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


Andrew Reid
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8 minutes ago, crevice said:

Your positives about the S1H are everything I would want in a camera. Your negatives, which I have yet to encounter, should be fixed in a firmware update as they seem to be directly tied to VLOG, which is a positive since its something that could be fixed, similar to the GH5. With that said, you have brought up a valid concern - but  you have brought it up over and over and over, to the point where we get it, but we are not Panasonic - you should be voicing this to them at this point in order to actually get it fixed. If you have already and they are aware, then you should give them time to fix it. There has yet to be a first real firmware out yet to even see if its addressed. To be clear, I have no issues at all with you voicing concerns that need to be fixed, nothing will get fixed if we are all silent. But you made your point and now you are just stating the same thing over and over again, in this forum, on facebook, on review sites, etc. I am not sure what you want out of it. Are you hoping Panasonic read and fix it? If so, why not just contact them?

Lastly, I disagree with your notion of the pocket 6k or any of these mirrorless cameras, including the S1H, having an "organic" image. An organic image to me, would be an original Blackmagic pocket, Blackmagic micro, Blackmagic cinema 2.5. Those actually used a Fairchild sensor and had a nice organic look to it. You didn't need to add grain to those those cameras to make them look organic, it was organic out the box. 

 

I think by organic he just means natural colors and no in camera processing (noise reduction). 

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23 minutes ago, thebrothersthre3 said:

I think by organic he just means natural colors and no in camera processing (noise reduction). 

Possibly, but he praises the S1H colors and says he isn't fond of the pocket colors earlier in the thread, so not quite sure. Not trying to start a war and trying to keep things positive. But hearing the same issue brought up over and over again is constantly steering this thread into the same direction - one that none of us can do anything about. 

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2 minutes ago, crevice said:

Possibly, but he praises the S1H colors and says he isn't fond of the pocket colors earlier in the thread, so not quite sure. Not trying to start a war and trying to keep things positive. But hearing the same issue brought up over and over again is constantly steering this thread into the same direction - one that none of us can do anything about. 

Its due to the difficulty he's having with the aces workflow for the Pocket as well as the brown cast. 

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20 minutes ago, thebrothersthre3 said:

Its due to the difficulty he's having with the aces workflow for the Pocket as well as the brown cast. 

Like @CaptainHook said, going straight to Rec709 on a yRGB timeline it's possible to fix all the issues mentioned. Also waiting for the latest work from @Sage, which looks like he can even go further, but that wouldn't fix any of the issues I get from working with ACES and the Pocket cameras atm and that would create issues with my upcoming project. Really on the fence right now...

Also the Pocket 6K looks great after downscaling to 4K when Resolve scaling algorithm is set to smoother.
The footage looks natural and basically unprocessed, the issues seen on the Pocket 4K like (moire/spatial nr becoming visible, sharpening halos) seem to be gone due to the larger sensor size and more important resolution.

@crevice
I agree the old BMCC looked more organic out of the box. No processing at all, really pleasant color and no clipping.

Also forwarded many samples to Panasonic and I think they may reduce the issue like on the GH5 but not really fix it entirely which would mean by providing a NR OFF switch like on their EVA-1 and Varicam line which would also mean more noise and worse dynamic range ratings I don't care about anyway.

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2 hours ago, Video Hummus said:

I would give the S1H some time and a few firmware updates. They've added major codec upgrades and offerings in past cameras might not be different here.

So close to a new project and nothing heard yet. ?
Even borrowed a Pocket 4K from a friend in the meantime for other projects so I don't have to deal with ghosting. 
Hopefully sooner than later.

Quote

offering full frame 4Kp60 as more competition comes out, or improve tracking AF.

That's something that even the FX9 won't be able to do.
Seems like FF sensor readout nowadays is still a bit too slow sadly.

Edit: The EOS C500 MKII will do it.

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3 hours ago, deezid said:

So close to a new project and nothing heard yet. ?
Even borrowed a Pocket 4K from a friend in the meantime for other projects so I don't have to deal with ghosting. 
Hopefully sooner than later.

That's something that even the FX9 won't be able to do.
Seems like FF sensor readout nowadays is still a bit too slow sadly.

Edit: The EOS C500 MKII will do it.

The S1R does it tho, not sure how decent it is. 

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4 hours ago, deezid said:

So close to a new project and nothing heard yet. ?
Even borrowed a Pocket 4K from a friend in the meantime for other projects so I don't have to deal with ghosting. 
Hopefully sooner than later.

That's something that even the FX9 won't be able to do.
Seems like FF sensor readout nowadays is still a bit too slow sadly.

Edit: The EOS C500 MKII will do it.

I still cant find your "already posted" example clips about the problems. Sample footages about the TemporalNR which ruined your shots at base ISO in VLOG with proper exposure, and about the "impossible to grade properly" brownish (lack of colorgrading skill, etc...)  BRAW  BMPCC4K shots.

Could you please provide the download links to them again?

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On 10/30/2019 at 3:10 PM, deezid said:

Still not sure about keeping my S1H.

Postives: Great color, works perfectly fine in ACES, no clipping issues, great DR and roll-off, IBIS and battery life, ease of use
Meh: Mediocre Codec choices which may cause issues, but all good so far
Bad: Temporal Noise reduction ruining many shots - barely usable honestly. Even recorded externally to ProRes HQ (tried an Atomos Shogun and Odyssey 7Q+)

I'll take it off your hands.

$1500 seems fair. ?

 

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On 10/29/2019 at 3:33 PM, Mike Mgee said:

@deezid Ill pay some good $$ if you make a comparison video of your lord and savior S1H vs the doooki train bmpcc4k. I wanna believe the hype.

Here's Mr. Deezid's grade -- or something or other, no idea why he offered the shot here as he does  -- of an S1 v. BMPCC 4K shot, kindly provided by another participant.  See that brown potato quality of the BMPCC 4K  and the wonderfully "organic" quality of the S1?

https://www.eoshd.com/comments/topic/34763-panasonic-s1-v-log-new-image-quality-king-of-the-hill/page/25/#comments
 

deezcompare.thumb.JPG.2cef2c65deaf0eab487518de1add7789.JPG

 

You can find my own basic adjustment (not grade!) of these two shots a few post down in that S1 thread.  Still no sign of  brown potatoes v. organic wonders, but maybe that's because, unlike some here, I'm not a professional colorist?

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See for yourself, download the samples from my blog: https://blog.presstige.sk/post/187207698230/bmpcc-4k-raw-vs-panasonic-s1-v-log-i-just-did-a

After three months of shooting with the BMPCC and the S1 I would pick the S1 over the pocket any day. I'm not saying that the pocket is a worse camera, but the S1 really got the edge with the slightly better dynamic range and usability. I don't own an S1H but I suppose it's almost the same when it comes to 4K 10bit. Bottom line: no bashing here, i love both cameras :)

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5 hours ago, funkyou86 said:

A bit off topic. From your blog: "I had to dial the temperature down to 4100 in Resolve"
How do you dial the temp down in Resolve to 4100K. I didn't know one can set the temperature by Kelvin there.

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22 hours ago, helium said:

Here's Mr. Deezid's grade -- or something or other, no idea why he offered the shot here as he does  -- of an S1 v. BMPCC 4K shot, kindly provided by another participant.  See that brown potato quality of the BMPCC 4K  and the wonderfully "organic" quality of the S1?

https://www.eoshd.com/comments/topic/34763-panasonic-s1-v-log-new-image-quality-king-of-the-hill/page/25/#comments

That was my Lut for the Pocket 4K which for some reason is quite close to a V709 conversion which I used on the S1 clip. 

AlexaX-2, IPP2 Rec709, V709 and probably other Rec709 compatible conversions have many things in common:

  • Great color definition
  • Great tonality
  • No or a very light color cast
  • Smooth roll-off
  • Even colorful lights are rolled off properly

The standard BMD V4 Extended conversion on the Pocket 4K at least looks entirely different. And inside ACES the camera performs even worse.
Tried to make P4K samples (around 100) look like corrected using my Lut but can only come relatively close. Can't really match it entirely, since there are too many hurdles to begin with.

Maybe if I invest more time into developing it...

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On 11/2/2019 at 11:10 AM, deezid said:

That was my Lut for the Pocket 4K which for some reason is quite close to a V709 conversion which I used on the S1 clip. 

AlexaX-2, IPP2 Rec709, V709 and probably other Rec709 compatible conversions have many things in common:

  • Great color definition
  • Great tonality
  • No or a very light color cast
  • Smooth roll-off
  • Even colorful lights are rolled off properly

The standard BMD V4 Extended conversion on the Pocket 4K at least looks entirely different. And inside ACES the camera performs even worse.
Tried to make P4K samples (around 100) look like corrected using my Lut but can only come relatively close. Can't really match it entirely, since there are too many hurdles to begin with.

Maybe if I invest more time into developing it...

I don't count myself either sufficiently skilled or so incapable as to want or to need to invent my own color grading workflow.  I figure that the BMD engineers, camera and Resolve, probably have it over on me there.  Namely, that the LUTs and transforms specific to the camera will take the footage into the correct color space, and the rest is up to me.  I don't expect the transform to make the image look good or balanced, or to roll-off highlights in some specific or pleasing way.  That would be up to the colorist. You know, lift gamma gain.   If there is no supplied camera transform, as is the case currently with ACEs/BMPCC 4K/6k, the obvious choice would be, don't use ACEs.  Or substitute another transform and take your chances.

Which brings us back to your claims about the poor "color science" of the BMPCC 4k/6K and the vastly superior "color science" of the S1H.  Using a common workflow, in this case RCM, I didn''t see that great divide in the two clips previously supplied, and you haven't provided any samples of your own to persuade anyone otherwise.  

So do we see it, or don't we?

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On 11/2/2019 at 11:08 AM, crevice said:

Found this on the FB group. Shot on S1H with Leica R glass. The low contrast/low sat grade was the intention it seems. Dynamic range looks really good 

 

If folks really want their footage to look like this, you have to wonder why they'd bother to agonize over camera choice.  Just about anything will do.

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3 hours ago, helium said:

If folks really want their footage to look like this, you have to wonder why they'd bother to agonize over camera choice.  Just about anything will do.

This is a creative art form we take on as filmmakers - I see nothing wrong with the approach by the filmmaker or the grade, if that was their vision.

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