Panasonic Lumix S1R Mark II coming soon

[ita149]

On 7/6/2025 at 5:19 PM, mtol said:

Has anyone been able to assess how the fine details are processed here? I'm wondering how the footage looks compared to the original S1 or S5?

I have the S1RII and the S1II. I also still have the old S1 and S5.

The S1II is the same than the S5II about video details, even if some youtubers said the details rendering has improved, it's not true at all. Same bad rendering as the S5II.
I understand some people are not bothered or can't see the difference and it's nothing wrong about that, but the difference is clear by example if you zoom inside your videos on people faces.
Like the S5II, there is a sort of rough detail sharpening and in the same time a lack of very fine details.
As always V-log looks better than the 709 profiles but it's still not great in my opinion.

The S1RII also has the same detail rendering and I was very disappointed by the 6,4K Open Gate, it was not better than the 6K of the S5II, maybe even worse, like if this mode used a tiny bit of binning like the 5,9K 16:9.
The new 7,2K is ok and looks better than the 6,4K. 
The 8,1K Open Gate is even better but limited to 24fps. Even if the video engine is the same between the S1II, S5II and S1RII, the later has much more resolution in 8K, hence the fine details looks finer even with the bad processing.
it's only when the footage is a bit underexposed or overexposed that the S1 6K looks better.
I read somewhere something interesting about Real Time Lut, using a burned in lut with a good amount of contrast helps to recover fine details. When recording V-log without Real Time Lut and grading in post, some fine details can't be recovered. I can confirm it's true. So using Real Time Lut V-log on the S1RII in 8,1K Open Gate is the best for details rendering.

I'm glad Panasonic has fixed the colored pixels issue in Prores Raw on the S1RII and now the footage looks great, same details rendering than on the S1 or S5. But it's really crazy we must use Prores Raw to get the same good details rendering than on the S1 or S5 H264/265. And the crop is a shame, 1,45x ! When cameras like the Z8 or Z6III offer 6K or 8K 60fps raw video without crop ...

About the S1II, Prores Raw only has a minimal crop (about 1,05/1,1x I think) and it was the main reason I bought this camera. Like on the S1RII, Prores Raw is excellent and like it has much less crop, fine details looks even sharper (in a good way). It's really fun finally get a camera with excellent IBIS, excellent detail rendering and good AF without using external recorder, even if Prores raw is a pain for the workflow.
The only issue I found is the 240fps 1080p mode, it is clearly not finalised because some horizontal lines appear randomly.

I also found the photo raw files of the S1II and S1RII to be slightly less contrasty than the S5 and S1, they have less that punchy looks and I still prefer the rendering of the S5 and S1 with my best lenses like the 50mm S or 24-70mm Pro. it can be because of ACR but the JPEGs out of the cameras also looks slightly less contrasty than on the S5 and S1.

Other than that, IBIS is stellar but sometimes more digital than on the G9II or GH7, color science is good but not as good as the GH6 to my eyes. The S1II also has better AF than the S1RII and I can feel the difference.

Compared to Nikon, Lumix has several advantages like the IBIS and Open Gate. L-mount also has great "practical" lenses but I think they lack really great lenses with very nice rendering and more pancakes.
After using most of the L-mount lenses, only a few looks really fantastic, like the 50mm S Pro (if it has not the coating issue), 24-70mm S Pro, 28-45mm Sigma and the APO Summicron SL. While absolutely great, the APO SL are really too much expensive for most people and it will be hard to attract a lot of people in the system, it is why Lumix try to attract people with smaller lenses and never released again new S Pro lenses since 2019/2020. 
Nikon has better AF most of the time but also more great lenses. The 50mm f1.8 is much better than the Lumix, the Nikon 35mm/50mm/85mm f1.2 and 135mm f1.8 are some of the best lenses you can buy. You can also adapt Sony FE lenses and there are more interesting "cheap" lenses available from third party manufacturers like Viltrox (mainly the 35mm f1.2 and 35mm f1.8).