The S1RII options Panasonic’s newest phase-detection autofocus, which has a lot better topic recognition and monitoring algorithms. The S1RII can acknowledge folks, animals (canine, cat, chicken), vehicles, motorbike and bikes, trains, and airplanes. In my testing, Panasonic’s topic monitoring system could be very practically nearly as good as what you will discover in Nikon, Canon, Sony, and Fujifilm. It wasn’t essentially the perfect for all the things—for instance, Nikon stands out as higher at monitoring birds—but it surely’s an all-around stable autofocus system that does not miss a lot.
{Photograph}: Scott Gilbertson
What I didn’t like isn’t what it does, however what it will probably’t do—particularly, cease monitoring a topic when in subject-tracking mode. For instance, if I’m monitoring my canine enjoying on the seaside within the early morning and wish to cease for a second and shoot the dawn, on my Sony and Fujifilm I can faucet the screens and swap the main target to the horizon, compose, shoot, and return to monitoring the canine. To try this with the S1RII I needed to first toggle off the topic monitoring. It is not an enormous problem, neither is it a deal breaker, however it’s a little head-scratching.
The remainder of the time, I discovered that the S1RII did a very good job of monitoring all the things I requested it to. Oddly although, it has the toughest time with people. Generally in a crowd of individuals, it will lose the topic, one thing that does not often occur in my testing of Nikon, Canon, and Sony cameras. Whereas Panasonic’s autofocus system is certainly sooner and extra correct than earlier variations, it isn’t flawless. I do not discover this a deal breaker in any respect (I nonetheless shoot many guide focus lenses), but it surely may be price testing with a rental for those who shoot a variety of sports activities or wildlife.
Picture High quality
I’ve all the time preferred Panasonic’s shade rendition for its neutrality. It is not heat, it isn’t cool, it is nearly completely within the center. The one place I noticed this differ a bit with the S1RII is in pores and skin tones on my youngsters, who seemed a bit pinkish in some lighting situations, however in any other case I didn’t discover any shade rendering oddities. Dynamic vary is excellent. I used to be capable of elevate shadows in RAW information 2-3 stops with out actually even needing to take care of noise.
