Big test
PanasonicLumixS5
Boasting an awesome feature set in a compact body, the full-frame mirrorless Panasonic Lumix S5 is capable of exceptional-quality stills and cinema-quality video. It has the all credentials to be the ultimate still/video hybrid camera PRICE: £1799
PANASONIC.COM/UK
It is a hybrid full-frame mirrorless camera with 24.2 megapixels for stills and 4K video recording internally or externally – all in a very compact body form. Remarkably, not only is the Lumix S5 the smallest and lightest Panasonic S series camera to date, it is actually smaller than the hugely popular Lumix GH5 – and that is a camera based on the smaller Micro Four Thirds format. That makes the Lumix S5 really portable and suitable for long periods of handheld shooting. The camera’s design is user-friendly, too, with an excellent control layout with plenty of physical buttons, most of which can be changed from their default function. For example, the array of three controls sitting just behind the shutter release for the white-balance, ISO and exposure compensation can all be set to 94 other functions. In fact, via the function set-up menu items, there
WORDS AND IMAGES BY WILL CHEUNG
WITHMORE ANDmore still photographers seeing the benefit of video, whether that is for social media, an opportunity to expand their creative horizons or professionally, the need for cameras with the skill set to shoot high-quality stills and video has never been greater. The Panasonic Lumix S5 has been conceived to fulfil that need.
ABOVE The Lumix S5 is a much smaller full-frame model compared with the earlier S1/S1R models, and it handles very nicely
PERFORMANCE: EXPOSURELATITUDE
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To see how much we could push Raws from the Lumix S5, we shot a +/-4EV bracket in 1EV steps. We used manual exposure mode for this, with the accurate exposure being 1/250sec at f/13 and ISO 100. The Raws were exposure corrected in Lightroom. Tolerance to overexposure was very good and even the +3EV frame of this scene recovered very nicely. Colours looked natural, although there was some loss of saturation,
but this wasn’t too severe. The +1EV and +2EV pictures looked to the same as the correctly exposed frame. Raws dealt very well with underexposure, too, and while there was digital noise in the even tones of the recovered -3EV and -4EV shots, you had to view shots at 300% on- screen to see it, and even then it was fine.
In summary, the Lumix S5’s Raws responded well to exposure abuse.
-1EV
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50 Photography News | Issue 83
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