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After spending several weeks with the Panasonic S1R II, we’ve finally come to our final conclusions about the camera. In many ways, this is absolutely one of the single best cameras for real photographers that primarily care about still photography over trying to game social media algorithms via video. That’s because of any of the still-photography cameras out there, it offers you the most creative options you can possibly have. There’s Real Time LUT, Panasonic’s own Cinelike profiles, in-camera multiple exposure with RAW, Live View Composite, and very reliable autofocus along with versatile image quality. I’ve been carefully considering what my next camera choice will be — and between this, the Leica M11D, and the Fujifilm GFX 100RF, this is the camera I’m considering because of how much creativity it gives me. Seriously, Panasonic is providing liberation that Canon and others have taken away from me. And so we’re updating our full review.
Our updated review text is down below. But if you want to read the entire Panasonic S1R II review, you can head over to this link.
The Big Picture: Panasonic S1R II Review Conclusions
I’ve got to be incredibly frank here: the Panasonic LUMIX S1R II is seriously one of my favorite cameras of the year. It puts photographers and still photography front and center. On top of that, it gives you lots of controls that make the shooting experience pretty simple fot you overall. What’s to really love?
- The modest megapixel count with the brand keeping it in the 40s for a balance of detail and high ISO output
- The in-camera creative modes
- The autofocus comparable to several other brands
- The weather resistance
- The big lens selection across the entire L mount alliance
- The overall weight
If you consider yourself a real photographer, this is the camera to try and possibly commit to. It’s on my list of the cameras I actually want to purchase.
Any problems that this camera has could possibly be fixed via firmware updates — and I’m curious to see how that plays out.
We’re giving the Panasonic LUMIX S1R II the Editor’s Choice award and five out of five stars. Want one? Check it out on Amazon.
Gear Used
We tested the Panasonic S1R II (on loan to us from Panasonic and returned before the publishing of this review update) with the:
Who is the Panasonic S1R II For?
While the Panasonic S1R II has lots of great video features, it’s a camera primarily designed for photographers in pretty much every way. I wouldn’t bother shooting video with this as Panasonic has much better cameras for that.
In reality, too, if you’re shooting video for an algorithm that treats you like a disposable creator, your iPhone is good enough.
Ease of Use Update May 2025
Straight out of the box, the Panasonic S1R II is pretty great and simple to use. Their menu system is and always has been one of the best to interact with. But I also felt like I needed to customize my S1R II experience a whole lot. For example, there are two big red buttons — both of which I disabled video recording for. Instead, I set one to turn off/on the scene detection function while the other one toggled the exposure preview settings. I also set the AF-On button to let me choose what scene detection mode to work with.
Trust me, these are very important details — and you’ll see why in the focusing section update.
However, the thing you should keep in mind is the absolute pure versatility that this camera gives you:
- Live View Composite: Pretty much replaces any OM System camera offerings especially because it’s full-frame
- Real Time Lut with the LUMIX Lab app: replaces Canon’s styles, Nikon’s Image Control, Sony’s Picture Profiles, and Fujifilm’s film simulations. In the case of Fujifilm, it’s replacing X-series because this is full-frame.
- Multiple Exposure with RAW: Canon took this out of their latest cameras. At the moment, Panasonic LUMIX is the only full-frame camera brand that offers multiple exposure with RAW
If you combine these with Profoto lights, lens filters, etc, there’s very little reason to even need to go into post-production at all. Seriously, this camera is one of the absolute best ones for photographers to make images in-camera and further differentiate themselves from those who spend all their time in post-production to make something look great.
My only big complaint: I wish that content authenticity were added to my images from within the camera and upon creation.
Oh, that and sometimes I feel like the battery life drains a bit quicker than I really wish it did.
Focusing Update May 2025
You should note: if scene detection is on, then tracking subjects that aren’t incorporated into that scene will be quite difficult. Where it’s most difficult is when you’re shooting an event and photographing people but then want to photograph a detail of someone or something. In my case, it was photographing faces and then food.
To explain this further, with quite literally any other camera system, tracking will never give me problems if I’m not focusing on a subject not part of the specific scene detection. In fact, I just did this with a much older Sony a7r III camera and the Canon EOS R5. If I’m at a rave photographing people and their outfits, then I want to focus in on someone’s unique necklace, I should be able to do that with ease while in tracking.
Specifically, this problem happened with the tracking mode as I often find these days that the focus and recompose method of shooting is really the easiest way of getting the shot. In fact, I find it to be sometimes much faster than directly using the joystick to focus on a particular detail. Sometimes when trying to move the focusing point myself, it ends up going a bit further away than I want it to and that takes up more time.
Granted, focusing and recomposing isn’t always the best way to use this camera either. But if you’re shooting events, then it works. Let alone for most of photography history, photographers have focus and recomposed.
Autofocusing on people of color in low light is pretty accurate and fast to do. However, I still find Leica and Nikon to be better at it. If anything, the Panasonic S1R II is on par with the Sony a1 II — which Sony claims to be 30% better at autofocus on people.
Image Quality Update May 2025
The big thing about the Panasonic S1R II is the fact that they announced a partnership to make it more compatible with Capture One. Considering how brands tend to universally recommend the program over Adobe Lightroom to us, this brings us such joy. What’s even better is that the RAW files from the Panasonic S1R II feel like they have nearly endless versatility when editing them. There are situations where I had completely blown out the highlights and backlit a subject, but the S1R II was able to get lots of the details back and save the shadows at the same time.
If you’re one of those photographers who wants to get the exposure right in-camera and doesn’t want to underexpose like crazy to edit later on, then the S1R II is the camera that you’ll want to get. This only really starts to become a problem with highlights at ISO 6400 — and even then, it’s pretty much negligible. I’m not one of those photographers that needs to edit everything to look like a high dynamic range image.
Extra Image Samples
The Phoblographer has been huge on transparency with our audience since day one. Nothing from this review is sponsored. Further, many folks will post reviews and show lots of editing in the photos. The problem then becomes that anyone and everyone can do the same thing. They’re not showing what the lens can do. So, we have a section in our Extra Image Samples area to show edited and unedited photos. From this, you can decide for yourself.
Edited
Unedited
