Panasonic Lumix S1 & S1R
THE S SERIES CAMERAS THAT ARE SAME-SAME YET DIFFERENT.
PANASONIC TOOK ITS time announcing its first full-frame mirrorless cameras. That time, though, has been well spent in making sure nearly everything about the Lumix S series snappers is perfect. Both the S1 and the S1R are rugged, well designed, easy to use and produce some stupendous results with excellent colour rendition. The choice between the two comes down to whether you’re a videographer or a stills photographer, and how much spare change you have lying around.
Both S series cameras are identical externally, and come with specs sheets that are similar but with some key differences. To cut a long story short, the more expensive S1R, with its 47MP sensor is focused on stills while the more affordable 24MP S1 was built for the videographer. However, it doesn’t matter which camera you pick up, the design is intuitive with an equally user-friendly menu system.
BUILT TO LAST
It’s not just the weather-sealing on this duo of cameras that make them a good investment, there’ll soon be plenty of lens choices as well with Panasonic having jumped in bed with lens-makers Sigma and Leica to form the L-mount alliance.
Compared to the competition, though, the S series snappers are quite big for the mirrorless kind, yet they sit comfortably in the hand, even when used with the new f/4 70-200mm telephoto lens. And doesn’t matter if you’ve got small mitts – there’s a whole load of external controls that you can reach easily enough with just stretching a finger and without taking your eye off the electronic viewfinder (EVF).
Speaking of which, there’s nothing quite like the S series EVF out there. Sporting a comfortable rounded eye cap, the EVF delivers a staggering 5.76 million dots of resolution with
THE EYE AF IS VERY RESPONSIVE AND PICKS UP THE PUPIL OF THE SUBJECT’S EYE – EVEN ANIMALS – VERY QUICKLY AND STAYS LOCKED ON.
three levels of magnification – 0.78x, 0.74x and 0.7x – adjusted through a View Mode button on the side of the viewfinder chamber. The EVF can be set to refresh at 120fps or 60fps, with a lag as low as 0.005 seconds.
One feature that we liked was the lock switch on the top left-hand corner on the rear of the camera. This can be used to deactivate certain control points and, again, the choice of which lies with you. For example, you can choose to lock the dials in place or temporarily disable the rear display – something that comes in handy if you constantly find your nose touching the screen when using the EVF.
Another endearing feature is the backlit buttons which make them easy to find when shooting in the dark – the illumination button for the top display can be configured to light up some of the main rear controls.
While most of the controls feel perfectly placed, the power switch is an exception, having found its way to an awkward position just in front of the top display. Not only is it a rather small switch, we found we had to look for it each time we wanted to turn the camera on or off – it would take a while to build muscle memory to reach this one intuitively.
STAYING FOCUSED
Taking a leaf out of its G-series book, Panasonic has brought over its Depth from Defocus (DFD) autofocus system to the S-series cameras – most competing camera companies are using phase detection or hybrid autofocus systems. Despite this, possibly controversial, decision, we found that the AF system was lightning fast in most conditions. Like the Lumix G9, the S series cameras also has a variety of autofocus modes, all of which work whether you use the toggle control or the touchscreen. Swapping one for another is super easy.
The biggest selling point for them would be the Eye AF, which can easily rival Sony’s system. There’s a dedicated button for this, which is conveniently located to the right of the lens on the front of the camera body, just where your middle finger sits. The Eye AF is very responsive and picks up the pupil of the subject’s eye – even animals – very quickly and stays locked on.
WORK IT
Like most modern cameras, the S series shooters have a 5-axis image stabilisation system built into the body. This alone is capable of reducing shake by up to 5.5 stops. However, add a lens with built-in stabilisation (like the new Lumix S 24-105mm f/4) and the stability gets bumped to 6 stops.
While the Lumix S1R’s low-light shooting can be extended up to ISO 51200, the S1’s native ISO caps out at 51200, but can be extended up to ISO 204800. A standout feature of the Lumix S series cameras is the ability to capture stills using the Hybrid Log Gamma (HLG) curve. This colour response has been designed to help photographers take advantage of modern HDR screens, offering a higher dynamic range for more natural contrasts. These images are stored as HSP files, which utilise compressed 8K resolutions that make colours pop on an HDR screen. Panasonic is currently the only camera-maker to offer this feature.
Another addition to the S series cameras is the option of choosing different Automatic White Balance (AWB) options. Alongside the standard AWB mode, there are two more options which produce either warmer (AWBw) images for portraiture, or cooler (AWBc) images best suited to street photography.
SPOT THE DIFFERENCE
Other than the significant price difference between the two, the sensor resolution and ISO sensitivity, the video capabilities splits the two S series cameras. The S1 is capable of shooting uncropped 4K at 30fps or 4K/60p from an APC-C sized crop. It even takes advantage of oversampling for better footage. At launch, the S1 was limited to 8-bit 4:2:0 recording but there’s a paid firmware upgrade available that will bring it to 10-bit 4:2:2 recording with V-Log.
On the other hand, the S1R records both 4K/30p and 4K/60p with a crop factor of 1.09x but, because of its whopping 47MP sensor, depends on pixel binning to scale down to 4K resolution.
VERDICT
Given both S series cameras are superb entries into the mirrorless market, it all comes down to value for money. For that, we stand by the Lumix S1. For $3,500 you get may get a lower resolution sensor, but you get the same control and build quality, better video capabilities, excellent low-light performance, and speedy performance with the option of either 24MP standard images or 96MP composites – perfect for the average user.