Panasonic S1II video stills: so many options

Photo: Richard Butler

With the S1II, Panasonic continues the tradition of offering “open gate” recording that uses the entire sensor area, which, like with the S5II, produces a roughly 6K 3:2 image (though the S1II’s rolling shutter is substantially faster). This mode provides great levels of detail and more flexibility in post; if you’re working on a 4K timeline, you have a fair amount of room to reframe a shot, and you can use the same footage for both landscape and vertical output.

The camera also has a 5.1K open gate mode with a little less resolution and detail. That cuts down on its flexibility, but allows for a first for full-frame Lumix cameras: open gate recording at 60p. The 5.1K 24p and 60p modes apparently have the same level of detail.

The camera’s 4K modes are all oversampled from 6K capture, and have similar levels of detail to those of competitors like the Z6III and EOS R6 II, even at up to 60p. The S1II can’t quite manage full-width 4K 120p, but the mode only requires a 1.24x crop, rather than a 1.5x crop like with the Z6III. So while there’s some reduction in detail compared to the slower framerates, it does capture a tad more detail than the Nikon, and will come with a smaller change to your field of view.

If you don’t prefer oversampling, the S1II also offers a 16:9 5.9K capture mode and a 1.89:1 5.8K capture mode, both of which are available at up to 60p. The extra resolution offers a bit more detail and more flexibility in post, though not quite as much as the 6K open-gate mode.

Raw video

Like the S1RII, the S1II can record ProRes Raw internally, capturing a native 5.8K region of the sensor at up to 30p, or a native DCI 4K region at up to 60p. This mode may be useful for those on professional shoots that need the utmost control over their footage, but for reasons we explained in the S1RII writeup, Raw video isn’t something that most shooters will likely find useful. In short, it doesn’t offer the same benefits that stills shooters expect from Raw images versus JPEG ones, and it will require a lot of post-processing work, especially if you’re using modern mirrorless lenses that have geometric distortion correction as part of their optical formula, as Panasonic’s implementation of ProRes Raw doesn’t embed them.

The S1II is absolutely bursting with video modes, so this overview is far from comprehensive. Our chart detailing them in our initial review covers 166 different options, and it isn’t even a complete list of all the configurations you can have. However, our testing shows that it’s very capable of producing high-quality footage, even at fast framerates. Combine that with all the video assistance features that Panasonic includes, and it’s one of the most flexible hybrid shooters we’ve seen.

Our DPREVIEW Tribute:

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