austinchimp

I always think that shooting video is like having to think in 5 dimensions at all times - particularly as a one man band. You're thinking about the 3 physical dimensions you're occupying with your body, your equipment, the physical space of your subject, your environment, where is the light, is the sound ok.. You're also thinking about movement and time - where is something coming from, where is it going, how long is the shot. And you're also projecting part of your mind to the edit, where future-you, or an editor, is sitting down to view your rushes and working out how it all goes together. Added to that any interaction with the subject in a documentary setting where you're also trying to chat, ask questions, capture something real. Yes, it's really hard. Most of the youtubers, for obvious and understandable reasons, create content in environments where they are in control - whether that be standing with a long lens on a tripod where you can pick off shots from a distance, or in their bedrooms. What, for me, it all boils down to is this: The craft and technique and equipment are 2%, and what is happening in front of the camera is 98%. That's why you're probably frustrated if you're reading this with thousands of dollars worth of top equipment around you but nothing to point it at. There are very, very few people who can shoot mundane things and make something great out of it. Not many Dziga Vertovs or Ron Frickes around. An amazing tornado or once in a lifetime sporting play captured on a shit camera is worth 1000x the most beautifully crafted shot of your cat. Perhaps one of the problems is that there are so many people with cameras now in the world, and in actual fact so little of the world is 'cinematic' or lends itself to being filmed. That's not to say there aren't great stories everywhere, but not everything works well on screen. Likewise the reason we enjoy professional movies and tv isn't because they have the best equipment and budgets, although that obviously doesn't hurt. It's because there's millions of dollars in value in front of the camera - the greatest and most beautiful actors, spectacular scenes, great scripts and stories that have taken years of man-hours to craft. Without that, the best DP in the world would have nothing. My final comment on Phillip Bloom - not everything he does is my cup of tea, but he's certainly very skilled and knowledgable. He's had the bravery to put his face and name out there on the internet, and also you may criticise his work for being mostly slow mo shots of people doing nothing shot with a 100-400mm, but to me the fact that it's usually watchable and evocative to some degree is pretty great. As we've all seen in this forum, that's a hard trick to pull off. I've worked solidly for 15 years or so now shooting and editing big sporting events internationally, and doing some corporate, and honestly while I think I'm ok at what I do, if I wasn't shooting something with millions of dollars of value flying past my lens, my work wouldn't be interesting. I'm not what makes it interesting. I try to do personal work sometimes and I find it a struggle and it's never something I'd share here, just memories for my family and friends mainly, or tests for myself. I don't think my daily life is that cinematic or interesting to people on the internet. I've tried to make peace with that.

I feel the same way about the comparison between the S1 and the XT3. I tried so hard to love the XT3, and I do love its form factor and many things about it, but the image quality of the S1 is far superior in both video and stills. In fact, I'm always amazed by how many people rave about the XT3 in reviews. I'm assuming there have been no IQ improvements in the XT4. The XT3 dynamic range is quite lacking in some situations, and the image fidelity - the detail - is kind of mushy and almost phone-quality at time. The biggest deal breaker was the photo quality in raw, which I find to be smeary and lacking in detail. I've used all the raw converters, C1 etc but didn't find anything that got really clean and sharp images. Maybe because I'm comparing APS-C to full frame? The S1 photos are 100% more detailed, although the fuji colour is great. In video the S1 detail, cleanness, dynamic range and colour is in a different league. I'd say the S1, along with the S1H (which I tested for a couple of weeks) is the best video image quality I've seen from any hybrid, and I've tried and owned many. For reference, the best absolute video image quality I've experienced is the Ursa Mini 4.6k which I owned for a year or so. I preferred the image to the Red Epic Dragon. I also had the ZCam E2 for a while which was great, but ultimately I wanted a hybrid camera. The S1 quality in 25fps is as good if not better than the E2 in prores. E2 slow motion - 50fps 4k and above - was far better though.

I've found the GHa luts look amazing on the S1 V-Log too. Give it a try. When I do side by sides, it makes the native Panasonic luts look horrible.

Really sorry to hear about that @Sage Thanks for all the work you do on this, it's much appreciated, although events lately and your personal news put all this camera stuff into perspective. Take care mate.

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.