Panasonic finally puts phase-detect AF on a mirrorless: the S5iiX

Nice camera. Too bad it was late to the party for me. I committed to Sony in 2021 out of exhaustion. The original S5 looked like a camera that needed a v2 from the beginning.
 
Bassman2003 said:
Nice camera. Too bad it was late to the party for me. I committed to Sony in 2021 out of exhaustion. The original S5 looked like a camera that needed a v2 from the beginning.
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Yeah same for me. I went sony in 2020 and have no intention of switching to another brand. Still, it's cool! And panny ibis is much better than Sony's in my experience. I had an S1 for a while
 
kind of.

with canon (or sony?) you can rent/borrow/buy a 400 2.8 or extreme wide that will go on a vid cam or a stills cam.
I guess the fudgi mount doesnt do a fast 400 or other things and certainly they re not in your local hire shop or mates cupboard.
 
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I want to see AF clips longer than 10 seconds, maybe a Gordon Laing video if he does one for video where he's walking back and forth in front of those Christmas lights because the round bokeh expanding and contacting erratically - even for a split second - is always the giveaway.
 
Good to see Panasonic improve their autofocus as that was their major Achilles heel compared to Sony and Canon. However, also interesting to see them finally step up to the phase hybrid AF just at about the same time as Sony has made another generational AF leap with their new AI assisted autofocus system. I'm going to assume Canon will make that AI generational leap as well shortly.
 
That's the way DLD always wrote it up...Sony providing the hand-me-downs to others with each passing generation.

Makes sense because at some point if major corporations are making cameras and one is so far ahead with tech and another is so far behind then that doesn't make sense.

Even a consumer - without knowing anything about cameras - might ask why the AF is so bad in this camera compared to this one?

So it's best if a company seems like it's making progress, and maybe it truly is. :thumbsup:
 
ahalpert said:
Yeah same for me. I went sony in 2020 and have no intention of switching to another brand. Still, it's cool! And panny ibis is much better than Sony's in my experience. I had an S1 for a while
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I think the A7IV is probably a better stills camera and the A7sIII probably an equal or better video camera. So I am not envious but I have always enjoyed Panasonic's mirrorless camera video interface. If history was different, I might have gone with two S5 IIs and a GH6 but it appears the Cartel had a different plan!
 
With only a $300 difference between the S5II and the S5IIx, the fact that the former will be available in Jan and the latter by May 31st may not be so great. Panasonic are already playing from behind, ~ 5 months is a lot of time for the upcoming Sony and Canon releases. A single camera may have made more sense.
 
ahalpert said:
https://www.newsshooter.com/2023/01/04/panasonic-s5-ii-s5-ii-x-announced-with-phase-hybrid-af/

$2,200, seems to tick a lot of boxes, including prores capture, 4k120p 10-bit 4:2:2, and 6k30p 4:2:0 10-bit open-gate or 16x9. Dual native iso (640/4000). I'm not sure where the drawbacks are. Looks sweet
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It does not have 4K 120p. 120p is only for HD. It’s actually a very slow sensor at 25ms. Rolling shutter is pretty bad. Even the 4K 60p is a APSC crop. So it’s far from a perfect solution. Still only really a FF camera if using 24p. Any slow motion or anybody that prefer a 60fps video it is essentially a APSC camera.

Then there is that lens mount. How much future does it really have? Sure there are some native lenses now but there is almost no adaptability for electronic control for video. At least for continuous AF. Plus the adapters tend to be really slow. Realistically adapting electronic lenses is not really a viable option.

internal 10bit is nice but it’s also not the only option now. The Sony A7IV and Canon R6 mk2 at similar price points have 10bit.

apparently the video AF may be a tad better than the first R6 but then that also requires a native Panasonic L mount lens. So far the really good lenses have been tested so they may perform better than other l mount lenses. Again adapting EF or any other lens will never work with the video AF so you have to use a very specific set of lenses to get that AF to even work for video. How many are going to move to the S5 and invest in all new lenses to have comparable AF to Canon and Sony? Photo AF was not as impressive for moving subjects according to DPReview. Makes sense Panasonic would really work on their main problem which was video AF. It’s impressive they finally got to this point but let’s be real it’s them catching up to be at the same level as the competition. It’s far from superior and not enough on its own to make any of us ditch our current systems and start all over.

The one area I see a nice advantage is the support of external ProRes raw and external BRAW. Other cameras only have external ProRes raw support which is awesome for FCP users. We tend to need raw for heavier grading or VFX however which makes more sense in Resolve/Fusion. The type of stuff worked on in FCP doesn’t really need raw very often.
 
NorBro said:
That's the way DLD always wrote it up...Sony providing the hand-me-downs to others with each passing generation.

Makes sense because at some point if major corporations are making cameras and one is so far ahead with tech and another is so far behind then that doesn't make sense.

Even a consumer - without knowing anything about cameras - might ask why the AF is so bad in this camera compared to this one?

So it's best if a company seems like it's making progress, and maybe it truly is. :thumbsup:
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Just to reiterate my point - it's not Panasonic "catching up to Sony or Canon", it's the cartel getting to the point where having DEFF'nD by itself is no longer deemed acceptable at this price range. And so Panasonic is allowed to bring out a marginal improvement to this particular feature. I also would like to reiterate that the AF is arguably the easiest to disable by software. All one has to do is to activate a timer that destroys continuous recording after a certain period or a frame count.

Obviously, given the hugely negative experience with Canon R5, any preprogrammed software/operational system can be designed to turn a camera into a dead weight. That is why,given Panasonic's recent history with its inferior auto focus, a deliberate attempt to retain some video pulsing as a part of the overall camera performance can not be excluded. It may not be as severe as the Canon cripple hammer on R5 - mostly eliminated two years after the release - but it's not likely to be completely out of the question either.
 
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Don't get too cute, the timer is my theory. lol

But forget about the money, it's even simpler than that like I mentioned above and it's just not acceptable at all regardless of the price because it's ancient tech.

It's like if two competitors make cameras and one keeps releasing HD cameras while the other continues to release 4K cameras.

___

"Why do they keep making HD cameras?"

"Why do they keep making DFD AF cameras?"

Don't want to raise too many eyebrows. :huh:
 
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