Lumix S5II 3.0 / S5IIX 2.0 - New Firmware Update Quick Review
Vložit
- čas přidán 25. 06. 2024
- A quick look at the new firmware update for the S5II/S5IIX and my thoughts on it so far.
Download these latest firmware updates here: av.jpn.support.panasonic.com/...
Buy the Panasonic Lumix S5IIX from:
- Adorama (US): adorama.rfvk.net/rQbkNj
- Clifton Cameras (UK): tidd.ly/45o7nWO
- WEX Photo Video (UK): tidd.ly/3s1o78K
Or pick it up second-hand from MPB:
- US: prf.hn/l/xElzBjl
- UK: prf.hn/l/AJoMyl5
- FR: prf.hn/l/eOaneYE
- DE: prf.hn/l/NdyYpJm
- EU: prf.hn/l/DLGmRAj
00:00 - Intro
01:09 - IBIS Example
01:38 - Notes about the IBIS
03:15 - AF Improvements
04:05 - Sensor Speed
04:49 - Pre-burst Mode
06:25 - The future
07:40 - Your thoughts
08:20 - Outro
Can confirm, the stabilization is next-level. Really impressive. Thanks for sharing your experience.
Today I was checking new software in S5II and took photos of birds in flight. I didn't use the electronic shutter, only the mechanical one. AF is fast and accurate. I am very pleased with this change.
Yeah it works really rather well with the mechanical shutter 👍 Seemed very good at sticking with the eyes too. I tried out a few different setups for sensitivity and it seemed to work well in various configurations too!
You have the perfect bedtime podcast voice!
You need to turn "Quick AF" on in the menu, that will dramatically improve your autofocus speed on the camera
LUMIX is one of the few companies that fixes what ain’t broke, and it’s only for the better
Thanks for testing that lens. I am mainly a Sony shooter and bought the S5iix exclusively for video. I have the Sony A9 so don't care that much about fast action shooting when it comes to photos with the S5iix. I shoot mainly in 1080p 60fps so I need to use APS-C mode in order to get the PDAF and not the contrast detect AF. I also have this lens (my only lens on the Lumix right now) so great to see these results. Just subbed by the way, keep it real Robert, love your content. By the way, I will also never use the Frame IO stuff.
Thanks very much! 😀 I'm really pleased with this lens now. I had debated getting rid of it a couple of months ago as I really wasn't getting much use out of it, but now the big IBIS improvements make it my preferred outdoor video lens. If I need to zoom in a bit I tend to chuck it into 4k50p so it has the 50% crop, so it works out roughly like a 14-56mm for me overall and that's just fantastically useful.
Thanks for your video. Sorry if my question is dumb but do we still need to purchase the paid firmware upgrade in order to shoot raw on the sII? Because I couldn't find where I can purchase it from, and wondered how much it would be!
I think so! It’s pretty hard to find but I think the SKU for it is DMW-SFU2, so hopefully that can help you find it 😅 As far as I know it’s still required to output RAW over HDMI on the S5II (non-X)
Stabe is great, auto focus is much better for talking face videos, don't care about anything else, very welcome upgrade, loving panasonic at the moment :)
Could you test the 14-28 again but with EIS standard? The crop is a lot smaller (~1.1x vs 1.4x) and it also corrects for perspective distortion now.
Ooh I didn’t know that. Yes I’ll do a test (probably tomorrow) and link it here 👍 I’m really curious to see what the effects are.
The new perspective distortion is really good. Even in the standard eis. I have tried running with the 18mm and the extra mode and OMG its absurdly good. It's better than my gh6 was.
Here's some demo footage with the various settings: czcams.com/video/St6lC6-2H9Y/video.html. I hope that helps!
Hey dude, thanks for the vid. I tested today aswell.
One thing, very crazy:
- in bad light conditions the AF goes automatically from AFC in AFS. in the SH 30 and SH30 Pre mode.
Tested in Good light, the AF was fast and also no Problem with the Pre. Go test with a fast Lens.
Cheers
Oh that's seriously weird if so! I'll have to retest it when I eventually blag a faster lens from somewhere 🤔 Or do some 18mm f/1.8 action shots of my cat I guess. I do know the camera swaps to contrast detect in AF-S, so that would be another aspect to test too.
What do you mean pre?
@@creativegreatsvisualsPre Burst SH30 Mode.
Thinking to switch from xh2s to S5iix. Do you think it’s a good idea?
I'd say that depends on what you use it for 🤔 I really liked a lot about the X-H2S, and it's definitely the better camera for any action photography. But other than that they're pretty well-matched in many ways and it'd probably be worth trying them out side-by-side for a while if possible.
4:23 this is the problem the I have on my S5 even in conditions where the shutter speed is set to 1/1000 or much lower. I will test with AF settings because mine was pumped a little bit.
The sensor read out isn't slow its faster than the a74 it only hasa normal 21ms read out
I missed the fact that you'd gone back to the S5II, I'll have to go back and watch your other videos. Did you not have a major issue with your use case when you first tested it?
Yeah I decided it wouldn’t work for me for birds, but I ended up buying one six months later for video instead 😅 And I love it for video, but every now and then I like to see where it’s at for other things too 😀
@@robert_may I'm going back through your old videos now! 👍🏻
@@robert_may I've also purchased a sigma 150-600 which has also had a firmware update independently to the big S5II update. I'm going to test out the birding capabilities at the weekend 🤞🏻
@@007silverwings Ooh I missed that firmware update - lemme know how you get on! I really like that lens; just as good as the DSLR version but way lighter 😀
@@robert_may I will do. For some reason my channel notifications all stopped for your channel. Catching up now! 😜
I don't use the video functions. So, I was excited by the auto focus and pre-burst changes for stills.
The autofocus seems to work well. An improvement for sure when photographing animals with my Sigma 60-600 at 600. Zooming into an image on the S5ii, the focus box is centered on the eye. Need to shoot more examples but 👍 so far.
The pre-burst I've yet to fully master. I took quite a few shots of birds at a feeder. I got some good results for sure. Most culled were just bad posing on the bird's part! However, just like with previous versions, the burst file writing takes FOREVER! The SD card images are red for a long, long time. I seem to be able to keep shooting and recording (I had a few hundred) but at one point the camera had to be rebooted by removing the battery. The image count stopped but the cards were supposedly still being written to.
Yet to work out how to best use this. I don't like the lack of feedback, not hearing the shutter in operation.
Funny you should mention the 60-600, as I'm now borrowing one to review on the S5IIX and it's really quite good! AF seems to be largely very good for birds, though I do find initial subject acquisition a bit pants - it tends to rack through the whole focus range quite a bit rather than snapping to where I'm pointing it, but I haven't spent much time testing that yet. But when it is focused it's really nailing it and the combination of the body and that lens is really rather sharp.
And yeah 100% agreed on the file writing - I don't know why but the S5II and G9II have really poor SD card interface speeds. The OM-1 by comparison is quite a bit faster. It's a shame they didn't include a CFExpress Type B slot really, as it's actually far more cost effective once you start comparing v90 SD cards, which are essentially a necessity for burst shooting.
When I shot the OM-1 as my primary bird camera I mostly used the pre-capture mode for birds taking off, which is a relatively good use for it! On the S5II that mode lags the viewfinder too much to capture birds in flight I think, unfortunately.
I love the 60-600. I get great Hi-Res shots of the moon, and awesome animal closeups. I use my FZ2500 if I'm going places when I prefer a much more portable setup. In good light, that works well. The 60-600 is pretty heavy and my arms ache! The combined IS is amazing for hand-held at 600mm.
I just got a Lumix 70-300 lens as a lighter-carry option for the S5ii but this one is awfully soft around the edges at f8. I get great images at f22 though! 70mm wide open is very good. I'm exchanging it and hope the replacement is better. 🤞
Entirely unrelated, but inspired to ask because 1. You'll know better on quality filters 2. The flashy red paint drew my eye (must be my car brain like with red calipers, haha)
Which filters do you use? I've been trying to get some ND filters for long exposures I want to try, but all I can ever find online is people arguing and "product received as a promotion" reviews that don't really help
Haha I fully admit that I also like the red paint. There’s still something oddly enticing about that orange ring on Sony cameras to me too 🤤
That variable ND is from Moment and I’ve been very pleased with it - it’s pretty nicely made and seems to not have the IR leakage issue a few competitors have. Not sure if they do non-variable ones though 🤔 Worth keeping in mind that variable NDs are basically stacked circular polarisers so can have an unwanted effect for photos (they’re just easier for video though)
For fixed NDs I’ve used Hoya circular filters and Cokin square filters quite a bit. Got a drawer full of weird Cokin ones actually 😅 Not a bad choice for long-exposures as the bulkiness doesn’t matter too much then, and they’re not too expensive!
Canon probably started it for lenses with the red paint on L glass, but I'm glad other lens brands have followed suit, it's fun having colors instead of all black everything (Sorry MKBHD, I still want some color soul 😂)
Thank you for the brands and mentioning the potential issues with variable ND filters, I never knew that at all! Makes sense, though, since not many ND-ed photos also need what polarized filters do. I'll check out the Hoya and Cokin stuff! Hoya sounds like the way I'll go for walk-around needs, and then Cokin, like you said, where bulk isn't a limiting factor. Now to see if I can find some painted step down rings to still feel "cool" with filters on, hahaha
Actually your brain knows you’re holding the camera, not necessarily ours. It also looks like it could be held from someone in front of you with a gimbal.
I indeed have also felt the lagginess of the camera when using pre-burst mode and to clear the buffer off this camera is painfully slow, with that combination, the feature is unfortunately a dissapointment. Perhaps in the future with a faster sensor and Panasonic finds a way to clear the buffer more efficiently this will become a more usable feature.
Yeah it definitely feels like a feature for a future camera to me. Panasonic do now have a lot of the groundwork laid for a good action camera, but they'll need to make quite large improvements to the hardware to make use of the software changes.
I think the main issue with buffer clearance on the S5II is its weirdly slow SD card interface. The OM-1 writes much faster to the same cards, which is curious. But v90 cards don't make any sense from a cost perspective anyway - I hope the next S1 has CFExpress Type B as cheaper high volume cards in that format are both cheaper than v90 cards and significantly faster.
@@robert_may I have used Sony and I have had a couple of Fuji's and I've never seen something as bizzare as how inefficient these S5ii/x cameras are to clearing the buffer when taking action shots. Regardless, I absolutely love my Lumix and enjoy shooting on it.
Much as I like the 24mp sensor on my S5, it's been around a while and is showing its age for the applications you put it to. I skipped the Mk II but might be tempted by an S1II, though whether Lumix persevere with a top screen and large body is another question. Panasonic are great at updating their cameras with serious software improvements, transforming the already good G9 where other manufacturers would have brought out a new model (yes, OM Systems).
Yeah I like this sensor for its low light capabilities but less so its speed 😅 I’d quite like another giant Panasonic camera but I suspect I’m in the minority there 😆
And yeah agreed, I very much appreciate their attitude to firmware updates!
400 and no keepers 😊 you're obviously doing something wrong and you never mentioned what lens this bad performance happened on.
The Sony A7 IV has a slower sensor readout, Nikon Z6 ii about the same.
I've yet to test the new firmware myself but I doubt it's as bad as you say.
400 with no keepers on electronic shutter. That was on the 28-200, which isn’t ideal but it focuses fast at least. I wouldn’t use electronic shutter on the A7IV or Z6II either. All three cameras perform pretty similarly with mechanical shutter.
@@robert_may 28-200 is too dark, that is the slowest Lumix lens which doesn't do AF any favours. Try a 70-200 f2.8.or something, that 200mm end is f7.1 and designed as a travel lens, not a sports lens.
@@nocturnal1970 Yeah I’d prefer to test with something brighter and longer but unfortunately there’s no easy way to get ahold of one at the moment without buying it. It wasn’t the AF causing the issue anyway, it’s the lag caused by the electronic shutter unfortunately. Worked relatively well with that lens on mechanical shutter at least!
@@robert_maywould a faster lens help the sensor read quicker and give better electronic shutter performance, or is this fundamentally a hardware bottleneck?
Like yourself, I think the future is bright for lumix. I look forward to to the S1mk2 and hope it's more photocentric.
Ooh interesting question 🤔 I do think some sensors slow down at higher ISOs, and the S5II viewfinder does lag if you go into too dark a location, so perhaps it’s a bit slower than others in that situation (the Z9 by comparison doesn’t lag like that). Though none of the shots from today were dark enough to trigger that lag anyway, as it was surprisingly bright for once 😅
The image stabe is just e stabe on top of ibis. Anyone can get e stabe when you want in post. E stabe utterly sucks inherently.
If only Fujifilm's new f/w release was being received as well as Lumix's... 😂😢😭
Haha I haven't been following the response to that, I'll have to go do some snooping. The patch notes were the usual cryptic Fujifilm variety so I wasn't entirely sure what was supposed to have changed 🙈
IS is good ...very good ....but face out of focus is the same crap unpredictable when object moves and is in a group of people cause its prioritize front object...... out of focus .....sorry.....connect application massive unreliable CRAP .....slow preview mode like 3 sec sorry crap .....thanks that you and Holland point out that this camera is'nt what Panasonic try to sell as the best hybrid camera ....IT IS NOT AT ALL .....that's why they dropped the price ENJOY your ( and mine too ) degraded investment ....just don't pretend that this is an perfect camera