What's new
L-MOUNT Forum

Register a free account now!

If you are registered, you get access to the members only section, can participate in the buy & sell second hand forum and last but not least you can reserve your preferred username before someone else takes it.

Lumix S1Rii - Raw Files - High Shadow Noise

E

Erik_A

New Member
I was watching a Lumix S1Rii YouTube review from "Jan Bors Creative" and he mentioned that he allowed free downloads of his Lumix S1Rii Raw files at his "Buy Me a Coffee" link

After downloading and looking at the files in Lightroom, I am noticing very high noise when bringing up the shadows, even at low ISO settings. I also processed and exported the RAW files to 4000x6000 pixel JPEGs to match my Lumix S5 resolution. Even with the downsizing from Lightroom, the noise is much higher than in my native S5 files.

I don't use these cameras for video, just photography. I was hoping that this 44.3MP full-frame sensor could almost match the resolution and beat the noise from the older GFX 50 cameras.

I think that Panasonic when trying to make this a robust video camera, and a high FPS photo camera, has made noise concessions for still photography. For now I will keep my S5 and if I need a higher resolution image, upsize the RAW with Lightroom's Super Resolution mode, which works excellently on the clean RAW files from the original S5.

I was also watching another Lumix S1Rii YouTube review (and comparison to Sony A7RV and Canon R5II) from "Manny Ortiz" where at the 8:00 minute mark he mentions similar finding with artifacts in the files when bringing up the shadows.

YouTube links:

Manny Ortiz



Jan Bors

 
After watching this follow-up video, it seems that Lightroom's support for the S1Rii files may be premature. Better results are found in Capture 1 when bringing up the shadows:

 
Erik_A said:
After watching this follow-up video, it seems that Lightroom's support for the S1Rii files may be premature. Better results are found in Capture 1 when bringing up the shadows.
Click to expand...

That figures. I remember when the S5ii first came out, DxO Photolab made a mess of lifting shadows. They fixed it pretty rapidly.
 
Yeah, I also got my hands on some raw files (courtesy Richard) from the S1RII and ran them through Cap1, and I thought the outcome looked pretty good. IIRC Richard's big S1RII video does some direct comparisons to the 24 MP sensor, and while the lower-res sensor did have an edge in shadow recovery, it wasn't very large (he used C1).
 
Erik_A said:
I was watching a Lumix S1Rii YouTube review from "Jan Bors Creative" and he mentioned that he allowed free downloads of his Lumix S1Rii Raw files at his "Buy Me a Coffee" link

After downloading and looking at the files in Lightroom, I am noticing very high noise when bringing up the shadows, even at low ISO settings. I also processed and exported
Click to expand...
Interesting. I had downloaded all the RAWs from the DPreview review. And I looked at these in Lightroom, and pulled all of the shadows up to 100% and did not see anything troublesome. One exception, there is one picture of Tokyo at night with a large region of completely dark sky, and it showed more noise than I'd like (at ISO 640). I ran Lightroom's noise function on that and it completely cured it. Note that I always process in the HDR mode and typically have already lifted the exposure 1 to 2 times before increasing shadows. For that picture in question it was lifted +1.25.

Anyway, thanks, I'll look at this some more.
 
CharlesH said:
Anyway, thanks, I'll look at this some more.
Click to expand...
I did download and try Capture One. There is quite a difference from Lightroom with S1R II RAWs, and that photo with Tokyo night sky at ISO 640 has no noise. There is another DPreview photo with the Tokyo night sky at ISO 6400, and that night sky also has no noise, and the features in the shadows only have fine grain noise. (To be fair, Capture One does clip the blacks, and maybe I should clip blacks with Lightroom for this case.)

I had held off getting Capture One because the S1R II comes with a free three month trial. But Capture One has a one month free trial for anyone, and I got that for now. I must say all the DPreview RAWS are beautiful with Capture One; they have done a very good job with the RAW converter. They also have RAW conversion for the Hi Res RAWs, where the early version of the Lightroom conversion doesn't have this yet. I'm hopeful the Lightroom RAW converter will improve and get up to par with Capture One, because Lightroom is my main photo editor. Or else $$$ :(
 
Last edited:
CharlesH said:
I had held off getting Capture One because the S1R II comes with a free three month trial. But Capture One has a one month free trial for anyone, and I got that for now. I must say all the DPreview RAWS are beautiful with Capture One; they have done a very good job with the RAW converter. They also have RAW conversion for the Hi Res RAWs, where the early version of the Lightroom conversion doesn't have this yet. I'm hopeful the Lightroom RAW converter will improve and get up to par with Capture One, because Lightroom is my main photo editor. Or else $$$ :(
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've never liked C1's interface, but I have to admit they do a better job of RAW development on some tough files than On1 does.
 
This kind of early cock-up could sink quite a few potential sales for Panasonic.
 
Hmm. I can only assume that C1 is doing some NR behind the scenes without making it explicit. I can't see how LR can be creating noise.

That Leica SL3 is looking more interesting for photographers ! Pity it's $$$$ and that the rear screen is tilt only.
 
Not sure how well this will work with a screen grab, but here are the DPR samples at ISO 3200 for the S1RII, Z8, and a7RV. Processed in Capture 1. I have turned off all NR, and raised the shadows to the maximum amount. 200% view.

Screenshot 2025-03-20 at 11.46.06 AM.png
 
pdk42 said:
Hmm. I can only assume that C1 is doing some NR behind the scenes without making it explicit. I can't see how LR can be creating noise.

That Leica SL3 is looking more interesting for photographers ! Pity it's $$$$ and that the rear screen is tilt only.
Click to expand...
I certainly recommend you spend some time with the DPR files. Of course, if you use LR, you may have to wait for an update.

But in Capture One, if I compare the S1, S1RII, Z8, and a7RV using the base-ISO "+6 stop" files, and then push them super hard in C1 - whilst disabling all NR & sharpening - I find that:

- For chroma noise, it pretty much maps to resolution - S1 is best, S1RII & Z8 next and about the same, and the a7RV the worst.
- In terms of color fidelity after the push, both the Panasonic bodies and the Sony body do OK and about the same, but the Z8 shows a green tint.
- In terms of pixel level detail, that can be hard to judge due to the differing resolutions, but I do think the S1RII files have a little more detail than the Z8 files. But I have found that to be true for all the files I have downloaded, so it could be down to lens choice.

Now, if you look at properly-exposed higher ISO files, it does seem like something is up with the Panasonic files (and/or the processing):
- At base ISO, I find the S1RII files sharper than the Z8 files. Again - lens choice?
- At ISO 3200, the S1RII has finer-grained noise and still has better detail than the Z8.
- At ISO 6400, they kind of equalize from a detail standpoint.
- At ISO 25600, the S1RII file seems suspiciously clean and soft.

In principal I don't like the idea of Panasonic being heavy-handed at high ISOs, but in practice I'm not sure how much I care about what happens at ISO 25600. In the end I'd probably apply more NR to the Nikon file anyway, so softness may end up equalizing.

It will be interesting to see if any of this changes with production firmware and updates to the PP software. But for now, as far as base ISO work is concerned, I don't see any cause for alarm with regard to the S1RII, although some will still prefer the 24 MP sensors.
 
GeorgeHudetz said:
I certainly recommend you spend some time with the DPR files. Of course, if you use LR, you may have to wait for an update.

But in Capture One, if I compare the S1, S1RII, Z8, and a7RV using the base-ISO "+6 stop" files, and then push them super hard in C1 - whilst disabling all NR & sharpening - I find that:

- For chroma noise, it pretty much maps to resolution - S1 is best, S1RII & Z8 next and about the same, and the a7RV the worst.
- In terms of color fidelity after the push, both the Panasonic bodies and the Sony body do OK and about the same, but the Z8 shows a green tint.
- In terms of pixel level detail, that can be hard to judge due to the differing resolutions, but I do think the S1RII files have a little more detail than the Z8 files. But I have found that to be true for all the files I have downloaded, so it could be down to lens choice.

Now, if you look at properly-exposed higher ISO files, it does seem like something is up with the Panasonic files (and/or the processing):
- At base ISO, I find the S1RII files sharper than the Z8 files. Again - lens choice?
- At ISO 3200, the S1RII has finer-grained noise and still has better detail than the Z8.
- At ISO 6400, they kind of equalize from a detail standpoint.
- At ISO 25600, the S1RII file seems suspiciously clean and soft.

In principal I don't like the idea of Panasonic being heavy-handed at high ISOs, but in practice I'm not sure how much I care about what happens at ISO 25600. In the end I'd probably apply more NR to the Nikon file anyway, so softness may end up equalizing.

It will be interesting to see if any of this changes with production firmware and updates to the PP software. But for now, as far as base ISO work is concerned, I don't see any cause for alarm with regard to the S1RII, although some will still prefer the 24 MP sensors.
Click to expand...
I guess there’s no free lunch in sensor land. Hi res sensors seem still to lag lower res ones in terms of low light/high ISO. The physics tells us this is to be expected at the same generation of sensor tech.

What would really matter to me is how the S1R compares to the S1Rii at base ISO when pushing the files hard in post processing. From Richard’s review it seems that the S1Rii is much better - at least when using C1!
 
pdk42 said:
I guess there’s no free lunch in sensor land. Hi res sensors seem still to lag lower res ones in terms of low light/high ISO. The physics tells us this is to be expected at the same generation of sensor tech.

What would really matter to me is how the S1R compares to the S1Rii at base ISO when pushing the files hard in post processing. From Richard’s review it seems that the S1Rii is much better - at least when using C1!
Click to expand...
Yes, it does seem that way. I asked Richard to send me some moderate-ISO, long exposure S1RII images (the achilles heel of the S1R), and they are far more malleable in post than similar files from the S1R. So I think the S1RII will work well for astro, for example.

Keep in mind that the images I downloaded from DPR are effectively black when first loaded into C1, and I then maximize the Exposure slider AND the Shadow slider (and also raise blacks by 25%) to do my comparisons. So yes, the 24 MP sensors hold up better to this kind of abuse, but even in my most poorly exposed sunset images, I've never had to resort to such antics in post in order to bring shadows up.

I'll do some more specific, real-world comparisons at base ISO once I receive mine, but I'm optimistic.

BTW, I also did some comparisons to the Sony a7RIII (which also uses a 42 MP sensor) using the DPR files, and the S1RII files handled heavy abuse a little bit better. Not enough to matter, but you could see it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top