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

Ok have been using and testing the S5ii for a few weeks now as a replacement for Canon R6 and am overall very happy with it. Will be selling the R6.

I did consider getting the R6ii but it was nearly £800 more expensive than the S5ii and still had some of the issues I had with the R6 - namely micro HDMI, no external monitor when using the touchscreen, and still the relatively poor DR of Canon mirrorless

The new R8 also came into the picture but no IBIS and poor battery life meant it wouldn't work for me.

I looked at used R5's too but was put off by the 30 minute record limit, micro HDMI, lingering doubts about it still overheating and relatively poor DR with higher price tag and added expense of new cf express cards.

Back to the S5ii and I've really enjoyed using it. Where I feel it is better than the R6 is...

No overheating or 30 minute recording limit. R6ii does fix both of these too

IBIS - this is big for me and didnt realise just how much better it is than on the R6. Has really helped speed up the filming process grabbing handheld shots I wouldn't have the confidence to do with the Canon.

DR, again quite a big difference, image feels fuller and cleaner than R6

Full size HDMI - again for me a biggie. I tried using a micro HDMI clamp on Fuji Xt3 and it still broke. I detest micro HDMI and has no place on a camera that claims to take video seriously.

External monitor works whilst still having access to a fully functioning touchscreen of the camera. You can also put luts on the monitor image. All very nice for my ageing eyes

Audio - this is the first mirrorless camera where I feel comfortable recording sound internally on important stuff. The 96khz 24 bit with line level and decent preamps I think make all the difference. I use Sound Devices mix pre-d for XLR on the base of the camera. I know Panasonic and Sony and now Canon using Tascam have an xlr audio adaptor you can attach to the hotshoe but that seems a crazy place to hang xlr cables to me and looks like an accident waiting to happen. Am very happy not using external audio and syncing up.

AF for video - using the Sigma adaptor my EF lenses work on the S5ii just as well as they do on the R6. This has been a bit of a surprise I thought the R6 would still be better for AF but for my uses I think they are about the same. The S5ii sticks to its subject just as well. For stills I haven't really tested too much - for sports or wildlife fast moving stuff I presume the R6 maybe better but that's not what I photograph. Am still waiting for Capture one to be able to use RAW on the S5ii but have been very happy with the jpegs so far. Am aware the R6ii has improved feature with subject only that maybe better now for video AF

Lenses - I got the 20-60mm and 50mm 1.8 with the S5ii at a good price. They are both great lenses for video - well built, silent and fast AF and come with good quality lens hoods. Drives me mad that with Canon you have to buy an L lens to get a hood. The 20-60mm is surprisingly good, 20mm is a great bonus when traditionally these zooms start at 24mm. The zoom ring is quite firm but solid and won't extend under gravity like my 24-105mm L lens is prone to do. I love the 50mm it has a nice big dampened focus ring and is a good size and weight on the S5ii, feels nicely balanced. Am using it way more than I ever did the little plastic 50mm stm lens I have for the R6 which was slow with AF and cheap feeling focus ring. I think these silent focusing Panasonic lenses are better for video than most of the noisy Canon lenses i have.

Crop mode in apsc the S5ii is sharper and cleaner than the R6, handy for extra reach

Colour - I really like working with vlog in Resolve and feel it is more malleable than the Canon R6's clog3 which has less DR to play with and has some strange cut off going on in the shadows.

One thing I will miss about the R6 is the Meike vari nd filter adapter I used which was great when using EF lenses and better and much cheaper thsn the Canon version. I hear that Meike are making one for the Panasonic so will be keen to get that so long as it works as well as the Sigma adaptor does.

R6 has 4k 50p full frame but I don't use it so no big deal for me - obviously for some it is important

Anyway that's all I can think of for now, hope someone finds it useful
 
all good things to hear, thanks for the review. I hope they are able to reduce RS in the S5iiX version; but it will probably just be cosmetic & firmware differences. These are still great values and they were smart to enable good AF with (select) Canon glass to entice people to switch. Can always go to another platform without much investment. Whatever they do with the S1 Mark II make it a low RS camera as opposed the original & S1h. Rumors of Sony allowing their flavor of the A9II sensor instead of the A7 IV are a way better move
 
interesting to hear that the AF with adapted EF lenses works so well. I probably would have stayed in Panasonic instead of going to Sony had that been the case when I bought an A7SIII. I'm grateful for the higher high native ISO (12800 on the a7siii vs 4000 on the S5ii) but the IBIS is predictably superior on the Panasonic, as was the case with my GH5 and S1.
 
Thanks for sharing. I hope you enjoy the camera. I have a knee jerk reaction to think like Abe as a career Panasonic user, but I need to be fair and say the Sony A7Iv & A7siii have produced amazing images along with the Alexa S-log3 LUT and the Cobalt still color profile. The images are better than I ever expected with Sony. So I think there is some mind game I play with myself and brands. I do agree that the Panasonics' just feel better for video production with their shutter angles, solid audio with the XLR attachment and crazy IBIS. That I can say I miss a bit.
 
That is a great review which again makes this a lot more difficult for me.

Just to counter a bit. I also have the R6 and I Agee with you on every point. For me however and I'm sure many others goign forward however I think comparing it to the R6 mk2 is more realistic.

1. As you mentioned the R6 mk2 does solve both the overheating and 30 minute record limit so thats a wash.
2. IBIS is a plus for the S5 II but I don't find the IBIS on my R6 to be all that bad for certain shots. Running around or vlogging type stuff its not all that great but more static or slow movement type shots are great. The S5 II does have the advantage here but I wouldn't exactly call the R6 IBIS unusable either.
3. DR is a rather complex topic and greatly depends on how it's used. While the S5 II may have a bit more and a bit cleaner there are many that do not use clog3 to its full potential. I'm producing easily 1000 nit HDR with the R6 and still have to tone map or tapper off some of the values to limit the HDR to 1000 nits. For SDR delivery there is still a ton to work with there. I would also like more DR from Canon but I really don't see it as a limitation yet on the R6. Especially for those still delivering SDR. For HDR clog3 easily targets 4,000 nits of HDR before total clipping. Thats the current limit of HDR with Dolby having the only display on the planet capable of viewing 4,000 nits. We are many years away from pros having the option to buy a 4,000 nit HDR display and likely a decade away from consumers having that. Again the S5 clearly has a DR advantage here but we get to a point where what matters with DR is a SDR amount and a HDR amount. The HDR amount just needs to be more than the SDR amount and at a certain point it starts to matter significantly less how much more it actually is. Clog3 is also a log format that loves post noise reduction and when utilized picks up a lot more DR then without it. It acts more like raw in that way where you kind of have to use noise reduction for the best results.
4. I have used cages with HDMI clamps for years from micro HDMIO, mini HDMI to full size HDMI. I have never had a port break when I take good care of those ports. Yes it sucks to have micro HDMI. That standard should be illegal. Instead of the EU farting around with Apple maybe they should do something that actually does hurt consumers due to a defective concept and ban the micro HDMI port. It breaks, is unstable and has no place in society. With that sad we can fix it. I do hope Canon stops using the darn thing in the near future but it doesn't look like they will. Not until they feel forced to. Still it's not enough for me to base my camera decision on. Especially with the Panasonic HDMI delay. I used Panasonic for many years and the HDMI delay sucks big time.
5. I only use an external recorder like the Ninja V and a clean out does allow the camera LCD to be used. So it's really a non issue for me. Plus like I said before the Panasonic HDMI delay really sucks. Not sure I can ever go back to that. Not after using BMD and Canon cameras that do not have that delay. Despite Canons faults I much prefer to use my external display in absolute realtime.
6. AF and lenses seem like a wash to me really. EF work great on both. RF affordable primes seem to cost less than Panasonic affordable primes. The really god f2.8 zooms to be about the same price as well. In the end it's all pretty much the same. Sigma has some good options but no OS which means the body IBIS is working by itself. I don't really consider either system to have a AF or lens advantage or disadvantage. I do think right now there is a better market out there for RF lenses however.
7. Crop mode should be a wash on the R6 mk2 since both are now 24 MP.
8. I still prefer Canon color. Yes the R6 has less DR and a cutoff in the noise floor but I find it has plenty to work with still. I do prefer the range of the S5 II but not the color. In particular the skin tones. Having used Panasonic for years I was never a huge fan of Vlog when I had to use V-log L. I know the full V-log is better but Panasonic still isn't always known to be the most pleasing for skin tones. Not saying they are bad but it was part of why I switched to Canon.
9. I don't really have an opinion on the audio. Never really had an issue with the built in audio on a Panasonic GH4 either. Guess I'm just not that picky about it. If I need more critical audio I use external recording for that. What I do use in camera audio for I tend to not find a big difference between cameras. Panasonic does have better audio options of course and for those that must have the best in camera audio Panasonic is the way to go. So far my R6 has just been scratch track audio. Ran two wireless lav mics into it once and it seemed to do great. Didn't do a side by side however.
 
All valid points, just to add the R6ii is nearly 40% more expensive than the S5ii here in the UK - that is a huge mark up and puts it in a different price bracket for many

Panasonic lenses are completely silent and fast for AF, the RF lenses I have tried - the 35mm 1.8 and 85mm f2 are surprisingly noisy and slow to focus. No idea on the price differences

IBIS isn't unusable with the R6 but is a lot better with the Panasonic even without lens IS. ALso the wobble on the R6 is very evident at 24mm, the 16mm RF lens is unusable with IBIS - on the S5ii I can use the kit lens at 20mm no problem

I found the DR difference quite big, I don't use HDR but was hoping the clog3 would have helped a lot more than it does - there is something strange going on in the shadows with the R5 & R6 - Cine D describe it better than I can, this is in their R6 DR test...

"What can be observed is the fact that almost no noise floor is visible – it looks like lower stops are simply cut off.

Hence, it will not be possible to dig into the shadows much without losing color and creating banding – confirmed by our latitude (underexposure) test "

Colour is obviously subjective and Canon produces a nice image, all cameras do these days but still prefer Black Magic, Panasonic and Fuji probably in that order. Vlog is lovely and the less contrasty curve seems to gives me more to play with. Anyway as I say all the cameras are capable of great images now, hard to pick a bad one

Crop mode is definitely sharper in video on the S5ii, no idea with stills
 
ade4all said:
All valid points, just to add the R6ii is nearly 40% more expensive than the S5ii here in the UK - that is a huge mark up and puts it in a different price bracket for many

Panasonic lenses are completely silent and fast for AF, the RF lenses I have tried - the 35mm 1.8 and 85mm f2 are surprisingly noisy and slow to focus. No idea on the price differences

IBIS isn't unusable with the R6 but is a lot better with the Panasonic even without lens IS. ALso the wobble on the R6 is very evident at 24mm, the 16mm RF lens is unusable with IBIS - on the S5ii I can use the kit lens at 20mm no problem

I found the DR difference quite big, I don't use HDR but was hoping the clog3 would have helped a lot more than it does - there is something strange going on in the shadows with the R5 & R6 - Cine D describe it better than I can, this is in their R6 DR test...

"What can be observed is the fact that almost no noise floor is visible – it looks like lower stops are simply cut off.

Hence, it will not be possible to dig into the shadows much without losing color and creating banding – confirmed by our latitude (underexposure) test "

Colour is obviously subjective and Canon produces a nice image, all cameras do these days but still prefer Black Magic, Panasonic and Fuji probably in that order. Vlog is lovely and the less contrasty curve seems to gives me more to play with. Anyway as I say all the cameras are capable of great images now, hard to pick a bad one

Crop mode is definitely sharper in video on the S5ii, no idea with stills
Click to expand...

Clog3 is an interesting format to work with. Canon is doing something odd with the noise floor for sure. Canon tends to love highlights and its clog3 at ISO800 is in a way similar to ISO800 on the P4k. In terms of how the stops are mapped you have an equal amount of stops over and under. This allows the highlights to capture a ton of detail while sacrificing the shadows. Much like on the P4k where ISO800 and ISO1000 have a ton of noise. Clog3 is not a really good log format shot at its base for digging into those shadows or doing anything with the shadows. Its optimized for highlight detail.

The trick to clog3 is to shoot over. I know a lot of people suggest this but they don't explain why or whats really going on. Shooting over is like remapping the stops on the P4k. One stop over shifts the stops so its more like ISO400 on the P4k. Two stops over shifts the stops so its more like ISO200 on the P4k. This now makes the format a lot more robust in the shadows so you can do a lot more with it. Of course highlight detail is sacrificed but thats precisely what happens on the P4k as well.

Nobody really knows why the R5 and R6 cut off the noise floor. Kind of made sense with clog1 but it doesn't make sense with clog3. Just give us the noise and let us deal with it. Funny thing is external raw from the R5 does not cut off the noise at all. It's recorded as clog2 with no cut off and a massive noise floor. The plus side there is with good noise reduction we can pull back some of those stops buried in that noise floor. Keep in mind the CineD lab test for the R6 only includes Clog1. They never bothered to update their test with clog3. They did do a later update for the R5 and for the most part whats true of the R5 is true of the R6 as well. So we do know clog3 on the R5 still cuts off part of the noise floor. It's possible it's an oversight from when the cameras could only handle clog1. Maybe some engineer felt it made more sense to combat the limited 10bit processing.

The cause of that massive noise floor is the 10bit processing. Photos with mechanical shutter use 14bit processing. Good raw video cameras use 12bit processing. The slower Canon sensors can only manage 10bit video processing however which results in a larger than usual noise floor and limits the dynamic range. R5 5k cropped external raw and R6 mk2 3.7k cropped external raw do manage 12bit processing. Unfortunately nobody including CineD has bothered to measure the dynamic range of those cropped modes. With the clipped noise floor gone and the better 12bit processing th cropped modes could end up having higher dynamic range. In theory. I have yet to try it until I get a R6 mk2 and Atomos releases their support for it. I really don't have much interest in the R5 right now to try it myself. Not going to buy a three year old camera when a R5 mk2 may be right around the corner.
 
When I say the trick to clog3 I mean the trick is really knowing how and when to map the stops to fit the needs of the shot. Much like the P4k. The P4k is flexible for a reason. So one can choose how to best use those 13 stops to emphasize highlight or shadow detail. Same goes for clog3. It's not a one size fits all log solution. It has to be used at its optimal mapping to best suit the scene being shot. Sometimes that will be shooting at base. Sometimes that may mean two stops over. I find one stop over to be a pretty good balance but if I am shooting HDR where I want as much highlight detail as possible I will shoot at base or even shocker one stop under.
 
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