My first impressions with S5ii

I bought the camera (twin lens kit) yesterday with Panasonic Cashback deal and additional trade in bonus for £1799. It is a very good value for money, I was thinking to get a Sony A7RV but the cost of the camera alone is the double the price the cost of S5ii + 2 lenses; so I sacrificed my (pseudo) need for high res and best AF available. I shot almost all stills.

I am still trying to get my head around the AF modes. I am a still shooter and shoot street mainly. I guess one area+ subject detection will work. But even my poor understanding of AF modes I managed to get good AF for many shoots. It is miles away from my G9.

Low light simply amazing. I mean I was expecting a bump but not that much. After mFT a FF is a huge leap. I am aware of de-noising softwares can do a lot good work to bridge the gap but it may end up having a mushy photo easily. Besides the noise of S5ii looks/feels less uncomfortable.

It is so nice to see Live Composite mode included in the FW update. I think it opens whole possibilities for creative shooting.

Control of DoF is another new thing for me.I have an Oly 45mm f/1.2 and nice lens but I use rarely and having mainly f1.8 and zooms compared to 50mm f/1.8 is a big change. I like to isolate subjects often on my street shoots as I shoot portrait style a lot.

Of course size of lenses (compared to f/1.8s ) are much bigger but this is the penalty I am happy to pay.

I will sell my G9, 45 mm f/1.2, 17 mm f/1.8, 25mm f/1.7 and keep my zooms Oly 12-40 ( I was planning to sell it but a scratch on the front element makes it difficult), Lumix 12-60, Pana 12-32, Fantastic Plastic 40-150, 45mm f/1.8 with my GM5, GF7. I will have two system setup. I haven't decided whether I will sell my X100V.

Overall I am happy to go for another Panasonic.

No definitely not :) I am getting older, it meant to be for L-forum.

I have been using m43 { mainly Panasonic } and FF together since 2009 , it actually makes for a good "system" that covers all the bases I need. That is a heck of a deal . The S5II has the pixel shift option which could satisfy your high res cravings 😀

welcome to FF land. your switch description is the same as mine from m43.

Then you were doing something horribly wrong with the G9. The G9 has outstanding AF, fast to the point of instantaneous, accurate as all get out, about the only place you could say it struggles is with subjects such as birds in flight, or continuous AF in video. Which you say you don't do. Something very wrong there for sure.

Maybe it is me but I have been using G9 for nearly 4 years. I took many shots with good focus and I was generally happy with it but S5ii took me half a day to get better results especially given the shallow DoF of FF. Perhaps the way I shoot, I dont know.

I got mine in the first batch that came into the country, I may have pre ordered it -can't remember, but it was late January 2018 anyway when it hit my hands. It's been brilliant, straight out of the box, without touching the settings. The first 2 or three shots are all jpegs shot before I had a compatible raw converter, a week or so after I got it. DFD works better with shallow DOF by the way. It has an uncanny ability to pick faces out, and nail them even on moving subjects. Static subjects are are sleepy stroll in the park for it.

Does seem a bit odd. I use my G9 in the simplest way possible, fixed single centre point, AF-S only and I find the focusing lightning fast and extremely accurate in almost all circumstances, even in lighting so dim you can barely see the subject. Difficult to imagine how anything could be better for single shot use. It is also ok for birds in flight shots at something like a bird of prey centre.

I also shoot full frame A7Rii and medium format GFX50s and I still find the G9 to be my favourite camera. The pixel shift mode is excellent for landscapes, adds 2 stops of dynamic range and noise reduction, removes most colour aliasing. I use my Sony exclusively for shallow depth of field work and my GFX for long exposures. Why lug around the weight of bigger systems when shooting handheld unless you have some kind of use case where only a larger format will work?

I do like Panny cameras and I'm tempted by a cheap used S5 to replace my Sony but honestly, not that much. The A7rii is not my favourite camera ergonomically but image quality is excellent so I'm pretty sure I won't :-)

My favorite for moving subjects, is the central diamond pattern. Resized to be just a bit larger than your intended subject. I've got a control wheel/dial assigned directly to focus box size, you can do it on the fly. It's glorious to watch all the focus boxes surrounding the center box lighting up green, almost flowing over the subject in an organic fashion. And then when you look at the results enlarged on a computer, it's generally picked out a face or helmet. There are definite differences between focus point/box patterns, if you just use a generic 3x3 or 5x5 custom box of your own making, it picks on the closest part of the subject to the camera. The central diamond pattern seems to use all focus points/boxes surrounding the center of your diamond pattern to help or assist the center one hit focus.
For static shots using large aperture primes, the pinpoint cross hair focus point/mode is dead on nuts accurate, every single time. Sure, it's a tiny bit slower to acquire focus than a larger box style, but deadly accurate.

Have fun with the new camera.

I was pretty shocked too when I started shooting FF, just how much less noisy and how much more malleable FF files are compared to M43.

I actually went the other way, from 36x24 to m4/3, & was actually surprised at how small the envelope was that the larger format delivered somewhat better image quality. Sure, if you spend your time shooting black cats in coal mines at midnight, you will see the difference, but for my use case, any major difference is very rarely seen. It's got to be pretty damn dark not too be able to get a reasonable photo with my tiny little f1.4 & 1.7 primes, at ISO 1600 & 3200. About the point at which I put the camera away anyway. But that's just me.
Every so often I get the urge to grab a FF body and a couple of f1.8 primes, but every time I stop and think how much difference a stop or so less noise will make to my photos. And continue with my little m4/3 cameras 😁😁

Well that burning itch got the better of me, I succumbed to a Black Friday sale on a S5 (original) with the 20-60 lens, & also the Lumix S 50mm f1.8 Really really enjoying it so far. The thing I like best is that less effort is required when raw processing. I can get 95% or more of the result with my m4/3 kit, the S5 is just easier. Under expose a bit for any important highlights, crank the shadows in the raw converter, done. Lazy mans camera :) Good fun.

That is it. I found the big advantage over M43 was that it was much easier to manipulate Raw files for those occasions where detail needs to be recovered from the shadows. For photographs that do not need much correction at base ISO, M43 is fine.

I shoot a lot in places where I need to bring detail out of the shadows. FF is much better for this sort of shot.

Comes down to horses for courses.