tendance
Panasonic Lumix S5
the lumix s5 now that canon and sony have released
formidable video centric cameras panasonic has
responded and with the full-frame lumix s5 it takes nearly
everything and that’s good about the lumix s1 and puts it
into a much lighter body despite the smaller size
the s5 retains key s1 features like 10-bit 4k video
5-axis in-body stabilization and a flip-out display to
top it off it has a new and improved auto-focus
system that’s faster than all of panasonic’s other
full-frame cameras it’s also priced at 500 less than
the s1 so is there a catch to find out i took a
pre-production model through its paces around
paris and in the countryside to see what it could
and couldn’t do with the s5 panasonic finally has
a full-frame camera as small as rivals like
sony’s a7 iii and the nikon z6 and at 714 grams with
a battery and memory card it weighs a bit more
than the a7 3 but more than 300 grams less than
the bulky s1 while it’s smaller than the s1 the s5
handles at least as well if not better than that
model and its other rivals that starts with a nice
big grip and lots of manual controls that let you
set the auto focus burst shooting shutter aperture
iso and more without ever diving into a menu and
when you do need it panasonic’s revised menu
system is much more clear and logical than
before the display is fully touch functional and
flips out to the side that helps make the s5 a
very good vlogging and selfie camera the s5 has
a 2.36 million dot oled evf and that’s far inferior to
panasonic lumix gh5
the 5.76 million dot oled model on the s1 maybe
panasonic figured that video shooters don’t need
high-res evf but i disagree i would have preferred
one with at least 3.69 million dots the s5 is also
slightly compromised when it comes to storage
you do get dual sd cards and but only one is a faster
uh s2 slot as for ports it has both headphone and
microphone jacks but you only get a micro
hdmi and not a full sized hdmi port and like the s1
or gh5 a nice new feature is a usbc port that
can charge the battery and run the camera at
the same time finally the new battery can handle
470 shots per charge and well over an hour of
4k shooting the new cells can be used in a gh5
but the s5 can’t use gh5 batteries the s5 has
5-axis image stabilization that works in concert
with stabilized lenses it delivers 6 stops of
stabilization which is better than the gh5 but
worse than the s1 as usual and the optical stabilization
alone is great for handheld video but can’t take
the place of a gimbal there’s good news and bad
news with the autofocus unfortunately panasonic
stuck with its contrast detect system that’s inferior
to the phase detection used on sony and canon
cameras especially when it comes to video on
the positive side panasonic has managed to
increase the autofocus system speed pretty
drastically that makes for faster subject
acquisition and smoother face and eye tracking
as before the biggest problem for video
autofocus is pulsing as the contrast detect
panasonic camera
system overshoots and recaptures focus
however it’s less noticeable than before and
you can expect better performance in aps-c
mode than in full-frame mode as the camera
has to do less processing the face and eye
detection system now finds faces that are much
smaller in the frame and attracts bodies at speeds
five times faster than before and it can also follow
your subject if they turn or tilt their heads and but
it can get fooled if they walk out of frame overall
though the s5 nails focus a lot more reliably than
the s1 when it comes to photography the s5 is
certainly no sports camera it only does 5 frames
per second with continuous autofocus which is
less than half of what the a7 3 can handle on
the plus side
