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Handling, Setting up and Operating the S1RII

CharlesH

CharlesH

LMF-Patron Gold
I only have about half a day with the S1RII, so I will post just a few notes for now. As we all learn more about our S1RII's we can chime in.

Handling
The camera is very much like a S5II or S5IIx. But there are a few changes. The grip is slightly deeper; for me I hardly notice the difference. If you have large hands it might be welcome. A thing I did notice, the On/Off switch is rotated a little counter-clockwise, and this makes it easier to operate with your thumb. Also, if you use a cage the switch is more accessable. The tilting screen is a biggie, and makes a lot of difference with handling. I do video as well as photos, and prefer a tilting screen to a swiveling screen for video much of the time. But the swiveling screen is there if you need it.

The photo/video/S&Q lever is also a big deal. This plus the five custom modes has completely changed how I think about setting up a Lumix camera. Frankly I'll probably work on this and think about it for quite a while.

Setting up
The SmallRig S5II/S5IIx cage will fit on the S1RII. But when it is on the battery door won't open, so if you use a cage you will need another one. I got an Angelbird 2TB CFexpress B card and have been using it in my GH7 while waiting for the S1RII. But, it won't format in the S1RII. The wait symbol just spins and spins and never finishes. I have been formatting the card in the GH7 and using it in the S1RII, which seems to work, but I'll trade it for a Lumix qualified card and hopefully that will solve the issue.

Next up
I've been running telephoto zoom lenses in the Hybrid Zoom mode, set to Minimum Image Size "S" which add a 2X zoom. This is great fun, and I'll post about it tomorrow.
 
Hybrid Zoom
The higher pixel count on the S1RII compared to the S5II or S9 means it has more pixels available for HybridZoom. With the Minimum Image Size set to "S", the image size zooms from 8144 x 5424 pixels (44.17 MB) down to 4128 x 2748 pixels (11.34 MB), which shows on the camera as an added X2 zoom. This happens smoothly as the lens is zoomed through its range. I looked at three zoom lenses, the 28-200mm, the 70-200mm f/4 and the 70-300mm. I also looked at the 70-200 with a 1.4x extender.
The 28-200mm becomes 28-400mm
The 70-200mm becomes 70-400mm
The 70-300mm becomes 70-600mm
The 70-200mm with a 1.4x extender becomes 98mm to 560mm

I took dozens of pictures, but I'll only show a few. The shots are RAW, and I used Lighroom to look at them. HybridZoom only works with JPEG, so to get RAW I shoot RAW + Fine, and I only took the RAW photos to Lightroom. When you open a photo it is scaled to the Hybrid Zoom focal length. But the entire picture is there as well, scaled to the native focal length without the Hybrid Zoom factor. The way to view the entire picture is to use the Crop Overlay button. This shows the entire picture, mostly greyed out, plus the smaller Hybrid Zoomed image not greyed out. Like with a normal crop in Lightroom you can move cropped region around, or change the crop size and shape if you want. Hit enter and it goes back to the Hybrid Zoom image. If you normally edit in Lightroom this probably makes sense - otherwise I'll move on.

The advantage of the 28-200 is that it is small and light. It was a medium performer, good enough I'll probably carry it on a hike now and then. The 70-300 had the worst performance. This was a surprise, I wanted it to perform well but it had a couple of problems. First, the stabilization did not work as well as the other two lenses and I felt I needed a little higher shutter speed. And when I did have it stable and focused well it was not as sharp as the 70-200 or the 70-200 with the 1.4x extender. The 70-200 was the superstar, with 400mm and 560mm images as sharp as I've ever seen with my back yard telephoto tests. Of course this lens is heavy; big and heavy. So I'm not taking it on a long hike.

My usual telephoto test shot is some fire station antennas on a ridge about 1.1 miles (1.8 km) from my back yard. I'll just show one. This was with the 70-200 and the 1.4x extender (560mm equivalent). It was getting late in the day, with quite a few clouds around, so it isn't a pretty picture, but I only look at the antennas themselves. The detail on the antennas may be the best I've seen. (The photos shown here are scaled down to meet the forum size limits.)

P1000117.jpg
  • Panasonic - DC-S1RM2
  • LUMIX S 70-200/F4+STC1.4
  • 280.0 mm
  • ƒ/5.6
  • 1/320 sec
  • Pattern
  • Manual exposure
  • ISO 80



I did a test to compare the 70-300 to 70-200 with 1.4x extender. For this I un-zoomed the 70-300 to 560mm equivalent.

The 70-300mm
P1000112.jpg
  • Panasonic - DC-S1RM2
  • LUMIX S 70-300/F4.5-5.6
  • 291.0 mm
  • ƒ/5.6
  • 1/800 sec
  • Pattern
  • Manual exposure
  • ISO 400


The 70-200 with 1.4x extender
P1000113.jpg
  • Panasonic - DC-S1RM2
  • LUMIX S 70-200/F4+STC1.4
  • 280.0 mm
  • ƒ/5.6
  • 1/800 sec
  • Pattern
  • Manual exposure
  • ISO 400


The 70-200 with 1.4x extender is the clear winner here. The test had the same results with multiple shots.

The 28-200mm and the 70-300mm might benefit from DxO PureRaw processing for better sharpness, but this is not available for S1RII RAW yet. When it's released I may try this again.
 
Last edited:
CharlesH said:
The advantage of the 28-200 is that it is small and light. It was a medium performer, good enough I'll probably carry it on a hike now and then. The 70-300 had the worst performance. This was a surprise, I wanted it to perform well but it had a couple of problems. First, the stabilization did not work as well as the other two lenses and I felt I needed a little higher shutter speed. And when I did have it stable and focused well it was not as sharp as the 70-200 or the 70-200 with the 1.4x extender. The 70-200 was the superstar, with 400mm and 560mm images as sharp as I've ever seen with my back yard telephoto tests. Of course this lens is heavy; big and heavy. So I'm not taking it on a long hike.
Click to expand...
That is really a surprise, I would not have expected that. I love my 28-200 but that it would perform better than the 70-300 :oops:

That the 70-200 would be the clear winner was ofcourse to be expected.
 
Nevyn72 said:
That is really a surprise, I would not have expected that. I love my 28-200 but that it would perform better than the 70-300 :oops:
Click to expand...
There are a few things about the 28-200. The O.I.S. is really good, and is quite a bit better than the 70-300. So the stability is very good with my not really stable hands. The focus of the 28-200 drops off badly at the edges at longer focal lengths (at least with my copy). But with Hybrid Zoom you work just in the middle of the image at the longer focal lengths, so it is less of a problem. The 28-200's detail on my antenna telephoto target isn't up to the 70-200, but it's acceptable for a carry around lens. Also, for the more normal non-telephoto pictures the Hybrid Zoom doesn't kick in much so it is close to full frame.

I was out in the yard this morning trying Animal detection with the 28-200 (with Hybrid Zoom on). This is 68mm for the lens, and 75mm Hybrid Zoom.
P1000144.jpg
  • Panasonic - DC-S1RM2
  • LUMIX S 28-200/F4-7.1
  • 68.0 mm
  • ƒ/8
  • 1/160 sec
  • Pattern
  • Auto exposure
  • ISO 400
 
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