This is the Panasonic LUMIX S5 II, a camera which in my opinion
is the best value option available on the market today and possibly of all time. Let's get undone. (lively music) ♪ Gerald undone ♪ ♪ He's crazy ♪ What's happening everybody? I'm Gerald Undone and this
is what happens, Larry! So as usual, some disclosure. Panasonic lent me this S5 II body and a couple of lenses
to make this review. I don't get to keep them, no money changed hands, and Panasonic does not
get to preview this video before I post it. Also, I was not involved
in the press trip to Japan and am not on any long-term
loaner program with Panasonic for any of their gear. So I'm as neutral as I can
be in making this review. This video does have an
actual sponsor though, and that's Storyblocks. And I'd also like to give a
thank you to Camera Canada for lending me the
original S5 for comparison and a couple of other lenses
to help with the testing. I'm a big fan of their store and always appreciate them
helping with these reviews. Now I'm a big fan of the
full frame Panasonic bodies. In fact, I've gone so far as to say that they're only a Sony autofocus system away from being perfect cameras. So, obviously I was very excited
to test out this new camera since they've essentially done that, added a competent phase
detect autofocus system to an already fantastic camera line. They've also done a few other things to improve the original S5, so let's discuss those now. First, they've done away
with the recording limits. Well, mostly. The only modes that you'll
find any recording limits are the 5.9K30 and the 6K30, which by default are limited
to 30 minutes of recording. But 6K24, 4K60 and so on have no limits. However, they've also added
a thermal management function that lets you increase the
temperature threshold to high, which will remove the 30-minute
limit from even the 6K30, but will increase the
temperature of the body. However, something I
really like about Panasonic is how they market their
cameras regarding overheating. They test and rate their cameras for up to 40 degrees
Celsius or 104 Fahrenheit. I don't know of any other
hybrid manufacturer doing that. This provides a lot of confidence knowing that you'll get
similar results in studio as you would out on a hot summer day. They've also installed a clever little fan inside this area of the camera that draws cool air in from the front and exhausts it out the side. And you have control over
the fan modes in the menu. I've been running it on the Auto2 mode and even during long 6K recordings, I've never heard it once. Now when it comes to runtimes, in 4K24, I got 2 hours and 15 minutes before the battery died; in 4K60, I got 1 hour and 45 minutes, again, before the battery died; and in 6K open gate, I also
got 1 hour and 45 minutes before the battery died. No overheating in any mode, and no issues with extended recording. And this camera is using
the same BLK22 battery that you'd find on the S5 and GH6. So the only recording
limitation is battery life. But thankfully, since they've upgraded to USB-C power delivery on this camera, you can run it indefinitely that way. On the previous S5, by my testing, it would charge at 7.5 watts, but then drop to 3 watts
when using the camera. On this S5 II, you charge at 10 watts and keep that 10 watts
when the camera is running. Now with those recording modes, there's some things to mention. First, it's impressive that
this camera can do 6K30 when even the S1H doesn't do that. That camera caps at 6K24. And I love that they've
added more frame rate options over the original S5, like 4K 48p, and they've bumped the 4K60 to 10-bit 422 instead of 420 on the original. And at 1080p, you can now record
high frame rates in 10-bit up to 180 frames per second
instead of just 8-bit like on the previous model. However, be aware that the 4K48 and 4K60 are still an APS-C crop. So no full frame 4K60. This is a bit of a bummer, but considering the price,
I'm willing to accept it. Also, there's no All-Intra
options on this camera, but there wasn't on
the original S5 either. But this brings us to another camera that Panasonic is announcing but that won't be coming
out for a few more months, the S5 IIX. Now those aren't available for review yet, but I wanted to make you aware that there will be an
edition of this camera that does have All-Intra recording, ProRes options, external RAW, and even the ability
to write to a USB-SSD. It'll also be a blackout design with almost none of the white text. Now I'm told this camera will be $200 more than the base S5 II and will carry all of the same photo and video functionality, but just add those extra recording modes. But if you don't need
those extra features, you can safely order this
S5 II and save 200 bucks. Also, speaking of the design, when it comes to the build
and ergonomics of this S5 II, it's almost identical to the original S5, save for a few improvements. First, the joystick is now a bit bigger and moves in 8 directions
instead of just 4. They've removed the jangly strap triangles of the previous model and replaced them with these rectangular
eyelets that don't move. I appreciate this. And they've upgraded the micro HDMI port to a full size Type-A. They've also thickened the grip a bit and improved the angle
of the shutter button, which does feel nicer,
but it's a minor change. Oh, and they moved the viewfinder sensor from the bottom to the top to reduce the unintentional detections that cause a switch to the EVF when your hand is in that
area pushing buttons. This is actually pretty clever. Other than that, you'll
feel right at home here if you've used any of the modern LUMIX bodies. I really like the layout and
ergonomics of these cameras, but if I was able to make one change, it would be to add a button to the top of this rear dial to lock it. I find I rotate this thing
accidentally way too often. Now you can use a function
button in the menu to lock all the dials with software, but not any one dial individually. My workaround was to turn on Synchro Scan so that even if I do
accidentally change it, it's only by a single degree
and not by a whole stop. Plus Synchro Scan is just good in general for reducing the flicker
of LEDs in your shot. Also, be aware that this camera
does not have a tally lamp, but it does have a flip out screen with an option to put a
big red box on that screen to show you that it's recording. Now speaking of that upgraded HDMI port, I have some praise and some complaints. First off, I love how well HDMI
works on Panasonic cameras. I like that you can display
your on-screen information on your external monitor even in 4K. I like how neither screen
blacks out when you do that. And best of all, you
don't lose touch tracking on the camera LCD when doing this. Something I wish Sony
would fix on their cameras. However, I do find it strange that you lose the on-screen information and display options on the camera LCD when doing that external OSD monitoring. It basically shows a clean
feed only on the camera during this output type. It would be nice to have
more flexibility here, like maybe the ability to show the big six-button display on the LCD, while showing the rest of the OSD info on the external monitor. Or even just a mirror
mode would be useful. Also, because of the bigger HDMI port, you can't rotate the LCD screen
as much as you could before or as much as you can
with some other brands, which I did find annoying at times. It almost makes me wish
they put that multi-way flippy screen from the
GH6 or S1H on this camera, that might have solved my issue. But again, these are minor gripes. Also, I really appreciate
the separate controls for the V-Log View Assist in
deciding whether to show it on the camera screen or HDMI, neither, or both. This is great. But they've also added
user LUTs to this camera that you can upload and then
either use them to monitor or actually bake them in
with this new picture profile called Real Time LUT. This allows you to do
quick delivery of files right out of camera if
you know ahead of time a certain look that you plan to apply. And you can use this for
both video and photo. But another fun application
could be color space transforms. Let's say you were mixing cameras. You could load a V-Log to
S-Log3 LUT onto your S5 II, select Real Time LUT, and then effectively shoot
alongside some Sony cameras and have them all be recording
the same gamma and gamut. This is a really cool feature. However, despite all this praise
I have for the HDMI output, I do have one complaint and I've already passed
this on to Panasonic, the audio when recorded externally is consistently one frame behind. I would love if they could fix this. It's not the end of the world, but it's annoying if
you're a perfectionist, and it requires extra work in post. In fact, there's quite
a bit of lag in general coming out of that HDMI port. Any movement on screen is echoed about half a second
later it seems over HDMI. This is an area that could use some work. Now while we're on the
topic of log recordings, this camera has full vlog, which is a gamma I'm
personally very fond of, and it has dual native
ISOs of 640 and 4000. So as usual, I busted out the Xyla 21 and tested the dynamic range. Panasonic rates this camera at 14+ stops, and I can confirm that's what
Imatest was able to detect. At ISO 640 in 4K24, we read a total of 14.2 stops. So that's good. But I also like to look at how many clean stops we're getting. So if we look at the
score here next to medium, which has a signal noise ratio of two, we get 12.3 stops, which is a great score and right in line with other full frame Panasonic cameras. So basically, we aren't losing anything by switching to phase detect autofocus when it comes to dynamic
range, which is great. And if we jump up to ISO
4000, the second native ISO, we mostly maintain our results. Not a perfect second native,
but solid performance. But there's a couple
things to factor in here, oversampling and noise reduction. So first off, I love that this camera gives us control over the noise reduction. So for these tests I put
it all the way down to 0. But this noise reduction
slider is actually kinda weird. More on that in a minute. Secondly, this camera oversamples from 6K in the full frame 4K modes. So I also wanted to test the 6K open gate for dynamic range as well. And interestingly, we
maintained our 12.3 stops when testing the 6K on a 6K timeline. Usually we see a slight decrease here because we're no longer oversampling. But my suspicion is
that the changing codec is responsible for this. In 6K, the camera uses H.265 versus the 4K's H.264. I've found when testing
other cameras in the past that H.265 seems to perform
better for noise than H.264, so that must be the equalizer here. But it's actually kinda gratifying to know that you'll get similar performance whether you record in 4K or 6K. Now, because these were all
without any noise reduction, I figured I'd run some
noise reduction in post to see how many of
those stops we could dig out of the noise with low effort. Since some camera
companies don't allow you to turn their noise reduction off, which might be inflating their scores, I thought I'd balance that
out by putting a minor amount of noise reduction
on a node in DaVinci Resolve and test it again. And when I did that, it jumped from 12.3 stops to 13.4, which is a fantastic result. However, I would not recommend doing this noise reduction step in-camera. First off, at lower ISOs, the noise reduction doesn't
appear to do anything. Regardless of where I set it, even all the way at +10, the Imatest results were identical. So at ISO 640, it doesn't seem to engage. But then at high ISOs, when
it actually does kick in, the results are not good. It's a blotchy mess and I actually prefer the look of the noise image. So leave that noise reduction at 0. And if you need to clean up
your image, do it in post. But overall, the noise is
handled well on this camera. Moving through the ISO range, I was impressed by the results
all the way up to ISO 25,600, which is surprisingly usable. And you can push it all the
way to 51,200 in a pinch. Now obviously, I'd
recommend skipping ISO 3200 and jumping right to 4000 to activate that second native ISO, but then you can cruise on up to 12,800 with hardly any color shifting. And on the topic of color, I'm of two minds. When it comes to using the
official 709 LUT from Panasonic, there's the subjective side
of me that likes the result and finds the look pleasing. But objectively, it's not
the most color-accurate conversion on the market. It definitely leans harder
into the reds and magentas than it does the other colors, and the greens and cyans can often be significantly
underrepresented. And if you push up your
saturation broadly to compensate, your reds become overpowering. The Color Space Transform in Resolve gives a better result though, and it's important to note that this isn't an issue with the camera and more an issue with the official LUT. But I'm pretty sure this is by design because when it comes to
skin tones and sunsets, this LUT is great. So it just comes down to taste. But I do think it would be cool if manufacturers started
providing two LUTs; a technical LUT that's color perfect, and then a more creative LUT that gives you the
Panasonic look, for example. That being said, you can safely isolate and boost your greens and cyans without the image falling apart as these recordings are
robust and grade very nicely. And this camera matches the original S5 almost perfectly for color. And for a more personal test, I put the S5 II next to my main angle to see how it looks in here and I was very pleased with the result. I was also impressed with
the audio functionality. You've got 3.5 millimeter
headphone and microphone jacks or you can install the XLR module from the previous cameras
into the hot shoe. It now features 4-channel audio. And when you plug a microphone in, it lets you increase the sound quality up to 96kHz at 24-bit if you want to. I do wish I could choose between 4-channel and 2-channel though, because it's annoying
seeing 2 empty tracks in my NLE all the time
when I don't need them. I also find it hard to
tell which jack is which in a dark environment. I'd suggest making the labels white or making the mic jack red. But it does have excellent
gain adjustment, clean preamps, and best of all, the ability to change the mic input to line level, which lets me record directly from something like the Zoom F6, which only has a line level output and is often too hot for
most mirrorless cameras. But on the S5 II, it sounds great. Here, have a listen to my main microphone, routed at line level, and then recorded internally on the S5 II, while I tell you about
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the description below. I also tested the
rolling shutter performance. I'd say second to autofocus, rolling shutter was
probably the weakest aspect of Panasonic full frames. Not as bad as some of the competition, but not in a place that
I'd call good either. And I'd say that's also
true for this new camera. It's not exactly good. For full-frame, oversampled
4K at 24 frames per second, I measured it at 21.5 milliseconds. Now my benchmark for calling
the rolling shutter good is 15 milliseconds or lower. But to be fair, this camera is much better than the Sony a7 IV which
reads at 26.9 milliseconds. I did come across an anomaly here though. I also tested the original S5 and it measured 26.1 milliseconds. But I thought I remembered
it being faster than that. So I looked it up on CineD's database, and, sure enough, they measured it in the 21 to 22 milliseconds zone back when they tested it originally. So I retested it and
still got 26 milliseconds. Then I tried changing
frame rates to 25p and 30p, trying it in 422, 420, turning random things on and off. And no matter what I did, the original S5 consistently
measured 26 milliseconds. So maybe a firmware
update changed something along the way on the original S5? I'm not sure. So I'd like to say that the S5 II is faster than the original, but when compared side-by-side,
they look about the same. What I can say for sure
is that it's not any worse despite adding a new autofocus engine. So that's good. It's also faster than
the S1H at the 6K modes. The S1H read at 29.6
milliseconds in open gate, well this camera can do
that at 25.3 milliseconds. And the S1H's 5.9K mode
was 25.1 milliseconds, while the S5 II can do
that at 21.2 milliseconds. They had similar performance in their APS-C 4K60 modes though of around 14 milliseconds. So like I said, overall, decent. Not the worst, but not quite good, but acceptable for the money. But the stabilization on
this camera goes a long way to alleviate any pains that
rolling shutter might bring. The IBIS on this camera is incredible. The best I've ever seen. Other cameras can match it
for locked-off handheld shots, but I've never seen a camera
be this good at movement. You have similar modes to before, the regular IBIS, and then the electronic, or EIS, which adds a small crop. I've got some observations,
but first watch this clip. This is me jogging after Lindsey with a 16 millimeter
lens with EIS enabled. This is the closest to a gimbal I've ever seen a handheld camera get. There is some warpy-wobbly
stuff in the corners, but this is kind of an
ultimate stress test for that. I'm using a very wide lens and I'm in this parking structure to emphasize those wobbles. But compared to other cameras, Panasonic has done well to
minimize that warpy stuff, and they pretty much disappear once you increase the focal length. But 24 millimeters, I
didn't see them at all. Okay, hold that thought because I actually have an update regarding that stabilization issue. But I wanted to film this
in sort of a vlog test so that we could test that as well at this point in the video. So I'm using the S5 II with autofocus, auto white balance, and auto ISO, so we can see how this camera just works if you let it do everything,
and you vlog with it. And I have the stabilization
set to just basic IBIS, no EIS. And I'm using the 20 to
60 millimeter kit lens at 20 millimeters at f/3.5. And I'm gonna walk through some different lighting scenarios here so
we can see how it adjusts when it's brightly exposed
and when it gets dark to see how smoothly it
adjusts and how well it does for both autofocus and auto exposure. I would prefer to do this test outside, but it has been raining
like crazy all week. Okay, so I spoke to Panasonic about the warpy-wobbles
I was experiencing, and apparently they noticed them too and so they had some
engineers work on an update and they released that as like another pre-production firmware update that I have now installed in this camera and that you guys will
get all of these updates by the time the camera ships. And apparently they were
able to fix the warpiness up to as wide as 20 millimeters, which of course is in
line with my observations that the wobbles tend to
disappear around 24 millimeter. Apparently it's even better than that. Apparently it's corrected all
the way up to 20 millimeters. So I'm gonna go back down
to the parking garage now and do another one of those jogging tests. And I will turn EIS on to see how it handles the warpiness at 20 mil. With some brands, you
don't get many wobbles, but you don't get very
strong stabilization. With other brands, the warpiness
overpowers the benefits of even using stabilization. But with the S5 II, I feel like they struck a nice balance that makes it very much worth using even in extreme situations
like I've shown here. But if they're able to
improve this warpiness problem a little bit more in firmware, that would be stellar. I'd personally recommend disabling EIS for anything less intense. You just don't need it. So you can reduce your
issues and remove the crop and still get fantastic stabilization for more basic movements. Here's a sample of me doing
a brisk heavy-footed walk at 35 millimeters on the
S5 II with only basic IBIS. And compared to the original S5, you can see a huge improvement. It also just feels so
smooth and satisfying for doing handheld pans. Truly the best stabilization
I've ever used. Now something else worth noting about that stabilization test is how extreme it is for autofocus. We've got Lindsey wearing a
black coat in a grey environment walking into bright lights
that are visible in the frame. And the rest of the scene is low contrast and I purposefully underexposed it. And the autofocus performed brilliantly. I was using the human detection mode, and it had no problems putting a box around Lindsey's head
or back or full body, depending on my distance to her, and it kept her in focus
like 99% of the time. I've done extensive tests
on this new autofocus system and I might even make a whole
dedicated video about it, but the big question is, have they done it? Has Panasonic added an AF
system to their cameras that gives me enough
confidence to rely on it? Absolutely! It's early days and there are some quirks, but it is shockingly good. It might honestly be the
second-best system out there now, leap-frogging Fuji, Nikon, and even Canon, and rubbing shoulders with Sony. There's still a couple of
things that Sony does better, but they're minor for my use, and more apparent in photography. The fact is, you can stick
this camera on a tripod, point it at your face, and it'll keep you in focus
for however long you need to yell at the camera without anything weird going on like pulsing on out-of-focus objects. There are some caveats
and best practices though, so like I said, I'm gonna make a whole video about that closer to shipping date so that anyone getting the camera will be able to get
excellent autofocus out of it by just watching my guide. And in the meantime,
I'm gonna keep reporting the little quirks that I find to Panasonic as they seem eager to fix them. But honestly, this is a
huge win for Panasonic, and I would feel completely comfortable shooting all my YouTube videos with this camera on autofocus. Some things you should be
aware of right now though, it does track animals
like cats, for example, but it doesn't have animal eye AF. It just puts a box around the whole cat. It does a solid job, but Sony does this better. And over and underexposure
isn't the best in the game. Overexposure is pretty good actually. I had great results up
to about 5 stops over. And you can even do 6 stops,
but it gets a little shaky. But underexposure was
a bit less impressive. I only felt confident at about
2, 2 and a 1/2 stops under. 3 stops under was mostly good, but I wouldn't do anything
mission critical with it. And then 4 stops under was pretty wonky. So if your main mission
in life is autofocusing in very dim environments, I'd probably still get the Sony. But for anything less extreme, this camera has you covered. Now when it comes to photo, I never really had that big of an issue with Panasonic's autofocus for stills, but I did notice an improvement here. It just feels peppier and more responsive. And there's less of that flickering from the contrast AF, and the blackout is reduced too. Basically, it's more pleasant
looking through the EVF when burst shooting. And now that they've
added a 30 fps burst mode, this new phase detect system is gonna be much more important. But if you're like me
and we're mostly happy with the photo capabilities of the S5, you're getting the same comforts but now with some
quality of life upgrades. To be honest though, it
does feel a bit sluggish compared to the latest Sony
cameras in stills mode. I haven't done any intensive testing with action or sports photography, but it just feels likes
it takes an extra beat to change subjects and there's a slight delay
when racking long distances. The JPEGs look great though, but I'll reserve any
image quality assessments until I've processed some RAWs. And I'd recommend you check out some action photographers' opinions if you're considering buying
this camera for that purpose. What I can say, however, is that if you're a video-first shooter who just needs to grab
some nice-looking stills as a secondary where the highest-speed photo
tracking isn't a necessity, this camera will suit you perfectly fine. And it might even be better than that, I just don't wanna make those claims without more thorough testing. Oh, and if you wanted the specs on that new autofocus engine, it's a 779-point hybrid
phase detect system. So you're getting a best
of both worlds scenario, like Sony, where phase
can do the heavy-lifting and contrast detection
can refine and assist. It has face and eye tracking, human body tracking, touch area and touch tracking, and that animal tracking
that I mentioned earlier. The only limitation I found that you might want to
know about before buying is that if you have the
camera set to 5.9 or 6K, and you have HDMI connected, you lose your subject
detection capabilities. You're fine if you shoot
at 4K60 or lower though. I could see this presenting
an issue for people who want to use face tracking autofocus while recording 6K internally, and monitor on a bigger screen externally. If that's your use case, you're gonna want to record
in 4K internally instead, which is still oversampled
and a great image, but you lose the open gate flexibility. But aside from that quirk, the recording options are terrific. This camera has two SD card slots, both UHS-II now, and you have relay and
backup recording modes to those slots. You can also record externally while recording to both slots internally for double redundancy if needed. And as you'd expect
from a Panasonic camera, it's loaded with a bunch of cool functions like focus transitions, live cropping, and a full suite of anamorphic features including a dedicated 3.3K
4:3 anamorphic mode up to 48 frames per
second with stabilization. But anamorphic isn't really something I play around with too much, so if you want to know more about that, I recommend you watch Josh's
video over at Make Art Now for a full breakdown on
his anamorphic experience with this camera. It also has a ton of useful exposure tools like adjustable waveforms, vectorscopes, two simultaneous levels of Zebras, a Luminance Spot Meter for
dialing in middle grey, and an excellent white balance tool. Although, to be fair,
even though Panasonic was one of the first mirrorless cameras to have a great white balance target, it's actually a bit dated now. I would love the ability
to reposition and resize it like I can on the newer Sony cameras. And I'd like if it told me the
reading after I acquired it. But it's still accurate
and fast, so that's good. And, of course, this
camera has shutter angle. Honestly, if there's a feature that can make me switch systems, it's shutter angle. Why can't other
manufacturers just put that in their hybrid cameras? And it's for these reasons that in the beginning of this video I said that this might be the best
value camera of all time. Cameras in this price bracket are usually all about compromises. Sony's offerings, for example, have great dynamic range and autofocus, but terrible rolling shutter and a lack of professional video features. Canon on the other hand, sacrifices dynamic range to
achieve their other strengths. And then Panasonic offered
all those great video features with excellent menus and ergonomics, but had the worst autofocus. As a consumer, the only way
you could truly have it all was by spending thousands of dollars more. So it came down to which
compromises were right for you. I don't feel that way anymore. Sure, this camera isn't perfect. It doesn't have much in the
way of time code support, the 4K60 is cropped, and the rolling shutter is still
a bit slower than I'd like. But they did a great job
of putting a reliable autofocus system into an
already stellar camera. And they're launching it at US$2,000! That's cheaper than the a7 IV, the GH6, the Fuji X-H2S,
and the Canon R6 II. And in most of those cases, you'd be saving up to $500
by choosing this camera while also conceding fewer compromises. I feel like to truly beat this camera, you gotta spend at least $1,500 more. And from a value perspective,
that's very impressive. The last camera that came out at US$2,000 that had me this excited, was the original Sony a7 III back in 2018. In fact, I called that camera the best value camera of all time. And while we should expect technology to improve over the years, I wasn't expecting this
S5 II to be so much better than that previous value champion at the same price that camera launched at nearly 5 years ago! So here we are, the Panasonic S5 II, the best bang for your
buck in a camera today, and in my opinion, the most feature-rich camera
for the money ever released. (lively music) Alright... I'm done. (lively music) (lively music continues)
