Panasonic S1R II Review: A hybrid camera with reasonable prices.

The S1RII features the latest automatic tuning of the phase in Panasonic, which contains much better algorithms than to identify and track the topic. S1RII can recognize people, animals (dog, cat, birds), cars, motorcycles, bicycles, trains and aircraft. In my test, the Panasonic topic tracking system is almost good like what you will find in Nikon, Canon, Sony and Fujifilm. It was not necessarily the best for everything-for example, Nikon is better highlighted in bird tracking-but it is a comprehensive automatic sound control system that does not miss much.

Photo: Scott Gilbertson

I don’t like what he does, but what he cannot do-that is, stopping a topic when it is in a topic tracking position. For example, if I follow my dog ​​playing on the beach in the early morning and want to stop for one second and shoot sunrise, in my Sony and Fujifilm, I can click on the screens and switch focus to the horizon, photograph, return, and return to the dog tracking. To do this with the S1RII I had to first switch to tracking the topic. They are not big troubles, as they are not losses in deals, but they calm the head slightly.

At the rest of the time, I found that the S1RII did a good job to follow everything I requested. It is strange that he has the most difficult time with humans. Sometimes in a crowd of people, this topic may be lost, which is not usually happening in the Nikon, Kenon and Sony cameras tests. Although the Panasonic automatic system is definitely faster and more accurate than previous versions, it is not a defect. I do not find this breaking a deal at all (I still fired many manual concentration lenses), but it may be useful to test with a rental if you shot a lot of sports or wildlife.

Photo quality

I always liked to deliver Panasonic colors to its neutrality. It is not warm, it’s not great, it’s only in the middle. The only place that I saw is a little different with the S1RII is in the skin tones on my children, who seemed a little pink in some lighting conditions, but I did not find any anomaly in the width of colors. The dynamic range is very good. She managed to upload shades in RAW 2-3 files, stopped without really needing to deal with noise.