Panasonic Lumix S5 II Review

For years Panasonic insisted its depth-from-defocus autofocus was fine, and for years it wobbled during video and lost faces the moment they turned. The S5 II ends that argument with seven hundred and seventy-nine phase detection points, and while it still is not the equal of Canon or Sony on erratic action, it holds a talking head and pulls focus without the visible hunting that made earlier Lumix bodies unusable for paid work. Everything else was already good and now has a reason to be bought.

There is a real cooling fan, so 4K60 records until the card fills rather than until the body gives up. Open-gate 6K uses the full sensor height, which means one take can be cropped to both a wide edit and a vertical one. V-Log is standard rather than a paid unlock, and the waveform and vectorscope are built in. The L-mount means Sigma primes and zooms mount natively for very little money. At two thousand dollars with in-body stabilisation this is the most video capability per dollar on the market, and the stills are perfectly respectable. Buy it if you shoot motion, look elsewhere if you shoot sport.