- Okay, so, Canon's released a camera recently. Sony's released cameras recently.
Blackmagic has released cameras recently. RED has released cameras recently.
Who's left? Panasonic. And Panasonic has their new S5
which is the little brother to the S1H and the S1.
So, let's see what they've included from those cameras in this camera
and where it sits in the product lineup. So I haven't used a Panasonic camera extensively
since the GH4. And since Panasonic released the GH5,
while it was a really good camera and I'm sure lots of people were very happy with it,
because it was micro four thirds, it didn't really appeal in terms of flexibility,
in my opinion, to us. But the S5 is a full frame offering from Panasonic.
Now, the S1 and the S1H were also both full frame offerings,
but they were much more expensive than this camera is.
And so the S5 sits in a price bracket that is much more accessible to people who are just getting
into photography or also want a camera that's really good at video and photography at the same time.
And I feel like Panasonic may have done a reasonable job here.
So, let's see what they've included.
We have a manual. Which to be fair, honestly, shout out to people
whom write camera manuals, because while I don't often use them,
every time I've had a small problem and actually referred to the manual,
it is usually well-written. So, good job to all the people out there
who work really hard to write these, because they are unappreciated.
So, right off the bat, one of the things that has never had me switch from using a Panasonic camera
is their new use of the L-Mount, which is a Leica mount.
Panasonic has always had a really good relationship with Leica, so they've always had this partnership
that has allowed them to use each other's technology in their cameras.
And so when Panasonic released the S1H and the S1,
they decided to go with the L-Mount. And the reason that the L-Mount didn't appeal to me
at the time was the limited amount of lenses
especially at the beginning. Now, that has improved slightly,
but I don't know if it's improved enough
to warrant most people to switch. But let's just see how the camera actually stacks up.
And despite the limited amount of lenses, how it might compare to something like
the a7 III or the EOS R, which is where this camera sits in terms of competition.
So, included in the box is this 20 to 60 kit lens.
Now, this lens comes at a cost of about 300 US dollars more than the standard body.
And if you are just starting out, that is a fairly affordable price to pay for a lens that has a reasonably good range.
Now, unfortunately, it's an f/3.5 to 5.6,
so you're not going to get the best low light
or shallow depth of field performance from this thing. But again, if you're just starting out and you're learning,
this is going to be a good range. And it does feel like a really high quality kit lens,
honestly, like the heft isn't bad, but it's also not too heavy
that it's annoying to carry around, because one of the benefits of this camera is
that it is so lightweight. Now, I haven't held the GH5 that many times.
But the cool thing is the S5 comes in both
smaller and lighter than the GH5,
which is really impressive considering this thing has a full frame
24.2 megapixel sensor. Now, is it the same sensor that's in the S1H?
Panasonic has not actually officially stated that that's the case, but the resolution is the same,
and the raw 5.9K output that's gonna come later
in December is also the same.
So, it might be, I'm not sure.
But, really cool that in this body,
they have a full frame sensor. Before we do the physical tour, let's see what else came in the box.
So we have a single charger.
A USB type C cable.
And then a wall wart for that USB type-C cable.
And a lens, which, I mean,
I don't know about any of you guys, but from the looks of this kit lens hood,
it wouldn't be generally that useful.
And so I usually never put these on. It can, you know, if you put it on
and you drop your lens, there's a lower chance it'll ruin the lens,
'cause if it lands like this, it will not land directly on the glass.
But that is generally the only benefit I see
that these leaf hoods, I've never had a great experience with them.
This one might be different, I don't know. But in my experience, these are sort of throwaway.
Also included in the box is a strap that
I guess actually this strap seems pretty nice and on the wide end, so you probably would use this.
I, again, probably wouldn't, but to each their own.
So, they have this new battery type with this camera, which is the BLK22.
So it has this standard pin out for the S5,
but it also has this pin out for the GH5. So, this battery is actually compatible with both cameras.
Now, unfortunately, GH5 batteries are not compatible with this camera,
but it's a nice touch for anyone who is using
a GH5 and might add an S5 to their repertoire,
or is upgrading, that you could use this battery
for your GH5, and so then you have an automatic B camera
if you decide to keep your GH5 when upgrading to this as well.
Little things like that, honestly, that I haven't seen many other camera companies do, so good on you, Panasonic,
for thinking of that. In terms of layout, it's pretty standard.
We have a dial right around the shutter button.
We have white balance, ISO, exposure compensation.
There's a very nice red record button right here
which is a nice touch. It's a very nice feeling button as well.
It's not an awkward placement like the original S or anything wise, so Panasonic has thought of that.
And then the dials feel pretty good. There's no lock on the dials,
which to me isn't really a big deal. I do like them on my X-T4 a lot,
but I find that locks are more beneficial in stills than they are NVIDIA,
and I feel like this camera leans a little bit on the video side, while the stills mode is pretty good.
But honestly, these dials, the turn feels hefty enough
that I don't feel like you'd ever accidentally knock them.
And if you did, it's not probably a huge deal regardless.
And the other cool thing is that they've added a slow and quick function to the dial.
So, it makes slow motion much quicker to access.
Now, this camera can do 60 FPS 4K.
Unfortunately, it's a sampling rate of 420
instead of 422, but it is 10 bit, so that part is good.
Unfortunately, when you're in the 60 FPS mode at 4K,
there is an APSC crop on the slow motion.
And you also get HD up to 180 FPS, but also with a crop.
So, it is a four frame camera and you can do fairly high
slow motion frame rates for a camera of this price point,
but unfortunately, it's not the entire sensor, there is a crop, which is not perfect,
but better to have them than not have them.
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in the video description. Okay, let's look at the rest of this camera.
So, one thing that the S5 has that my XT4 doesn't have,
physically for all the things that I love about it, is the easy access to the single, continuous,
and manual focus dials on the lenses. So on my camera, it's at the front here on the left
in the corner, which is not the easiest place to access it
if you're not used to like which one is which, what you're on.
And so having it here very clearly indicated by these dials is really nice.
Yes, I love this dial, it's a great addition. Now, for the rest of the camera,
the S5 has the awesome flip out screen
with full articulation that I've loved on the last couple of cameras that I've done videos on.
That's awesome. And then the button layout's pretty simple here. The AF-ON button's here, the joystick,
which is actually shallow, but quite clicky and usable.
I actually don't mind this at all. And then the actual dial for the menus
and the quick settings buttons are all here. Standard fare for most cameras.
For IO, we have a microphone jack
and a headphone jack on this side. This flap is pretty big.
And so I'm wondering if you'd ever have any like IO cable run issues depending on
how you would rig this camera. I feel like certain cages while when you have a flap
this large can get in the way. And if you are a video user that didn't care as much about weather sealing,
I would maybe consider cutting these off.
I'm not actually recommending that you cut off the flaps for your camera,
'cause this one actually doesn't seem very bad like other cameras that I've used.
But this could be an annoyance
in terms of IO clearance at some point. So, yeah, headphone, microphone jack.
Oh, guys, they've included the dreaded micro HDMI.
Now, I understand on a camera this size
that micro HDMI probably made more sense than full-sized HDMI, but when things like
the Pocket 4K and the a7S III
have come up with cameras that have full-size HDMI, it's unfortunate to see any camera,
even though this camera's priced at cheaper than something like the a7S III,
it hurts me to see any camera have micro HDMI, 'cause no camera should have micro HDMI.
Especially when this camera is gonna get a firmware update that gives you 5.9K raw,
which I'm sure many people are going to use, you're gonna end up using the micro HDMI.
And in my experience, this port breaks,
guaranteed, with heavy use in less than a couple of years.
So, that's just something to keep in mind when you're rigging the camera.
There are HDMI locks that you can get for cages
and stuff like that which help, but again, in my experience, have never truly solved the problem.
But your mileage may vary. They also have a type-C port for high speed charging,
so if you're the type of person who likes to bring around a big battery bank to rig on their camera,
you can do that and not have to carry as many single batteries from Panasonic.
And that would be also a cost effective way to keep your camera going all day on a long shoot
assuming you have it rigged the way that you like. On the right of the camera, we have the dual SD card slots.
Now, one of the SD card slots is UHS-1,
and the other is UHS-2. It is unfortunate that they only included one of each slot,
but I'm sure they have a good reason for that. So, my other thing about the L-Mount that I've actually
never experienced because I've never used the L-Mount is the port cap is locked
when it's just on the body like this, which is not typical of most cameras.
Now, the other nice thing, though, is that the button for the the S5's lens mount
is right here. So you don't have to turn the camera around
or let go of this grip to like hold it in a different way
to get the lens off, 'cause the button is here. 'Cause usually on Sony and Canon cameras,
the lens release is on the left. But because it's here and convenient,
you can have the grip still be in the shooting mode,
take the port cap off, and then grab your lens and put it on.
Which it's a little thing, but that's a very nice touch
for the convenience of lens changes, because that way it's much easier to do it really carefully,
and you just have more confidence.
That lens mount actually feels really good. Very tight fit, no wobble at all.
Is the touchscreen a touch screen? Yes.
One of the things I wanted to test for right off the bat is if you could punch in while you're rolling.
So I'm gonna roll the camera, it's recording. And, ooh, you cannot.
Okay, that's a little unfortunate as a video-centric camera,
even though it is a hybrid camera. So you can see we're rolling on the S5 right now,
and you can in theory move around the box
where your punch in for focus would be.
But you can't actually double tap to punch in.
Which is unfortunate, because especially if you're doing like a long interview, that's the type of thing
that could very easily throw you off. Now, it does have peaking right off the bat
as the default setting that's on. But my issue with peaking on small cameras like this
is that the display is so small that even the peaking can be very misleading, even on the lowest setting.
Most peaking features on cameras this size
are never that accurate. Like they'll give you the ballpark,
but it's very easy to be like slightly off. And if you're like wide open at 1.4
or whatever lens you're using, it can be tricky to nail your focus on a screen this small.
So, if you were an S1 user that wanted
the highest quality file internally
and for color grading after the fact, you probably bought the $100 Vlog upgrade.
Now, thankfully, Panasonic was gracious enough
with the S5 to include Vlog by default.
That gives you the full 14 stops of dynamic range
that these cameras with Vlog are capable of,
which makes this camera very capable in terms of video features for the size and form factor.
Another nice feature that they have built into the camera, and most mirrorless cameras these days have that,
which is nice to say, the sensor has embodied stabilization
up to five stops, which can then be used in conjunction with the optical image stabilization
built into certain L-Mount lenses. And that's really great for vloggers
or people who just want to be able to do quick walk and talks and you can only do it handheld,
that actually, the extra stabilization for that and in stills would be very useful.
Even though I'm primarily a video shooter, I do love photography, and it is something that I've been
also doing a lot more of recently. And this camera actually has a feature
that I wish more cameras would have in the stills mode.
And that is in the aspect ratio, you can select 65 by 24 or two to one.
So, with the 65 by 24 and two to one aspect ratios,
you just get a wider screen view
of whatever image you're shooting. And that's huge for stills because, yeah, sure,
you can crop to this aspect ratio
or any other widescreen aspect ratio in post. But when you're using it
as a framing tool within the camera, it changes your perspective of what you're shooting.
And the S5 is the only mirrorless camera that I know of in this body style and that is full frame
that has this aspect ratio as a shooting option.
The only other camera that I know of that has this aspect ratio as a shooting option is Fujifilm's
medium format line, the GFX 50R specifically.
Honestly, this is a small, niche feature
that I personally love. And I'm really glad that Panasonic put this in for stills.
So, for anyone who uses this camera for stills, they will have a very fun option
to make something look really like widescreen, panoramic, cinematic.
So, while this is only an unboxing and first impressions video,
we are going to include a couple of clips right now just to show you the general video performance
that you might be able to expect in Vlog specifically,
just so you get a sense of the widest dynamic range
that this camera can deliver for you. And here's an autofocus test as well.
And honestly, I'm impressed by what Panasonic has done with the S5.
Panasonic really has done a good job of taking the S1
and the S1H specs and cramming it into a smaller, more affordable body.
And while the specs of this camera are really good and the firmware update in December that promises
5.9K raw and a couple more anamorphic modes,
the specs alone I'm not 100% sure
will be enough to suade people away
from something like the EOS R, the X-T4, the a7 III
just because especially the lens lineups on those cameras
are much more fully formed. And while you could adapt to any of these cameras,
performance will suffer, and you do want a good crop of native lenses to be able to use
on something like this. So, if you're the type of person that
really cares about autofocus performance and all the benefits that you would have
from native lenses, your selection isn't quite as wide,
though Sigma's support of the L-Mount has been quite good. So, if you're a Sigma lens fan,
you are quite well supported on this camera. So, we'll see longterm how Panasonic's S5 does
against Canon, Sony, and Fuji. But honestly, this camera is competitive
to all the other offerings. It is full frame. It has in-body image stabilization.
It is a 10 bit camera. It has slow motion modes that are reasonable.
It has some cool stills features. So, if you're a Panasonic user looking to upgrade,
I think you'd be very happy with the S5. If you're somebody who's a beginner,
the S5 is definitely a contender among the competition.
And it honestly is just a really good time to be looking for a mirrorless camera,
because basically all your options are good. No option that you choose
would be a bad camera by definition.
And that's a good place to be. So, thank you, guys, for watching this video.
If you wanna know more about the S5 or want a full review of any other Panasonic
or any other camera, please leave me a comment down below and put your request in, because honestly,
there are so many cameras and they're all good to some degree, it's hard to choose which ones to include or cover.
But it is a good time to like cameras.
Very good year for that.