Six years. That’s how long the wait was. But the S1 II is finally here and, believe us, it’s worth all the waiting. Forget those incremental upgrades; this is a monster of creativity. From internal 5.8K ProRes RAW video, which is every filmmaker’s dream, to other high-end features. But photographers, you get yours too. This is Panasonic’s fastest-ever full-frame sort of blur at 70fps. The secret: a brand-new, partially stacked 24MP sensor to obliterate rolling shutter. And another feature that is the icing on the cake: Panasonic finally managed to kill the autofocus Kraken. Welcome to AI-powered hybrid phase detect so smart it’s almost psychic.
And there’s the catch with the Panasonic S1 II: the price. At $3,200, it’s neck and neck with the Nikon Z6 III, sort of like siblings with a somewhat stacked sensor and internal RAW video capabilities. Yet the Z6 III does hold a trump: $700 less in price and dipping far lower even on sales. Panasonic, who usually slashes prices, seems to have stumbled into a territory with an overpriced tag. After a month of hands-on testing, the final verdict is encapsulated in one question: what truly matters to you?
Panasonic/Engadget
Panasonic LUMIX S1 II
Panasonic S1 II is so much more than just a camera; it is a filmmaker’s paradise. Shooting 6K RAW videos of never-before-seen magnificence, it captures one-on-the-most-creamy shots due to its finest stabilization mechanism. Charged to the utmost, so to say.
Pros
- Fast shooting speeds
- Great handling
- Excellent video quality
- Best-in-class stabilization
- Pro video features
Cons
- Poor battery life
- Expensive
$3,200 at Amazon
Handling and design
The S1 II is an attempt to continue with the impeccable ergonomic legacy of its hi-fi brother, the S1R II, and the budget companion, the S1 IIe. Weight-wise and size-wise, it is very much smaller and lighter than the original S1 (weighs only 1.76 lbs!), so there is greater liberation in carrying it along for long shoots. The big, deeply grooved grip clutches your hand. Its angular lines and slightly firmer rubber skin don’t fully match the plush comfort of the EOS R6 II in many hours of shooting, but its manageable size and weight make the S1 II a welcome companion on any journey.
Let’s face it: complex menus mean time wasted. Instead, the S1 II places effortless control in the hands of you, the user. Thanks to its thoughtfully engineered design with great attention to detail about where the buttons and dials should be, operating feel joy-the joystick and the control dials are very intuitive. Say goodbye to accidental setting snafus thanks to dedicated switches for photo, video, and captivating slow & quick (S&Q) modes, all with their own independent adjustments. And the photographer’s dream just got better with a switch dedicated to autofocus, two record buttons for video (top and front!), ten custom buttons, and a tally light. The S1 II does not just take pictures; it empowers your creativity.
Getting to the camera’s settings was straightforward. The intuitive color-coded tabs from Panasonic coupled with an even simpler quick menu that could be activated by touch or joystick means rarely having to search for anything. The real magic? Customization. Setting up just the way I wanted all buttons and dials as well as the quick menu was just a blink of an eye, and then I backed it all up to a memory card for absolute safety.
To clarify the device information, the Palo Alto System asserts that the electronic tummy pipette must go all Exchange on the Z6 III through some pretty staggering specifications of 5.76 million dot resolution and finally 0.78x magnification guaranteeing ultimate crispness in its sighting. Yet the true sorcery is with the rear display: a fully articulating screen that can twist and turn through any shooting angle overhead, low-down, or anything in between. The Z6 III screen dangers being uncoordinated for all its mere swivel.
Battery life? Well, to put it simply, you’ll be reaching for the charger sooner than expected. A paltry 360 shots per charge or 320 if you are glued to the EVF. The endurance capacity is pretty much in tandem with the Z6 III, and even Panasonic’s S1 II shoots for just 380 shots. Canon’s R6 II flatly scoffs at these figures, rolling its eyes away with a staggering count of 760 shots, making one wonder where on earth each one of the others went to plug themselves in.
Steve Dent for Engadget
Taking full advantage of two card slots, the S1 II features one for an ultra-fast CFexpress Type B card for hardcore RAW video shooting and another one for an SDXC UHS-II. Need more? In specular fashion to the S5 IIx, GH7, and a selection of Fujifilm powerhouses, the S1 II allows you to record bandwidth-intensive RAW onto an external SSD with USB-C and push your creativity beyond the limit.
Go ahead and take full advantage of the connectivity options offered by the S1 II. If the need arises, a full-sized HDMI port is available for perfect Blackmagic, ProRes RAW capture. Dedicated mic and headphone jacks for audio monitoring keep the pathways clean from interference. My love goes out to the XLR2, which, when attached, grants your camera the ultimate recording power of 32-bit float, wiping the bad memories of clipping away forever. A gliding carbon-fiber curtain then welcomes and protects the heart of your imaging, the very same sort of sensor shields conceived and exercised by Canon and Sony in their new flagships.
Performance
If there is any talk of bursts with this, it is better to call it a burglary. It can easily burn through 70 frames of RAW per second electronically, and scarcely leaving a speck of dust on that rival. Want some more classic feel? 10 fps is a respectable rate to which the mechanical shutter can go. Electronic shutter has the dreadful wobble? Forget about it. The readout from this fast partially-stacked sensor is only 12 ms, practically meaning the distortion does not exist. We are talking cheetahs and hummingbirds, not just snapping pictures. This muscle can be outrun only by the truly supersonic.
Imagine a world where you have never missed those brief moments and perfect shooting opportunities. Pre-burst capture sets this dream free. The camera is already recording on that half-press of the shutter, ready to capture the action. Full shutter release captures up to 1.5 seconds of previously unseen magic. Kind of like a time machine for your photos! And it does so at its blistering speed of 70 frames per second, shooting for 3 seconds approximately (220 shots).
Here comes a tremendous push of Panasonic for the hybrid phase-detect autofocus; best on this company camera. Though, speed and absolute accuracy do not let it out of the crown from Sony and Canon. Also, it stands behind Nikon’s Z6 III. Try to muster all its power to go for a 70fps burst and cherish the softest few shots among the great ones.
Steve Dent for Engadget
Speaking of the Lumix S5 II’s software engine, it targets everything from dogs, cats, birds, and motor vehicles with dependable human eye-tracking. My Vancouver Aquarium experience was a mixed bag; the camera sometimes had trouble locking onto birds’ and marine mammals’ eyes. The camera, however, was at its best with more common creatures: dogs, cats, horses, and even cranky geese were a breeze. Panasonic’s Urban Sport autofocus really nails focus for the fast-paced movements of breakdancing, skateboarding, and parkour. During a skateboarding shoot with burst shooting at full speed, the S5 II astonishingly delivered in excess of 90% of shots in sharp focus.
Turning the page on the book of Panasonic stabilization and forgetting its competitors, it resides in the skies. The listing gave it eight stops of compensation almost nearing the extraordinary eight and a half from the R6 II. With confidence, I found myself producing razor-sharp images at a shutter speed of 0.5 seconds. But the name of the S1 II is most cherished when it strikes to the video domain; that stabilization is to my eyes unconscious-to-be, and I will get into more detail there shortly.
Image quality
Panasonic’s rendition of colors has lately begun to attract my attention, maybe rivalling the Nikon for accuracy. Canon, when compared with the warmer tones of color with which it treats certain subjects, seem rather cool; and in my personal opinion, Sony-brand-A7-IV-weighted-camera is somewhat off the blue-green spectrum. Panasonic’s cameras paint an image that is truly a sight for sore eyes.
The S1 II produces JPEGs that find a classic equilibrium between fine detail and noise control: sometimes noise reduction can go almost overboard at very high ISOs, but the generally pleasing images come about. RAW files serve those with more control and allows recovery of a huge amount of detail in both highlights and shadows, thereby presenting maximum choice in post-processing. One warning: using the electronic shutter in burst mode causes a reduction in RAW bit depth from 14 to 12, so choose carefully.
Thanks to the stacked sensor, the S1 II performs like a dream, but there’s one downside – noise. Go all the way to the high ISO and you can actually see more grain vis-à-vis the Panasonic S5, a camera having equal resolution but without the stacked architecture. But that can be the least of your worries, as the S1 II will hold against the shadows when put up with the likes of the Z6 III and will outrun most of his fully stacked counterparts when it comes to low light.
Panasonic S1 II sample images
Panasonic S1 II opens the gates to your creative capabilities and thus is a visual writing instrument. Capture 6K RAW with the best image stabilisation and be ready to pay for the top performance. Though rivals tempt you with better alternatives, the S1 II stands on its own.
Want greater signal-to-noise ratio than 24MP? Then the S1 II is for you. The high-resolution mode does much more than just up the pixel count: in fact, it may be said that it orchestrates its pixels. Eight separate images are captured, each with the sensor shifted just a little, and the software blends them into a glorious 96MP image output as either RAW or JPEG. You can even forget the tripod since the S1 II boasts wonderful in-body stabilization that allowed me to handhold these sharp and detailed shots. If you really want to, you can even push that further.
Video
While the S1 II rather subverted the 8K RAW spectacle of its 44MP sibling, it did put on the punches the filmmaker has always been dreaming about. Forget resolution envy; this camera turns a cinematic tidal wave loose–5.8K 30fps ProRes RAW, gorgeously immersive open-gate full-sensor fun, plus hypnotizing 4K 120p super slo-mo. Luckily, no more rolling shutter to steal the spotlight. For the creators who need a fluid melodic flow in their hands, where control is ruled in, is the big storytelling wow that is S1 II.
Beyond RAW, the S1 II offers 10-bit video recording in MP4 and Quicktime formats. Looking for even more latitude? In steps V-Log to maximize your dynamic range. And for ultimate color control, ARRI LogC3 is available at a $200 firmware upgrade to integrate your workflow with professional digital cinema cameras from ARRI.
The latest firmware upgrades have really opened up visual possibilities for the S1 II. Imagine being able to jump from a set frame of 10 aspect ratios to a whopping 17 aspect ratios, and as a cherry on top, your client will be able to preview three formats at the same time-everything for free. Frame away at ease for every platform-one-way open gate capture with vertical story cropping of your image, and widescreen composing for the big productions at the other.
Image technology is clear and crisp. Oversampling provides supreme sharpness, and colors are ebulliently shining with life. The dynamic range is respected and can be put to overdrive under Panasonic’s boost for some breathtaking effect only, rolling shutter effects get doubled in the meantime. In the absence of the boost, the rolling shutter distortion only among top-level extreme camera moves or extremely quick subjects makes itself an appearance.
The video autofocus is quite the workhorse, tenaciously gripping the subject as long as it stays on this side of breaking the sound barrier while also recognizing faces, eyes, pets, city athletes, and cars-if you have come from Canon or Sony’s cutting-edge autofocus systems you may notice a slight drop in precision and response time.
Steve Dent for Engadget
There is no comparison when it comes to video stabilization on the S1 II. You can forget about the shaky handheld clips. The optical stabilization gives you nice smooth, professional-type motion. For even smoother best results, the more you activate the electronic stabilization (EIS), the better it feels. It’s like possessing a built-in gimbal-capable camera (though it does crop the image). But here’s the kicker-they’ve brought back Panasonic’s famous cropless EIS! Wide-angle view angles? Corner distortions and rolling shutter are now things of history. The S1 II guarantees that your footage will remain crisp, clean, and immensely stable.
In terms of heat, this is hardly ever a concern because this camera has an internal cooling fan. I pressed it really hard-5.8K at 60fps and 5.1K open gate; however, it still ran for 50 and 40 minutes, respectively, before it finally stopped on me. Quite impressive for a mirrorless of this size being able to last that long, wouldn’t you agree? Now, to really make this thing stink, bypass those limits altogether by recording straight onto an SSD by plugging it into the USB-C port. Problem solved.
For filmmakers eyeing the Lumix S1 II and Nikon’s Z6 III, the devil’s in the details. Not a card knocked out by 5.8K N-RAW at a blistering 60fps with the Z6 III, this has twice the top speed of the S1 II–30fps. Image quality? A near tie, given that both cameras share the same sensor pedigree. Focusing leans a little toward the Z6 III, but the S1 II counters with very solid image stabilization and better ergonomics. Really a big difference in proficiencies between the two is that S1 II has everything else expected by any professional: timecode, waveform monitoring, and professional audio facilities. So the verdict: In prioritizing pro video features, the S1 II should be preferred. However, the Z6 III’s hugely low asking price does make you look twice.
Wrap-up
Touted as a hybrid beast, the Panasonic S1 II definitely carries that aura. And then there is the price. It puts an obstruction in the pathway of recommending the camera for content creators with a clean conscience. Here’s the catch: the Nikon Z6 III is lurking in the shadows, promising nearly the same video specs, arguably better photography capabilities, and a price that’s just lighter on the wallet by about $600. So, for most, the Z6 III is not just the challenger; it is the smarter buy.
At $2,500, the S1 IIe is the sibling of the S1 II for the bargain-hunters by Panasonic. It shares a tough build and excellent features with the S1 II but compromises by utilizing the S5 II’s non-stacked sensor. From the trade-off: watch out for some rolling shutter effect.
Still photography-oriented imaging artists may pay the extra $100 for what is considered the higher-resolution version offered by the S1R II. Timecode, ARRI LogC3, full-scale audio control: you name it, then these professional-grade gizmos are required by filmmakers. And given that premise, the S1 does the job well. Of course, the well-informed do try to catch a deal on the Internet.
Thanks for reading Panasonic S1 II review: A near-perfect creators camera if money is no object
