Panasonic Lumix S1R mirrorless camera review: alien invasion

Shooting in JPEG. Artistic filters and image styles

Despite the fact that cameras of the Panasonic Lumix S1R level imply shooting in RAW and subsequent processing of images, it is also important to evaluate the quality of work in JPEG — after all, for example, reportage photographers often have the task of uploading images immediately.

The first thing that caught my attention was the good dynamic range of the shots already in JPEG. For example, the scene below was filmed under difficult backlighting, when it is difficult even for the eye to distinguish details in distant shadows. In the picture, the shadows turned out to be worked out, nowhere did they merge into a dark spot. The texture of illuminated asphalt is also clearly visible:

The second important point is the impressive sharpness and detail of the image. Let me remind you that the camera does not have a low-pass filter, and, combined with the huge image resolution (8368 × 5584 pixels), this gives excellent results and opportunities for radical image cropping:

On the left is the original image, on the right is a crop. Shooting options: f/8, 1/60, ISO 160

The automatic white balance left not the best impression. When shooting landscapes and street scenes on a clear day, colors tend to look quite natural and pleasing:

But when shooting at dusk, in the shade, with mixed and artificial light, I liked the results much less. Pictures with auto white balance often come out too cold, with a purple or reddish tone, which is especially noticeable when shooting portraits:

The photo on the left was taken indoors with natural daylight, away from a window; photo on the right — on the street in cloudy weather in anticipation of twilight

It should be noted that the S1R has a lot of white balance presets: cold auto, warm auto, and so on, so it’s easy to adjust the camera to get a better color option.

Panasonic Lumix S1R has a traditional set of artistic filters for the company: there are many of them, they are quite diverse and interesting. I like to use them for shooting scenes that do not require deep processing, for example, to add atmosphere to a shot and immediately publish it on social networks:

Below you can see examples of one scene with all filters.

In addition to using filters, you can also influence the color scheme of your shots using the Shooting Style option. The camera has a preset set of styles and, of course, the ability to customize your own by controlling contrast, saturation, and other image parameters. The following is an example of shooting one scene with different styles offered to the user by Panasonic.

The camera has various bracketing options — not only for exposure, but also for color, focus, depth of field, etc.

An example of shooting a scene with depth of field bracketing

There is also a popular multiple exposure function that allows you to superimpose images on top of each other without using special programs:

One of the interesting features of the S1R, which has already been seen in Pentax cameras (K-1 II, for example) and Olympus, is the ability to shoot with a sensor shift to get a picture with ultra-high resolution. Here — up to 187 megapixels. True, pictures in this resolution do not show any transcendental level of detail, the increase does not correspond to a fourfold increase in resolution. However, for billboard photographers, this mode can be a good help.

⇡#Shooting at high ISO

Image quality in low light is one of the most important parameters for evaluating a camera. Modern full-frame mirrorless cameras have set the bar high, and it was interesting to see how Panasonic responded.

Consider shooting at different ISO values ​​using the example of a series of shots taken in a row. The first photo was taken at ISO 1600. It looks great, a hint of noise can be seen only at very close approximations — this applies to both JPEG and RAW.

On the left — a picture in JPEG, on the right — RAW, converted with default settings

In the next photo, the sensitivity is raised to ISO 2500, and the picture is about the same. Noises in RAW became a little more noticeable (again, you need to zoom in on the picture to notice them), but the in-camera noise reduction coped with them adequately, without significantly affecting the detail:

On the left — a picture in JPEG, on the right — RAW, converted with default settings

Next is a picture taken at ISO 5000. It also looks very decent, but here you can already more clearly distinguish both noise and the difference between JPEG and RAW: as a result of the in-camera noise reduction, the details became not so clear, the color is more faded and in general there was a hint of the «soapiness» of the picture:

On the left — a picture in JPEG, on the right — RAW, converted with default settings

The next example is more indicative: here the shooting was carried out at ISO 6400. Most of the frame is occupied by the sky, pay attention to how the noise reduction system showed up on it: it looks loose, not very attractive. In this case, I like the way the RAW file looks better, albeit with clearly visible noise. You can remove noise in the sky using selective correction in a photo editor.

On the left — a picture in JPEG, on the right — RAW, converted with default settings

To complete the picture, I also took a non-posed shot at the upper ISO value of 25600. We can see that JPEG looks very “soapy” compared to RAW, while RAW already has a critical noise value and color degradation. Such an ISO value, of course, can no longer be called a working one — a maximum of such a picture can be posted on Instagram*in a small resolution, strong noise is leveled.

On the left — a picture in JPEG, on the right — RAW, converted with default settings

For comparison, I will also show another type of plot. I tried the Panasonic Lumix S1R as a reportage camera. Since photos from the event were needed, as often happens, urgently, the shooting was carried out in JPEG format. The shot was taken with a 70-200mm telephoto lens with a maximum aperture of ƒ/4, so I had to raise the sensitivity to ISO 6400. I can’t say that the result seemed very good to me. Despite the included noise reduction function, the noise is still quite obvious, while the overall sharpness of the picture is far from ideal. In addition, there are noticeable problems with the transfer of skin tone — you can see the unevenness in the pictures below:

As a result, in terms of work at high ISOs, the Panasonic Lumix S1R holds up with dignity, but without revelations. In reportage and portrait shooting, if you need really high quality, I would recommend limiting yourself to working at ISO 3200, which is quite a bit by modern standards. For landscape, travel, street photography, if a little noise is not critical for you, it is quite possible to use values ​​up to ISO 5000.

Download RAW files (573 MB)

⇡#autofocus

The camera uses a contrast autofocus system — this distinguishes it from its closest competitors using a phase or hybrid (including both types) autofocus system. In total, the Panasonic Lumix S1R uses 225 focus points — by modern standards, this is not very much, but in this case it is not the quantity that matters, but the quality of the proprietary Depth from Defocus system, which causes a lot of controversy when talking about Lumix G-series cameras.

The camera focuses really quickly, but I can’t say that it is always accurate. When shooting portraits, there were no problems — the S1R immediately finds and highlights the face and eyes of the model; due to misses in focus, a situation sometimes arises when the sharpness goes to the far eye (as a rule, in the case when it is better lit):

In the tracking focus mode, when shooting a running man, the S1R performed well, most of the frames are focused correctly, but there are still some misses:

In the first two frames, the camera caught focus on the face, in the third (according to chronology, it is intermediate), the focus went to the backpack

When there are several people in the frame at the same time, it is worth telling the camera who to focus on. The most obvious solution — to depict in sharpness the one who is closer — for some reason often does not work, the characters in the background are in focus:

An example of a very common focus error

One of the main innovations of the focusing system is the ability to recognize not only people, but also animals in the frame. Capturing cats is a real challenge because it’s rare for an animal to sit still for more than a couple of seconds, and I was hoping that Panasonic’s new Lumix S1R technology would help reduce the reject rate significantly. But by and large, it remained the same as when shooting on cameras that lack this option. It seems that the camera does not always recognize where the animal’s eyes are:

As a result, I quickly switched to setting the focus area manually (I prefer to do this by touching the touch screen), which led to more adequate results:

When shooting subject compositions or landscapes that require focus in the foreground, the camera also needs to be prompted where to focus. Sometimes she makes mistakes in situations that are quite obvious to me as a photographer. Achieving focus in the right place is not always easy.

As for the speed of the focusing system in difficult / insufficient lighting, it left a positive impression: indeed, I didn’t notice any noticeable differences compared to shooting in the daytime, the camera grabs the object very tenaciously (but again, not always the one that should be the main one as planned ).

⇡#Shooting 6K photos

The 4K photo shooting function has long been introduced in the Panasonic Lumix G-series cameras. Its essence is that the camera, when using an electronic shutter, takes a series of photos of reduced resolution, but at a very high speed. You can view the result as a movie and select individual frames to save them as photos. This format is good for shooting dynamic scenes. In S1R, technology migrated from the GH5 camera — here you can shoot a series of photos not only in 4K resolution, but also in 6K.

In this mode, autofocus performed worse than when shooting a similar scene in burst mode: there were much more misses.

Below you can see the clip automatically glued by the camera in 6K shooting mode:

⇡#post focus

The post-focus feature is another Panasonic in-house development that we’ve already seen on a number of previous cameras. Its convenience lies in the fact that the user can choose the focusing plane not during the shooting process, but after. In essence, the technology lies in the fact that the camera quickly takes a series of frames in 4K resolution with focus bracketing. The resulting images can be viewed on the camera in movie format and manually specify the area you want to see in sharpness. Of course, it makes no sense to use this function for every scene, but in the case of a particularly important scene or a scene where you want to get a series of shots with the same composition but different focus, the option is quite promising. An illustrative example of the post-focus function can be seen below:

⇡#Stabilizer operation

What really impressed me about working with the Panasonic Lumix S1R is the stabilizer. Frankly, when you hear from the manufacturer about a stabilization system that allows you to extend the shutter speed by 6 times, you are skeptical about this: probably, we are talking about isolated cases in ideal circumstances. I was interested to understand what I could achieve by photographing familiar scenes without a tripod. The next shot was taken handheld with a 50mm lens at a shutter speed of 1/5 second. On the enlarged fragment, you can well appreciate the sharpness: there is no “shake” here.

Another example, shooting a more dynamic scene, here the goal was to get blurry cars that emphasize movement in the frame. The focal length in this case is longer — 75 mm, and the shutter speed is even slightly longer — 1/4 second.

So, we see that the work of the stabilizer can diversify the picture from an artistic point of view, but, of course, the main thing is the ability to shoot static scenes with hands without increasing the sensitivity too much. Indeed, in those situations where it was previously impossible to get a high-quality photo without a tripod, now such a powerful stabilizer can help out a lot. As an illustrative example, I want to show a couple of almost identical photos taken with a difference of a few seconds. In the first case, the correct exposure was achieved by increasing the ISO, in the second — by lengthening the shutter speed (the sensitivity is still considerable — ISO 5000, but at a longer shutter speed, the boat would be noticeably lubricated in motion, which I did not want). Agree, the threshold value of ISO affected the image quality much worse, and the sharpness of the second image is very decent (if the photo is planned not for printing, but for posting on the Internet, then after reducing and software sharpening, the micronuances associated with the lack of a tripod are leveled). The only thing that should never be forgotten is that moving objects in the frame at a slow shutter speed, of course, will still be smeared, and this effect is not always desirable. Therefore, alas, it will not work to apply the capabilities of the stabilizer, for example, to reportage shooting — there, in case of low light, you will have to increase the ISO.

Both shots were taken at a focal length of 105 mm. Left shot settings: f/4, 1/100, ISO 25600 Right shot settings: f/4, 1/25, ISO 5000

It should be noted that in the Panasonic S1/S1R, stabilizers in the camera itself and in the optics can work together (they are provided in LUMIX S lenses, including 5-axis ones, as well as in the camera itself). Due to this, such a high efficiency is achieved. Another point, already more funny than necessary, is that when the stabilizer is activated, you can see a moving dot in the frame, which just shows how your hands move when shooting and what vibrations the camera manages to stabilize. The advantage of this mode is that, in addition to the stabilizer, you can monitor the situation with camera fluctuations and “manually” correct them, relying on some objects or holding your breath.

In order for such statements not to be unfounded, of course, it is necessary to conduct comparative testing, but I think today this is the best stabilizer that I have ever seen in a camera.

⇡#Work with the RAW files

At the time of our testing of the Panasonic Lumix S1R, official updates to Adobe products had not yet been released, so the camera files were first converted to DNG using Adobe DNG Converter and only then processed in Camera RAW. Based on this, the conclusions about the photo processing cannot be called final, but we can make a general impression.

As the first example of a complex scene, I used a shot taken at sunset: the sun was almost down, and the bottom of the picture was very dark, which made the scene look faded and uninteresting. The goal here was to «stretch» the shadows, making the photo more balanced and visually lighter:

On the left is a RAW file converted with default settings, on the right is the same, processed to taste

When brightening the shadows, noise naturally appeared — here it does not particularly spoil the overall picture, but if desired, the noise reduction option can be applied during processing, then the picture will look more “smooth”, but less detailed.

In the next shot, matrix metering was used, and a very bright background resulted in a lot of underlight on the face, so the goal was also to lighten the shadows. There were no problems with this, but noise in the background is clearly visible in this picture. On the face, they are not very noticeable:

On the left is a RAW file converted with default settings, on the right is the same, processed to taste

The opposite situation: a very overexposed portrait due to the ISO not being changed in time. As a rule, it is much more difficult to deal with highlights than with shadows, but here the result, in my opinion, is good: the skin texture was completely restored:

On the left is a RAW file converted with default settings, on the right is the same, processed to taste

Below are some more examples of processing RAW files:

In general, working with RAW files left a pleasant impression — the pictures contain good potential both in shadows and in highlights, but, of course, completely “knocked out” bright areas cannot be restored.

Sample photos from this section and the ISO section in RAW format (362 MB)

⇡#Video filming

Despite positioning the Panasonic Lumix S1R as a predominantly still camera with video recording relegated to the background, the camera’s capabilities in this regard are very serious. They are noticeably «cut», of course, by the high resolution of the sensor, which forces the camera to use a noticeable crop to get a 4K image with a frequency of 60 frames per second, and the possibilities of video shooting in the dark are limited (the sensitivity margin for a sensor with smaller photodiodes is noticeably less). There are also “forced” restrictions in comparison with the Lumix S1 — for example, the length of the video cannot exceed 15 minutes, while the S1 simply does not have this restriction when shooting 30p, and when shooting 60p, the video length can reach 29 minutes 59 seconds. Also, unlike the S1, the R version cannot shoot Full HD at up to 180 frames per second. 60 fps is the limit. In this mode, by the way, the frame area corresponding to the APS-C standard is also used. Full surface is available when shooting 4K at 30 fps.

However, the camera does have headphone jacks with a microphone, and is compatible with the DMW-XR1 adapter, which provides more advanced microphones than those used in the camera. Shooting is available in 4:2:0 color and 8-bit depth (10-bit color is possible in S1) in AVCHD (up to Full HD only) and MP4 with H.265 codec (up to 4K). Bitrate — up to 150 Mbps when shooting 4K and up to 28 Mbps when shooting Full HD.

Download original video (1.14 GB)

Compared to the same GH5, the S1R’s video shooting capabilities are not so great, the camera is hardly suitable for professional videographers, but due to quite working autofocus and good final picture quality (even though Log profiles are not available here), you can record some additional video at a photo session or a wedding at the request of the client, it is quite possible, not to mention the exhaustive possibilities of shooting a video “for yourself”.

⇡#Conclusion

Lumix S1R, despite its innovative and iconic status both for Panasonic and for the entire industry as a whole, seemed to me an ambiguous and contradictory camera. On one side of the scale — a huge resolution of images, excellent sharpness and detail, on the other — not very intelligible autofocus work. On the one hand — the impressive capabilities of the stabilizer, and on the other — the average work at high ISOs (even taking into account the correction for the increased resolution of the sensor). The great weight of the device itself and the kit with new optics is less significant at first glance, but in the end it also has a strong influence on the decision to purchase a particular camera/system. At the same time, the build quality of the camera, and its ergonomics, and new optics — all this leaves a very pleasant impression.

I would recommend the Panasonic Lumix S1R to advertising, studio, portrait, landscape photographers — all those who have the ability to work thoughtfully, slowly, statically and at low ISO values. You can get the most out of this camera.

Travel photographers will be put off by the weight and dimensions of the equipment, but if this is not important and you are aiming for a serious result, then the S1R can also be a good option.

Regular autofocus errors and not the best in class performance at high light sensitivity do not allow us to recommend the camera as the best option for reportage photographers.

When compared to direct competitors in this segment, Nikon Z7 and Sony a7R III, Panasonic S1R advantages can be compatible with Leica SL optics without the use of adapters, higher resolution along with the ability to shoot with ultra-high resolution, the most effective stabilizer in its class, the best viewfinder and the most flexible control scheme. The system has good prospects (including due to a more advanced mount than Sony), but today it suffers from the diseases familiar to the early stage of system development: a small fleet of optics, an imperfect autofocus system, and an incompletely developed software part ( Panasonic is at the beginning of a long journey). The main limiter at this stage is the dimensions and weight, due to which it approaches mirror systems.

RAW files (first part) (891 MB)

RAW files (second part) (1.89 GB)

Advantages:

• very high image resolution (best in class);
• excellent sharpness and detail;
• good dynamic range in JPEG, wide possibilities for RAW processing;
• excellent stabilizer performance at any focal length;
• high-quality new optics, the possibility of using Leica optics, new Sigma lenses are in development;
• 6K photo shooting;
• great opportunities for in-camera work with color: filters, photo styles, an expanded selection of white balance presets;
• reliable chamber design, dust and moisture protection, the ability to work in difficult weather conditions;
• very flexible control system;
• 2 slots for memory cards, including XQD (in new firmware — compatible with CFexpress);
• excellent viewfinder with the best resolution in the class;
• very good autonomy.

Minuses:

• big weight;
• the largest dimensions in the class;
• not very accurate autofocus;
• average shooting quality at high ISO;
• difficulties with the transfer of skin tone when working with automatic white balance;
• not the most serious opportunities for shooting video;
• limited set of optics to date;
• price.

* It is included in the list of public associations and religious organizations in respect of which the court has made a decision that has entered into legal force to liquidate or ban activities on the grounds provided for by Federal Law No. 114-FZ of July 25, 2002 “On countering extremist activity”.