- Right now I'm shooting
on the Panasonic S5.
It's a new, full frame camera
that's geared towards creators.
So in this video, we're gonna dive
into what makes this camera unique
and whether this is a
camera that you should get.
All right, guys, let's get into it.
(upbeat music)
So I'm gonna be shooting this entire video
using the Panasonic S5.
So all of the footage that you see,
all the A roll is gonna
be from this camera
and also all the B roll
of course, as well.
So before we get into my
thoughts around this camera,
let's look at some of the footage
that I've been able to get
while I'm out shooting with it.
(car engine roaring)
(bright upbeat music)
Now there's a ton of really
good aspects around this camera
and there are also some things
that are a little bit frustrating
and I've had this camera
for about a month now,
and I've used it on every production
that I've been working on.
So whether here on my
channel, all of the videos
that you've seen recently,
all of the A roll
and a lot of the B roll
that you're seeing,
it's all shot with the Panasonic S5.
And then on the other side
of things in my client work,
I've brought this along on every shoot,
whether it's been shooting on a gimbal,
getting like B roll,
some behind the scenes,
and also I've been using
it for a lot of my A roll
a lot of the interview stuff
that I've been shooting.
And one of the cool things
about this camera is that
if you are a Panasonic user
and you already use
things like the hot shoot,
microphone attachment, it
works seamlessly with this.
So it just like the
other full frame cameras
in Panasonic's lineup.
This is a new edition
with some key features
that's really geared towards creators.
So one of the key things
that really stands out
on this camera is now you
have a big flip out screen.
So it's a small body,
it's smaller than the GH5,
but you have a big flip out screen
and has a price tag of $2,000.
So it's much cheaper than a lot
of the other full frame options out there
and it's got a lot of power
packed into this camera.
So I've got a lot of different aspects
that I wanna talk about in this video,
and we're just gonna go through them
and I'll talk about my experience
working with it in the real world,
not like doing some crazy
scientific test here,
but I really wanted to use this
camera in a lot of scenarios
where I actually will be using this camera
to give you my opinion
on whether this is a good camera or not.
Let's first dig into
what this camera offers.
So the S5 is a 24 megapixel hybrid camera,
so it's good for both stills and video,
you can shoot 4K up to 60 frames a second,
and you can shoot in slow-mo
up to 180 frames per second.
So it kind of feels like
a big brother of the GH5.
However, there are a few things
you have to keep into consideration
when you're going from something like
a Micro Four Thirds to the full frame S5.
now with the 4K 60, it's cropped,
and for me, this is one
of those pain points
where I really miss having the GH5
and go from 24 or 30 to 60 and
not have to deal with a crop.
Now, if you're shooting
1080x120, you get full frame
and you still get auto-focus
when you're shooting
in slow motion, 120 frames per second.
However, there is no 120P mode
where it records audio at
the same time as video.
So basically you're limited to 4K 60
to be the highest frame
rate that you can shoot in
where you're still getting
audio along with the video.
Now it has dual card slots.
However, when it comes to the HDMI,
it now uses a micro HDMI
instead of a full HDMI.
I would have appreciated
having a full HDMI out,
especially because coming from the GH5,
that's something that is
just integrated nicely
in with that system.
Now, even though the camera is
smaller, it has a good grip,
so if you're handholding
and walking around.
yesterday, I was out in the desert
shooting in 103 degree temperatures,
and the camera just felt great in my hand
walking around with it shooting all day.
Now, for me, I'm glad they
added a USB-C on the side
and you can charge while you're recording.
So right now I have the camera
plugged in using a USB-C,
so it's constantly providing
power, so instead of having
to have like a dummy
battery in the battery grip,
you can just use your USB-C
and charge while you're
actually recording.
Now also Panasonic has developed
a new battery for this camera,
and it's gonna last longer
than some of the other
batteries in the lineup.
Now, for me, this camera
feels great in my hands.
Like I said, it's a little bit smaller
than the GH5 and it's full frame.
So it has a nice size to the body
where it's not super bulky like the S1H
and it has everything that you would want
from a camera of this size,
especially for creators
with the flip out screen, the
big red button on the top,
access to all your controls
at your fingertips,
it just feels good when
you're working with it
and I do like the way
that this one is designed.
Now let's talk about overheating.
So yesterday I was out in the desert
in a hundred and three degrees,
and I had this camera out
shooting the entire day,
the battery didn't die and on top of it,
it never overheated.
Like the camera was hot to the touch,
when we would be working with it,
I couldn't hold onto it at certain points
because I'd be having the S5
in the middle of direct
sunlight on a tripod
filming us as we were
exploring a slot canyon.
Now guys, if you wanna see
the full video from this experience,
I shot the entire video
on the Panasonic S5.
And my goal with this was to
shoot in a running gun style
to really get a feel for
how this camera performs
for stabilization,
auto-focus, color, you know,
changing lights, we're in a canyon
where it was very dark and very bright.
So it was a good way to test
a bunch of different
features in this camera
and really see if this
camera is good for creators
and working in this running gun style.
But when it comes to overheating,
I've had no issues with this
camera overheating at all,
and I've definitely pushed it
in different hot environments
shooting at 4K 60,
and nothing has really cause
this camera to overheat,
even when it does get super hot.
And that's one thing about Panasonic,
the build quality of the camera bodies
works well in extreme environments.
So whether it is pouring down rain,
or it is out in the sun,
I've never had issues with my GH5
and I haven't had any
issues with this S5 yet.
So in a lot of ways,
I found that Panasonic makes great cameras
for creators who are out there shooting
in very, in type of
environmental conditions.
So I wanna talk about stabilization
because Panasonic has decent
stabilization, it's good
as long as you stay away
from super wide lenses,
you can get good stabilization.
So in this setting, I have a 16,
which is equivalent to a 24,
if you were to put it into full frame
and you'll notice that, yeah,
you'll get some more PFX
if you're moving the camera
around and in the corners,
but it's really, it's not terrible
in the grand scheme of warpy cameras.
There's some much worse warpiness
on other cameras out there, but overall,
I've always been super happy
with Panasonic's stabilization
and if you've used the GH5,
you've used some of
Panasonic's other cameras,
then you'll be happy with this one
because the stabilization is
also very good on this camera.
Whether you're in full frame or APS-C,
it's never gonna be perfect,
you always get some morphy
stuff with wide lenses,
zoomed in lenses, you're
not gonna be so much,
but you also got to
remember that stabilization
is not a complete replacement
for things like gimbals and whatnot,
but what's good about
Panasonic stabilization is that
it will keep your shots smooth,
and you're not gonna get
like crazy micro jitters
or anything like that.
All right, so we're gonna talk
about the elephant in the room,
which is autofocus because
Panasonic has never been known
to have the best autofocus.
However, with this camera,
they have improved it.
And I'm told from Panasonic
that this is the fastest autofocus
that Panasonic has created.
And one of the standout
features with the autofocus
is now instead of just having
face eye and body detect,
it also has head.
So the autofocus system is
gonna hunt for your eye,
your head, your face,
and your entire body,
to be able to find the best focus point.
But as you've been seeing
throughout this video,
I have been shooting completely on auto
and most of what I've shot on
this camera has been on auto
and I've been able to trust
it in a lot of situations,
but when I'm using something like a gimbal
and I'm like pushing in and
out from some different scenes,
it really takes a while
to grab onto the subject.
Sometimes it snaps on and then
sometimes, it just sits there
and waits and it waits. and
then finally it grabs the focus.
So in a setting where you have
like someone sitting here,
you're doing a talking head interview,
yeah, the autofocus works.
And once in a while, I've
noticed that it will bounce
off the subject but very
rarely in comparison
to other Panasonic
cameras I've worked with.
However, if you're like moving
fast in and out of a subject,
it does take a second for
it to register that subject.
Even in a situation where
there is enough light
to be able to see the
subject, and you can see here,
I have the autofocus settings on
the fastest I could put them,
just to see if I could
get it to snap quickly
and when I go out of frame,
we'll have it catch the
background and back in,
and there we're now in focus.
It does put a limitation on this camera
where if you are using like gimbal work,
where you're flying in and
out and moving all around,
it's gonna take a while for
it to snap on a subject.
You're not gonna be able to like
grab onto the subject all the time,
but in a lot of situations
where you are stationary
or you're keeping the,
maintaining the distance,
you can rely on the
autofocus to grab the subject
and then be able to hold that.
So definitely an improvement,
but something to consider
if you wanna get this camera.
All right, so we need
to talk about lenses.
So in front of me, I have
a bunch of Sigma glass,
these are full frame lenses, 85, 50, 35
and these are the little
APS-C baby lenses,
the 30, the 56 and the 16.
Now Panasonic doesn't
have a massive lineup
for full frame lenses at the moment.
I'm shooting on the 20 to 60,
which is a great all around lens,
but it's not a consistent lens.
So for my client work, I really
don't like shooting on that
because if I have to zoom in
and out, I have to mess around
with all the settings
to change my exposure.
And also it's not a super fast lens,
so you're not gonna get
that super shallowed up
the field that you wanna get
when you're using full frame.
However, Panasonic does
have some other lenses.
You have the 24 to 70,
you have the 16 to 35,
the 70 to 200 and the 50.
You kinda have like the basic lenses
that you need for a system,
but all good lenses,
but that's all you really
have to work with this camera.
And there's a lot of lenses
missing in their lineup.
I would love to see a set
of primes from Panasonic
so I don't have to be
using these Sigma lenses,
these are great, but they're massive.
I love the image quality I'm getting
out of the Sigma lenses, but just working
with this, this 85, it's huge.
I would love to see
versions of these lenses
that were like a 1.8 and much smaller.
And then I would also
love to see something
like a 16 to 35, 2.8
or some other variances
and some other options for lenses.
The issue is the L-Mount
has very expensive glass.
And that is something to
consider when you're looking
at getting a Panasonic full frame camera.
These three are great
for working in APS-C,
but these are pretty much the only lenses
that you have in APS-C
that will work with this
camera for the L-Mount.
(footsteps approaching)
So one of the best things
about this camera is the color.
You have a ton of options
with the picture profiles,
but everything that I've
worked with in this camera,
I've been super pleased with the colors
that I'm getting out of it.
Now, for me, I normally
use the natural profile
and that's what I'm shooting on right now.
And one of the things they've
added with this camera
is a flat profile, so this
is now the flat profile
and if you want some
room for color grading,
this is a great option.
Now this camera also
comes with V-Log in it,
it's not something that you
have to purchase additional.
So if you do want the 14
plus stops of dynamic range,
then you can use the V-Log
and get the most out of this camera,
but just having, you know, this natural
or the flat, which is on right now,
I've been able to get some
really good-looking footage
and, you know, have a
little room to tweak,
but not have to push it super far.
So let's talk about some of the features
that really stand out in
my eyes for this camera.
And one of those is just the
red box around the screen.
So while you're recording,
instead of just doing
like a flashing icon of a red dot
and like a count up or anything like that,
it puts a red box entirely
around the screen.
And it might know it's
not like a huge thing,
but when you're shooting,
you find that that red
box really indicates like,
"Oh yeah, I am recording,"
and you can see it from a distance,
it just catches your eye much easier,
you never have to really
look for the little red icon.
Now, another small thing,
mic jack on this camera is
not in front of the screen
so I can twist my screen back and forth.
I'm not gonna hit the mic jack
and I don't have to like
pivot the screen out
to be able to go from like this vlog mode
to a shooting this way,
and I can flip the screen
without hitting anything.
On the top of your
camera, you're gonna have
an S&Q button, which is slow and quick.
So instead of having to go into the menus
to be able to turn on your slow
motion for like 120 or 180,
you can just do it from
the top of your camera
and flip it over to S&Q mode.
And one other thing that
really stands out is that
when you're shooting
vertical for social media,
when you put the camera
sideways like this,
and you hit record, the camera
can automatically detect
that your camera's vertical.
So when you play back the
clip on your computer,
it's gonna play back vertical
and you don't have to do any rotation
in your editing software.
It's a small thing, but for
people that do vertical videos,
it's gonna be something
that's super helpful.
So one thing that's coming
with the Panasonic S5,
it's not available yet,
but this camera will be
able to shoot 5.2K raw.
Now, right now you can
actually shoot in 5K,
you have to use the photo mode,
but it really does actually
shoot in a video way.
So when you put it into photo mode
and record your photo series,
you can essentially get
the full sensor readout at five hay,
and you can record in 15-minute chunks.
And now I've been shooting with this
and I've shot 15 minutes
and then re-roll 15 minutes and again,
no issues with overheating
or anything like that,
it seems to just roll and
it pumps out a 5K file
that then you can use for your edit.
One downside with this is that
you can't record while
using external monitor,
so when you have an
external monitor plugged in
and you hit record in this photo mode,
all of a sudden your
external monitor goes black,
but you can preview it
before you do hit record.
Just something that I was
kinda playing around with,
if you're trying to squeeze
a little bit of extra
resolution out of your image.
And like I said, coming in the future,
there is gonna be a 5.2K raw output
so you can record on your Atomos Ninja V,
be able to get a raw
image and that's something
I'm looking forward to
testing once that's available.
So I guess I should mention photography.
If you guys don't already know,
I'm mainly a video guy and like,
I'll take photos here and there as well.
But with this camera,
I have taken it out to
do some photo shoots.
Here's one of my daughter on the beach
with a Sigma 85 millimeter 1.4,
and the photos are beautiful.
Now I wasn't able to
process the raw photos yet;
however, just using the fine JPEGs,
I was able to get some
pretty good-looking shots.
And I apologize if I'm
not covering a whole lot
when it comes to the
photo side of this camera,
but from my experience,
the photos look great.
But my main focus is definitely video.
We need to talk about
the crop on this camera,
because that's been one
of my biggest frustrations
when working with the Panasonic S5.
So when you're in full frame mode,
you can only record 4k at
24 or 30 frames a second.
As soon as you go to 60 frames a second,
you have to shoot in APS-C mode.
So for me, when I'm going back
and forth between 30 and 60,
it gets frustrating because
there's a lot of times
where I wanna shoot 60, but
I wanna have the full width
of the full frame mode,
because I don't wanna have
to be switching lenses.
If I'm shooting on primes and I'm shooting
on a 35 millimeter prime,
which is what I'm shooting right now,
and I wanna get some slow-mo shots,
all of a sudden that 35 millimeter
is gonna have a 1.5 crop on it.
So it's gonna change how I have to shoot,
and it's not going to be an easy thing
to switch back and forth
between slow-mo and real time footage.
And then when it comes to the slow motion,
you can shoot at 120 frames per second,
you get the full sensor
readout, you get auto-focus,
but then if you wanna go to 180,
again, it crops into the APS-C mode.
So what I was thinking is
there's an easy solution to this,
use APS-C lenses, and then
if you use APS-C lenses,
you can go on any resolution
at any frame rate that's
available on this camera,
and you never have to worry
about the crop in and out.
So I actually went out and bought
the Three Sigma APS-C lenses
that are for the L-Mount,
which is, you know,
there's not a ton of lenses
for the L Mount right now,
but these three were a good
option because you get a 16,
you get a 30, and you get a
56, which is essentially a 24,
a 50, and an 85, so it's a
good little three-lens lineup,
one for wide vlog style,
and then you have the 50 and the 85,
which are good for getting B roll shots.
Now, when I've been testing this,
and I found that it works great
when you wanna swap
between, say 24, 30 and 60,
you don't really have to worry
about that crop going in and out,
and also the lenses
themselves are much smaller.
So in a running gun style shoot,
when you're, have a backpack
and you're kind of out in the wild,
one of the things I really
like about Micro Four Thirds,
which is why I've been such a big fan
of the GH5 for so long
is it's smaller gear.
So with APS-C lenses, smaller gear,
so you don't have to carry as much.
Right now, I'm shooting on
the Sigma 35 millimeter,
and this lens is massive compared
to say the Sigma 16 millimeter,
which is a much smaller lens,
so you can carry less weight.
You know, it obviously depends
on what kind of shooter you are,
whether carrying around full frame lenses
with all of their size
and weight does make a big difference.
For me, if I'm out like
exploring the slot canyon
like I did in this last
video I shot yesterday,
I would rather have smaller lenses.
Now there's one big hiccup though.
I found that when you use
APS-C lenses on this camera,
you can't shoot in 120 or 180,
the options just don't
exist, they're grayed out.
Now, this is something
I brought up with the Panasonic engineers,
because I've been able to chat
with them about this camera
and they know that that's an issue,
and it might be something that
will be fixed in the future,
I don't have a for sure
confirmation on that,
but I really hope that they do fix this.
So should you get this camera?
I think it really comes down
to what type of shooter you are
and what you need from a system.
Do you want a full frame camera?
And if you do, what kind
of features do you need
to be able to make your workflow easier,
to be able to make videos
and tell stories better?
If you're someone who
already is a Panasonic user
and you've wanted to dive into full frame,
you're gonna really like this camera,
because it's going to
feel a lot like your GH5
or your GH5, but with a
lot more features and just,
it's easier to use when
you're creating content.
Also, the autofocus is
faster than those cameras.
So you will be able to use
your autofocus more often.
The things that are most
frustrating with this camera for me
are the lack of choices
when it comes to lenses,
the crop in and out
when you're using 4k 60,
and then of course the autofocus.
Beyond that, I think
this camera's amazing,
and I'm really excited to see
what Panasonic's going to do with the GH6,
and I've been a GH5 and GH5S user,
GH4 user for super long time,
so I really do enjoy working
with Micro Four Thirds,
but it is a treat to be able
to have a full frame sensor as well.
All right, guys, if you
wanna see some videos
that I've shot exclusively using the S5,
I'll put 'em right here on the screen,
check those out, take a
look, see what you think
of what I was able to
shoot using this camera.
All right, guys, I'll see over there.
