austinchimp

Can't see GoPros on this list? Would be a valid inclusion I think. Drones too. EDIT: Not intending to nag or be critical, this is an interesting survey and obviously you can't include everything!

Nice, but one thing I noticed - your uploads are super low quality and blocky. Are you uploading very small files? I'd up your bitrate a lot. Shame to do such nice work and have such a nice camera and upload such poor quality files!

Fringer works great for me. Good stills focus, and even some ok video continuous focus.

Yeah I have to admit, even after hearing how bad it is, the performance is shocking. It's a massive black mark against the camera. Even in photo mode it often won't lock on and hunts. For a so called Pro camera it's a joke. Shame because everything else is fantastic, but it's a pretty key flaw. Which Facebook forum did you comment in?

Just wanted to chime in on this and say I've used the S1 and S1H recently and the autofocus when recording with v-log is much worse than you'd imagine. I'd say continuous autofocus it's basically unusable. It cannot focus on a static face in good light indoors across a table about a meter across. Really hope they can pull out some improvement through firmware. The weird thing is the tracking box recognises the face and tracks it well, but the focus just went back and forth to extremes trying to focus. In other modes apart from V-log it's better, but not great. Given I bought the camera to use the V-log I'm quite disappointed that it can't do even basic shots. I wouldn't trust it even making home movies with my family, let alone a professional job.

Looks beautiful but must weight a ton!

I can't speak to the S1... yet, but I tried the S1H for a few days and was so won over by the V-Log that my S1 is arriving tomorrow. From what I can gather, there may be small differences between the S1 and S1H V-Log, but I haven't seen anyone say that one is better or worse. I remember when I had the GH5 that there was basically no visual difference between the 400mbps and the 150mbps LongGop. There are some comparison videos out there for the GH5. I would imagine that it will be a similar case to the S1. Anyway my experience of the V-Log on the S1H was that it's far superior to Sony S-Log in colour and the ease of getting a pleasing colour, particularly with skin tones. I put a couple of luts onto my rough V-Log tests and I was blown away by how good it looked. In comparison I have never found the same to be the case with S-Log. To get it looking good at all takes a lot of work, and even then it's not my cup of tea. Likewise the V-Log on the GH5 was better, but always ever so slightly off. I guess I'd have to put it down to the sensor, as the S1 range colour is so rich and realistic and just bang on. I won't be thrilled about the autofocus on the S1 based on the S1H, and the size is a bit of a pain, but I feel like it's worth it to get an image - with the V-Log - which to my eye is comparable to the EVA-1 and Varicam in terms of colour and skin tone. Going back to the Sony again, nobody could realistically compare the A7III to even the FS7, and certainly not the top of the line Venice colour science. EDIT I have to say that my impressions of S-Log have been with the FS7, FS5, A7SII and A7RIII. I understand the newer generation have much better colour.

Been testing the S1H for a few days and thought I'd share a few thoughts. First impression was that this is a large, heavy camera! A couple of other colleagues were taken aback by the size too. However one colleague who is used to shooting stills with a Canon 1DX mkII thought it was fine and fit nicely in the hand, so I guess it depends what you're used to. The menus are quite similar to what I remember from the GH5, although I sold mine about a year ago so it's not that fresh in my memory. At the moment I use a Canon C200 and have a Fuji X-T3 as my personal camera so it was a bit of an adjustment, and the S1H certainly lacks the tactile retro pleasure of the Fuji, and also lacks the video specific buttons of the C200. I was pleased by the look and feel of the 24-105 F4 lens, which gives nice shallow DOF when required. It was silent and well made, although coming from Fuji lenses recently my first impression was that it's massive! Again, it's just because I'm not used to it. Now for my worst thing about the camera - the autofocus is really a drag. I was so excited about this camera and initially the weird pulsing and searching autofocus took the wind out of my sails and gave me a very bad first impression. Even in stills it doesn't seem very precise or reliable, particularly in lower light. The face and person recognition sometimes works great, but is never reliable. You just never know when it's going to decide to defocus and start searching. Compared to Canon, Sony, and even Fuji AF, this feels like a massive step back. I hate the way it defocuses past the subject before snapping back, even in stills mode it really irritates me. I've learned to adjust to it a bit in the short time I've had with the camera (only a couple of days) and I'm sure I would learn to work around it, but it's a massive drawback, and I was really disappointed by the still performance, which is usable but just not at the level I'm used to. And finally my favourite thing about this camera... The image quality and colour is fantastic. Beautiful. Perfect 4k. I did try the 6k modes but only a little as it's not a big deal for me right now and also my Mac Pro choked on it! The colour in this new generation of Panasonics is strikingly good. I prefer it to Canon even. it's more realistic yet beautiful. Arri-like. And such crisp, beautiful unsharpened image quality. While I would say it still lacks the purely cinematic look of the old-school blackmagics or Arri, it's a wonderful modern image. I'd put it 2 leagues ahead of the GH5, Z-Cam E2 (which I owned for a short while) and way ahead of the Sonys. I don't know which I prefer between the S1H and C200 purely in image quality, but I think it might be the Panasonic. It's close, and I vastly prefer working with the S1H for it's form factor when run-and-gunning. The V-log is just gorgeous. It's making me consider buying a S1 just for personal use, just when I'd vowed to get over my GAS! So those are just a few quick thoughts. My bottom line is, if the autofocus was good this would be an essential camera. As it is, it puts this camera in a really tough spot. Yes the image is fantastic, and yes 'real filmmakers don't use autofocus', but most of us want and would use good autofocus. Once you've gotten used to it, it's very hard to go back! Especially for one man band operators like myself. It's so close to being perfect that I'm left quite frustrated. I guess the next generation is probably worth waiting for. But at the same time I'm haunted by how good that image is... It reminds me of how I used to feel when I looked at rushes from my Ursa Mini 4.6k. it's just pleasing and cinematic somehow. Satisfying for the IQ geek in me. I just wish that the AF was better. Hoping for a firmware improvement, but it's pretty clear it will never be up there with the best in the class unfortunately, and when the new 1DX miii comes out, I would expect a big price drop on this camera. EDIT I forgot to mention the slow motion. The 120-180fps isn't great to be honest, very soft compared to what I'm used to with the Fuji X-T3, which was another disappointment. Again, hoping for improvements in firmware, but not holding my breath. I think good crisp 120fps should be pretty much standard on a top level pro-sumer camera these days.

Really impressed by the colour from this camera. To me it's at least on a par with Canon and Blackmagic. Has anyone had a decent amount of experience with the S1 and S1H? The image looks to be quite similar but the S1 is so much cheaper!

Comparing Sony S-Log or Rec709 profiles to Canon WDR or C-Log : My experience is that Sony profiles retain more overall dynamic range, but Canon looks better due to excellent highlight roll off, and nice desaturation of the highlights. It's like it's already graded. Where as Sony tends to need work, assuming both cameras are exposed more or less correctly.

How have you found the audio? It's one of the areas I'm a little apprehensive about, and one I haven't had time to dig into properly.

This is fantastic work

In my experience (I haven't had much time to really stress test the camera) there are problems with horizontal pattern noise in the shadows, and underexposing is a recipe for trouble. The dynamic range is definitely not as much as the Ursa Mini 4.6k which I used to use. Still a nice image though if you expose it correctly. The high frame rates above 120fps also suffer from pretty bad aliasing. However the weird warping and flickering in that video is certainly something done to it in post, or else his camera should be returned as faulty.

Just watched this and I agree I'm seeing lots of weird artefacts. In my view there's something strange going on in the compression somewhere. I own a Z-cam e2 and while the image certainly isn't perfect, I haven't seen anything like this in the footage so far. Maybe he's applied some stabilisation in post? It also looks to me like it's exported at a very low bit rate.

Yes I think so, as long as Google can read the video. It converts it to a playable stream in the same way as Youtube, so when you watch a shared GDrive video in the player, you're watching a compressed stream rather than the original file. You can download the file to watch the original. One limitation is that videos shared on Google Drive can only play back at 1080P online. If you need to watch a file at 4k for example, the person receiving the file will need to download it to view at full resolution. Another good point of Google Drive is the control over sharing options. I don't know Dropbox very well so can't compare, but with Google you can decide whether a file link is viewable only in your organisation, or to specific people, or to anyone with the link. Very handy when you're sending out a link to somebody specific but don't want it to get out into the wider world. If somebody else gets hold of the link and wants to view it, you'll receive a notification asking if you want to grant access.