempting me over
to the S5 II is that image stabilization.
It's nice 'cause it works really well on the tight end
but on the wide end there still is that Ibis wobble
if you vibrate it or shake it real fast.
But under normal use, I don't really see it much.
Now the biggest reason why I'm hesitant to switch over
is that the Sony autofocus is so solid
and this is solid too, but it still has its quirks.
Now there still are other trade-offs like the A7 IV
is still a bit more expensive.
It's a 33 megapixel sensor, so higher resolution photos,
but the Panasonic does give us that 6K internal.
Sony does still give us more flexibility in the Kodak
and the faster right speed to the card
because you can optionally put a CFast card in there,
which is faster than the SD card limitations.
But the Panasonic does give us a little bit more flexibility
and that super slow mo.
Now they both do have that 4K 60 crop,
but in full HD the Sony, I think, tops off at 120.
But here we can get that extra reach
in that 150 or 180 frames per second.
Size-wise, the Sony is more compact,
but this Panasonic gives us more of those cinema features
like the waveform.
I think I'm gonna trial this camera
for the next couple weeks
and see how that goes before I make
any radical decisions here.
Do you wanna know what the thing that would make me
hands down just go, "I'm switching. I'm done.
I'm selling everything,"
is if this camera or the Sony mirrorless size
had built-in ND.
But apparently it's really difficult to have Ibis
and built-in ND filters on the same camera.
So that's I think why we haven't seen
the perfect combination yet.
But if someone can figure that out,
I would be like that's,
everything else on eBay the next day.
But anyways, lemme go ahead and dive into the comments
and see what you guys are up to.
"Love this video man.
It's been awesome to see people geeking out
about cameras and lenses.
I've been curious about anamorphic lenses for a while
and this video really helped me understand everything
and a lot more."
Thank you, Thomas.
Last video was kind of a deep dive on anamorphic lenses.
So if you're interested in anamorphic lenses,
even I learned a bunch on that video.
"Appreciate the deep dive by all involved.
Love the look of the original Atlas lenses
and excited to see them in use on the upcoming 'Babylon'."
We may actually be doing a video featuring
the cinematography of "Babylon."
So if you have questions about it
and you saw it in the theater, no spoilers,
but let me know in the comments
if you have questions about it
and we may answer them with someone that
knows a lot about it.
Oh man, these spam accounts are still here.
Like the "Text me on Telegram."
These are all fake by the way.
I keep reporting them.
They're not real, but they keep coming up.
Steven says, "I love videos like this.
Can you do a series of videos like this?"
So yeah, I kind of like doing deep dives,
especially on more of like the cinema side of things,
but I want to figure out how to
compartmentalize cinema series
like where I do deep dives and nerd out.
But anyways, I'm trying to keep my videos under 20 minutes.
That's one of my goals for this year
is to keep my videos more condensed
unless it's like a deep dive video or whatever.
But that is all.
See you guys later.