Beritar

I agree and I think this idea is nonsense. I use m43, Panasonic/Sony FF, and yet I preorderer the G9II. So why the hell I bought this "big" and "expensive" m43 camera ? There are a few reasons : - Neither my A7IV or S5II can give me the fantastic stabilization of the G9II with "relatively small" telephoto and super telephoto lenses. - Neither of these FF cameras have an acceptable rolling shutter or 60fps Open Gate/120fps 4K. Yes, the A7SIII has good rolling shutter and it has 4K 120fps, but there are always trade-off (much more expensive, low MP, no crop mode,worse details in 4K 120fps). - While they are a lot of really excellent lenses of the FE mount and a few on the L mount, m43 has a lot of jewels as well. I can't see me stopping using some of my Panasonic Leica or my Oly Pro lenses. Some are irremplacable like the 100-400mm PL, some are outstanding to the point that even comparable FF lenses are no match, like the two f1.7 Panasonic zooms (contrast and colors are wonderful). I also tried to replace my 12-32mm, 12-35mm and 35-100mm with some FF lenses on my S5II and my A7IV, I can't. There are some options for Sony to replace the 12-35mm but they are not compelling for me (weight, price or features associated with the camera). - This is subjective but I love the colors from the GH6 and I expect the colors from the G9II to be almost the same. I don't like the colors of the S5II as much, even less the colors of the A7IV. So at the end of the day, there is no perfect camera and system, but they have strengths and weaknesses. No, we can't get the low light performance of the S5II on the G9II. No, we can't get the FF look at some focal lenghts (like the 50mm GM f1.2) with our m43 cameras and lenses. But as pointed out above, m43 gives a lot of advantage as well. And if we should use m43 only with small cameras, we could not get everything this system can offer with the G9II.

Hi, I think I have an issue with my GH6. I have not used this camera a lot because I mostly use my S1 and my S5II but there is something weird about the AF-C in video. Something I never seen on any cameras I've owned and one of the reason I always found the camera to be very soft in video. Here is my issue : When I use AF-C in video ("Continuous AF"), the AF is fast but it is not accurate. Whatever the AF (speed/sentitivity) settings or the AF mode I use ("1-zone" on the video I've posted). I can clearly see the difference when cropping inside the videos in 4K/C4K and 5,7K below 48fps (24/25/30fps). Everything above 30fps works well (48/50/60/100/120fps), 5,8K Open Gate 30fps works well too but with a lot of pulsing (the Open Gate on my GH5 is faster and has less pulsing). The most surprising is before recording (with "Continuous AF" "Mode 2" activated), the focus is perfect, but right away when I press the rec button the focus become innacurate. The AF-C is still working but it is innacurate. Easy to see with the "Enlarged Live display(Video)" function. I can still get accurate focus while recording but I need to use AF-ON or to push the shutter button to force the camera to get the good focus while recording, but of course it's not a solution. I own some M43 lenses (Pana 10-25mm, 25-50mm, 15mm, 25mm II, 12-32mm, 100-400mm, Oly 25mm Pro, Oly 45mm Pro) and all my lenses are impacted but not the 25mm f1.4 II. This is the only lens to have accurate AF-C in video when using frame rate below 48fps, no need to press the AF-ON button, so it's really weird. All the lenses and the GH6 have their last firmware. I have of course tried to reset the camera. "Focus limiter" is off. 5,8K Open Gate and Burst photo AF-C have accurate focus (as well as every video modes above 30fps). A exemple of the issue with the 10-25mm in 4K 30fps and 5,9K 30fps. In 4K 30fps the continuous AF is not accurate unless I push the AF-On button. In 5,9K, there is a lot more pulsing but the focus is accurate. So, either my sample is defective (but why only with C4K, 4K, 5,7K below 48fps ?) either the GH6 has a big issue with the AF. Maybe someone using the GH6 could test ? Thank you.

I agree, 6K/5,9K on the S1 is just fantastic. Yes Cine-V is great for skin tones, I use this profile when I want nice skin tones or when I shoot in low light since the GH4, usually I bring the contrast down a bit and the image looks great.

Do you use the last firmware on your S1 ? I never use the "Highlight" setting because it can quickly make the skin looking plastic. Have you tried Cine-V ? This is the profile I use the most in low light and there is absolutely no difference in detail rendering between Cine-V and V-Log on my S1 with the last firmware.

Yes S1 709 is cleaner than S1 V-log but I don't understand how the S1 can keep every details without altered them if there is noise reduction. I only see noise, no sign of noise reduction. In any case, the S5II uses a different sort of noise reduction, much more aggresive with fine details. Vignetting is corrected on the S5II but not chromatic abberations. On my 85mm Lumix S, I have a lot of them in V-log. In 709, they are corrected automatically.

You should try to see the difference at 1:1 between your S1 with the last firwmare and your S5II with the 709 profiles and V-Log (like you did with Natural and V-Log on the S5II). I can assure you there is no difference with fine details on the S1 between V-Log and the 709 profiles, so if the S1 uses a sort of noise reduction, it's a very good one ! I used a lot of cameras and It's pretty easy to see when a camera uses temporal noise reduction, the details are inevitably altered, the same way as if you use noise reduction for stills, fine details become more "plastic". While I liked these cameras, BMPCC 4K prores, NX1, NX500, G85, A7III, A7IV, A7SIII, and now the S5II in rec 709, they all used noise reduction and there was no way to disable it in video. NR destroys fine details to some extent (NX cameras were the most aggresive). On the other hand, BMPCC 4K raw (of course) GH5, GX9 (very noisy), GH6 (only in Prores with both NR and sharpening at -5), S1 and S5, all these cameras don't show (or very few) altered details, just noise. About the "look", since the first time I used V-Log in 2017 with the GH5, I tried to remove noise while conserving very fine details, I never succeded. It always end up like the cameras I listed earlier, noise is somewhat removed but the details too. And I don't speak about the time consumed to denoise the footage, Neat Video needs a very good computer to work in 6k, the loss of lens correction in V-log is also a problem, it is why most of the time I was shooting in rec 709 in low light with the S1.

Yes like I said (a lot of times 😅) the S5II uses nasty temporal noise and chroma noise reduction in low light with the 709 profiles even at -5, the difference with the S1 and S5 is stricking, especially on skin. There is also too much sharpening in 6K with these profiles, even at -5, it's night and day with the S1. This is the first thing I noticed when I bought the S5II some months ago. Maybe (I'm not sure) the S1 and S5 use slight temporal noise reduction with the 709 profiles but it doesn't impact the details at all unlike the S5II. Now I only use V-Log on the S5II because of the smearing and the over-sharpening of the 709 profiles, and I always overexpose by two stops like you did, it can change the colors and the highlights rendering a bit but this way it definitely gives lower noise, and like you said V-Log is free of smearing as long as you use 0 NR and 0 sharpness. Thank you for the Lut, I will try it. Yes I hope Panasonic will fix the 709 profiles, for now I still use the S1 for low light but I miss the S5II AF.

I must doing something wrong because VLog is definitely more noisy, did you crop at 1:1 to compare ? I use LutCalc and I use a Lut with -2.6 stop correction in Real Time Lut, of course my ISO value is higher in V-Log. To match ISO 100 in Natural I must use ISO 640/800 in V-log, but with this value there are more noise than Natural at ISO 100, and yet I use a curve which crush the shadows a lot. Easy to see the difference when cropping at 1:1. Both my S5 and S1 with Natural look cleaner, and this is not due to noise reduction because the footage is full of details, zero smearing, the same level of details as V-Log with these cameras. I also get banding using V-Log on the S5II, and of course the lenses correction are not applied (unlike with the 709 profiles).

It's not so simple. If you create a LUT that push V-Log down by 2 stops, you need much more light compared to the 709 profiles.

I'm interested as well, I own the S5II and I can't use the 709 profiles on this camera, I don't like the fine details when cropping in low light even at low ISO, the S1 has just way better detail rendering in 6K with these profiles, the S5II just looks oversharpened even with sharpness at -5. I'm almost sure the S5IIX has the same issue with ALL-I, maybe not in Prores but I don't want to use SSD for run and gun. Note than neither the S5 and the S1 have skin smoothing/chroma NR with the 709 profiles.

For me, the S5 (and the S1) is still a great camera, the AF is good for photos. For video it's OK if you have enough DOF or if you use 4K 60fps. I have both the S5 and the S5II and I much prefer the video quality of the S5 with most profiles. The S5II has too much details processing for my taste, except in V-Log.

Why ? To see that both the A7III and S5II can't be sharpened (in camera or in post) because of the huge amount of noise reduction and detals filtering. The bad light is used to see how the cameras perform in difficult situations and how they use their noise reduction algorithm. Seriously I can see the difference even when viewing in 1080P, both the A7III and the S5II smooth details a lot compared to the S5, to the point that adding sharpness in post just look like upscaled from a lower resolution. If you can't see the difference and use the Panasonic standard profiles, you can buy the camera with confidence, but personally I see a big difference with the previous Panasonic S cameras. It is the most aggressive NR, and over sharpening (especially in 6K) i've ever seen on any Panasonic camera to date.

Yes I can really see a difference with my S5 since the first day I bouth the S5II. And the other profiles are even worse. I use a lot Natural and Cine-V in low light, there are just too much details filtering on the S5II with these profiles, it looks very similar to Sony (even worse than Sony at very low ISO) :

Yes the issue is with the standard profiles, the difference is obvious : However in V-Log they look very similar when sharpness and NR are set at 0 :

The S5II also uses more sharpening and details smoothing than before (S5 and S1), less in V-Log and HLG but still noticeable when pixel peeping. I "pixel peep" a lot because I use 6K to pan or zoom in post and with most profiles the 6K of the S1 really looks like a burst of raw photos and the S5II looks more like a burst of JPEGs with in camera sharpening and NR bumped up. And at this point even my old A7III (while noisier) keeps better details than my S5II in 4K.

Seriously I miss the S1 (but not its AF). In fact I almost don't use my S5II because I don't like it for low light even at low ISO. The rendering on faces is just bad because of over shaprening and (especially) smoothed out details. V-log is better but still not as good as before and not recommended for the cleanest footage, using underexposed LUTs to get ride of noise just doesn't work well because Dynamic range take a hit and above all you loose too much light doing this. If you don't crop a lot in your videos, I think you will like the S5II though, but in my case if Panasonic doesn't adress the image quality with the standard profiles and really want to target smartphone users, I don't think I will use their camera anymore. I was tempted to buy an S1 again but the AF is really not good with low contrast scenes or when using Sigma lenses, it even struggles sometimes in good light with Panasonic S lenses ... I also use the Sony A7IV (and III) and it has better image quality in low light, there are some noise reduction at high ISO but there is absolutely no smoothing like on the S5II at low ISO. So Sony has great AF and image quality in most scenarios but it lacks good IBIS with >20mm lenses and it has no Open Gate mode. It was really too much for Panasonic to make a S1 with the AF of the S5II ? I still hope.

I don't think the issue is Phase Detect because V-Log on the S5II (while sharper than before) has not the insane sharpening and chroma noise reduction that the standard profiles have. Moreover, nor my A7III and IV smooth details like this at low ISO and yet they use Phase detect. There are just bad processing going on internaly on the standard profiles with the S5II.

About the GH6, I've not used it a lot but even with HLG and V-Log (H265) and I feel the details rendering is slightly different compared to the GH5, maybe because of some details filtering ("Intelligent detail filtering" from Panasonic) but there is a difference, like if the GH6 smooths and sharpens some details in the same time, a bit like with the S5II standard profiles but far less pronounced. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55RygnQqAbU I think Deezid used the GH6 a lot more than me thought and said Prores has less noise reduction so maybe the details rendering is better than with H265. These days, many brands use a lot sharpening and different type of noise reduction, sadly most of the time there is no way to disable them. It is true that there is no chance your clients could spot the loss of details, but I use Panasonic cameras since a very long time and I loved the way I could crop or extract picture from my videos while retaining a lot of details, like a true Jpeg picture without too much noise processing or digital sharpening. We can't do this anymore with the S5II standard profiles because there are too much processing going on internally, exactly like on smartphones.

V-Log on the S5II is way less impacted, it looks "almost" similar to my S5. It has slightly more sharpening (maybe more spatial or temporal NR from what I've seen in the CineD test), and tint is more green than the S5. The real issue is with the standard profiles for the S5II.

This is my thought exactly , Panasonic must want to target smartphone users, It's the only explanation and it's a very bad new. But some people can't see the difference or sometimes prefer the over sharpening and mushy details of the S5II, so I am not surprised.

Another test between the S5II and the S5, this time with the Natural Profile (640 ISO) : I'm not a fan of extreme sharpening but it's not really an issue if it can be dialed down enough, the important thing is to keep details. The S5II uses a lot of sharpening at -5 but it also uses a lot of details filtering (look at the orange background) ,and of course adding sharpness in post can't help to recover details. I think I never seen an imaqe quality so bad from a Panasonic camera of this price (V-Log has less issues but this is not the always the best profile for some situations).

Do you know if the GH5II also has the heavy sharpening from the GH6 ? My GH6 and my S5II are very similar about sharpness, rough sharpening even at -5 with the standard profiles but also less fine details than S1/S5 and G9 because of the new "intelligent details" processing in the GH6. I really hoped Panasonic didn't put these processing on the S5II but it looks even worse.

If you shoot V-log there is almost zero noise reduction on the S5II, however I still prefer the V-log image coming from the S5/S1. But yes Panasonic really need to fix the image quality with the standard profiles.

From my experience (I have the camera since a month), the latitude is not the only downgrade, detail rendering (less in V-Log) and motion quality are also worse than the S1 and S5. But a lot of people will not see the difference, especially those who shoot in a very well controled environnement and those for whom 1080P is enough quality.

Another scene and "subject" :