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Panasonic S1H review / hands-on - a true 6K full frame cinema camera


Andrew Reid
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1 hour ago, DBounce said:

Did Blackmagic solve their red clipping issue? 

I guess I should explain that the blue clip is the least of my concerns ... H2665 10 bit 420 would not be pleasant on my 2009 MacPro 5.1 and it looks

like the codec is a bit limited with regards to major grading ... I rarely get by with less than 7 nodes in Davinci Resolve ....

May be a bit more noise than I would prefer and Matt Allard suggests that the camera is a bit challenged in mixed lighting. One wonders why Panasonic did not

hire someone who could light their scenes a bit better. But Matt shoots RED and Arri for his professional work so his threshold for excellence may differ from many.

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3 hours ago, DBounce said:

Did Blackmagic solve their red clipping issue? 

As far as I know its still there on the Pocket 4k but the Pocket 6k doesn't have the issue. That said it can be fixed in post on the Pocket 4k, while on the Panasonic S1 you are just screwed.

 

1 hour ago, docmoore said:

I guess I should explain that the blue clip is the least of my concerns ... H2665 10 bit 420 would not be pleasant on my 2009 MacPro 5.1 and it looks

like the codec is a bit limited with regards to major grading ... I rarely get by with less than 7 nodes in Davinci Resolve ....

May be a bit more noise than I would prefer and Matt Allard suggests that the camera is a bit challenged in mixed lighting. One wonders why Panasonic did not

hire someone who could light their scenes a bit better. But Matt shoots RED and Arri for his professional work so his threshold for excellence may differ from many.

I have a feeling he is just used to the excellence from Arri or RED. Would be interesting to see him compare it to the EOS R, Fuji XT3, and Sony A7III

I thought the panasonic codec with Vlog is H264 10  bit 150mbps?

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14 minutes ago, thebrothersthre3 said:

As far as I know its still there on the Pocket 4k but the Pocket 6k doesn't have the issue. That said it can be fixed in post on the Pocket 4k, while on the Panasonic S1 you are just screwed.

Yep, even managed to put all the fixes into a Lut and I think Alex @Sage will go even further with his Lut.
But we may see a fix from Panasonic soon and in the meantime shoot HLG and avoid ISO3200 and 6400 and above, 4000 is perfectly fine. :)

 

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1 minute ago, thebrothersthre3 said:

As far as I know its still there on the Pocket 4k but the Pocket 6k doesn't have the issue. That said it can be fixed in post on the Pocket 4k, while on the Panasonic S1 you are just screwed.

 

I have a feeling he is just used to the excellence from Arri or RED. Would be interesting to see him compare it to the EOS R, Fuji XT3, and Sony A7III

I dont understand this blue clipping problem at all. On the S1 and S1H, while in VLog, the green and red channel have the very mild, saturation they are supposed to have. Those two have a perfectly normal response. However, blue is completely different than red and green, it just floods in with this crazy saturation that is 10 times more than red and green have. I dont get it...blue, why does THAT color respond soooo much more differently then red and green?

I did some more blue light tests last night:

S1 - Vlog = Blue 100% destroyed

S1 - HLG = Blue 100% destroyed

GH5 - VLog-l = Blue = Excellent!

GH5- HLG = Blue = Excellent!

Sony Z150 - HLG = Blue is very bad but not completely destroyed

Sony NX80 - SLOG-2 = Blue is somewhat "OK" but responds weird.

Sony NX80 - HLG = Blue is excellent!

Sony RX10-III - SLOG-2 = Blue is 100% destroyed.

Sony RX100 VII SLOG-2 (uses new Sony "Venice" color science) = Blue is excellent!!

Sony RX100 VII HLG (uses new Sony "Venice" color science) = Blue is excellent!!

All these cameras got the EXACT same blue light scene test. I dont know what to think but the GH5 is great and Sony's new color science seems to beat the problem too.

This really blows my mind.

CT

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16 minutes ago, thebrothersthre3 said:

As far as I know its still there on the Pocket 4k but the Pocket 6k doesn't have the issue. That said it can be fixed in post on the Pocket 4k, while on the Panasonic S1 you are just screwed.

 

I have a feeling he is just used to the excellence from Arri or RED. Would be interesting to see him compare it to the EOS R, Fuji XT3, and Sony A7III

I thought the panasonic codec with Vlog is H264 10  bit 150mbps?

I think that you have 4K 10 bit 400 mbps but 5.9k and higher frame rate is limited to H265 420

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4 minutes ago, Cliff Totten said:

I dont understand this blue clipping problem at all. On the S1 and S1H, while in VLog, the green and red channel have the very mild, saturation they are supposed to have. Those two have a perfectly normal response. However, blue is completely different than red and green, it just floods in with this crazy saturation that is 10 times more than red and green have. I dont get it...blue, why does THAT color respond soooo much more differently then red and green?

I did some more blue light tests last night:

S1 - Vlog = Blue 100% destroyed

S1 - HLG = Blue 100% destroyed

GH5 - VLog-l = Blue = Excellent!

GH5- HLG = Blue = Excellent!

Sony Z150 - HLG = Blue is very bad but not completely destroyed

Sony NX80 - SLOG-2 = Blue is somewhat "OK" but responds weird.

Sony NX80 - HLG = Blue is excellent!

Sony RX10-III - SLOG-2 = Blue is 100% destroyed.

Sony RX100 VII SLOG-2 (uses new Sony "Venice" color science) = Blue is excellent!!

Sony RX100 VII HLG (uses new Sony "Venice" color science) = Blue is excellent!!

All these cameras got the EXACT same blue light scene test. I dont know what to think but the GH5 is great and Sony's new color science seems to beat the problem too.

This really blows my mind.

CT

Pocket 4K BMD Film V4 = blue is slightly distorted but recoverable - but only after converting to another colorspace.

1 minute ago, docmoore said:

 is limited to H265 420

Not really a limitation since debayer doesn't provide any more data than that at native readout ;)

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19 hours ago, Cliff Totten said:

Excellent news!  I was contacted by a Panasonic operations manager about this S1 and S1H blue channel clipping problem! He wanted me to be very aware that Panasonic has seen my video and they are very interested in this issue! I wont post my emails here but I will take one quote for you guys to see:  

"Rest assured that this issue has a lot of attention right now"....[from Panasonic] engineers.

During this time, be very carefull about shooting in VLog. Outdoors should be fine. Indoors and night shooting are very prone to deep blue channel saturation, even on blue light that is not very strong. HLG will be the much safer bet for the moment.

Lets cross our fingers that Panny will figure this out with a firmware fix. 

Thanks for communicating to them - you should point them to this thread and any other threads out there as well if possible. I think them fixing this before the S1H launch will really help their PR team out, since the folks that will get their hands on the S1H will be very vocal about this and at $4k - this type of issue should not happen. 

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On 8/29/2019 at 4:24 PM, Andrew Reid said:

OK so here's the thing about add-on EVFs. They are all shit. They all need stupid wobbly cables, they all upset the centre of gravity and balance of a mirrorless camera, they all draw attention to you so people know you're shooting video in public and the Permit Krackens swoop, people get upset, etc. They all cost a lot of money and they all take big chunky 1990's style camcorder batteries or hook into an even bigger v-lock brick on your spidery stupid rig, and therefore they are horrible to use, horrible to pack away, horrible to assemble and slow to boot up...I despise external recorders and external EVFs....But the Pocket 6K has no EVF so you need to add one for £1000...The Pocket 6K has no stabilisation so you need to add a cage and shoulder rig for £500.....the Pocket 6K has a piddly little battery which the meter decides it has had enough off after 10 minutes with random shut downs, so add the v-lock for £300 minimum.... I love what Blackmagic did with the image and codec. Just wish it was in a different camera not the shit one they put it in.

I have shot lots of field documentary material and I basically agree. We use Ursas, rigged Sony Alpha, DVX200, rigged BMP4CC4k, etc. 

I am disappointed the video-centric S1H does not allow punch-in to check focus while recording. The BMPCC4K and even my old A7R2 did that. An external EVF or monitor/recorder can provide that on the S1H, but if the goal is retaining a highly functional minimal configuration, lack of focus punch-in while recording is unfortunate. Panasonic's Matt Frazer said this was a limitation of their current imaging pipeline and would likely not be fixable via firmware.

The Blackmagic battery grip allows the BMPC6K to run for 2 hrs. If Blackmagic produced a BMPCC6K "Pro" version which had IBIS, a brighter tilting screen, waveform, and maybe 4k 12-bit ProRes or 6k ProRes priced at $4k, that would be compelling.

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2 hours ago, currensheldon said:

Looks Panasonic is going to beat Nikon to the punch. And at 6k raw too.

This is pretty incredible for a $4,000 FULL FRAME camera: https://www.atomos.com/press-releases/atomos-panasonic-lumixSH1-6K35mmFFR

Here is an interesting question that nobody has ever asked anywhere yet:  What "raw" output type will the S1H have?  The Sony FS700, F7 and FS5 do 12bit LINEAR raw using floating point math. However, the Panasonic EVA-1 does it's raw using 10bit LOGARITHMIC (log) mapping using integer math.  Many people don't know the EVA1 is 10bit raw,.,..which is totally fine.

So what about the S1H? Will that raw be the same as EVA1?

Complicated question:  If (big "if") the S1H is using a Sony IMX410 variant, then that sensor will have it's own A/D converters that encode whatever Sony made them to do. Sony commonly does 12bit sampling and offloads those raw values. Is it possible that it will be 12bit raw?  Is it possible that it will be a higher bit depth than the EVA-1's 10bit raw?  I have to believe that Lumix would want to access 10bit sampling off those ADC's if they could, if that sensor would give that to them.  OR,...maybe they would take in the 12bit raw and drop the extra two bits before that raw goes out to HDMI.

I have a hard time believing that Panasonic would want the S1H to be 12bit raw and the EVA-1 to be 10bit raw.

I hope somebody asks Jeremy Young of Atomos at IBC today.

CT

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2 hours ago, currensheldon said:

Looks Panasonic is going to beat Nikon to the punch. And at 6k raw too.

This is pretty incredible for a $4,000 FULL FRAME camera: https://www.atomos.com/press-releases/atomos-panasonic-lumixSH1-6K35mmFFR

Didn't Atomos also have a similar announcement on the Nikon Z cameras... "to be released later this year"? Yet the Nikon faithful remain forgotten.

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They may not be too concerned about protecting the EVA-1, as I'd guess there will be an EVA-2 with higher-end specs by NAB 2020. And this EVA-2 will have the L-Mount, which will result in them selling more lenses and therefore making more money. Currently, with the EVA-1, they sell the camera and then that's it. Whereas the S1(H) series is a total ecosystem with a lot more money to be made.

Not saying the S1H will outperform the EVA-1 or have 12-bit raw, but I would guess that Panasonic is eager to get their cinema line into the full-frame, L-Mount world to compete with C500 and FX9 and make more serious dough from their excellent L-Mount glass. So, I'd expect a full-frame 6k-8k Varicam LT with multiple mounts and a full-frame 4k EVA-2 with L-Mount to be released in the next 6-12 months... Hopefully. 

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15 minutes ago, Cliff Totten said:

Here is an interesting question that nobody has ever asked anywhere yet:  What "raw" output type will the S1H have?  The Sony FS700, F7 and FS5 do 12bit LINEAR raw using floating point math. However, the Panasonic EVA-1 does it's raw using 10bit LOGARITHMIC (log) mapping using integer math.  Many people don't know the EVA1 is 10bit raw,.,..which is totally fine.

So what about the S1H? Will that raw be the same as EVA1?

Rather have 10 bit logarithmic raw than 12 bit linear.
Want that extra dynamic range with a LOG curve :)

But in case the readout is 12 bit only I'm fine with 12 bit linear ;)

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2 minutes ago, deezid said:

Rather have 10 bit logarithmic raw than 12 bit linear.
Want that extra dynamic range with a LOG curve :)

But in case the readout is 12 bit only I'm fine with 12 bit linear ;)

The dynamic range is no different. It's just in how the sensor samples and maps it's voltage readings to digital.

The Atomos Shogun will take in Sony FS 12bit linear raw and can re-map it to a log curve like SLog-3 for video recording. It's no big deal to map linear to any log curve. Both linear and log mappings will capture the entire image sensor dynamic range.

CT

4 minutes ago, Video Hummus said:

5.9K 30fps ProRes RAW not bad, not bad at all. 

Remember, the S1H doesn't output "ProResRAW" itself,...it's just a plain Panasonic raw data stream.

It's the Atomos NinjaV that takes that generic raw stream and converts it to compressed ProResRAW specifications and saves it to a file.

CT

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8 minutes ago, Cliff Totten said:

Remember, the S1H doesn't output "ProResRAW" itself,...it's just a plain Panasonic raw data stream.

It's the Atomos NinjaV that takes that generic raw stream and converts it to compressed ProResRAW specifications and saves it to a file.

CT

Yes, I know. I’m glad to see that HDMI raw output is not capped at 4K 60p.

The 5.9K 30p competes with the P6K internal BRAW.

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4 hours ago, Video Hummus said:

Yes, I know. I’m glad to see that HDMI raw output is not capped at 4K 60p.

The 5.9K 30p competes with the P6K internal BRAW.

Yeah,...for me the Lumix S1H, a 10bit camera with great internal CODECs, no overheating and no recording limits and almost 6k raw? For $4,000,....is the most exciting camera I have seen in years. They just need to fix that one glaring problem with their color science and nasty blue channel clipping problem.

I already have an S1 and now the S1H is on my radar as a replacement.

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