Panasonic Lumix S1 II Review

Introduction

Ease of Use

The S1 II is designed to be an affordable step-up from the popular S5 II mid-range full-framer, bridging the gap between the cheaper S1 IIE and the more expensive S1R II cameras.

Although Panasonic haven't officially said so, the S1 II and S1 IIE collectively replace the original S1 model that dates all the way back to 2019 when the company first launched their full-frame range.

The S1 II measures 134.3 x 102.3 x 91.8mm and weighs in at 712g / 1.57 lb body only, which is much smaller and lighter than its direct predecessor. The original S1 was one of the largest and heaviest mirrorless cameras on the market, measuring 148.9 x 110.0 x 96.7mm and weighing 899g body only.

Panasonic have achieved this by essentially reusing the design of the Lumix S5 II, presumably standardizing on one chassis to make the camera smaller for end users and also cheaper to produce.

So if you're an S5 II owner looking to upgrade, you'll very quickly get up to speed using the S1 II, and if you ever want to upgrade from this model to the S1R II, the fact that all three are identically designed will definitely make for an easy transition.

This does mean that the the large status LCD on top of the S1 which was useful for quickly checking the camera's key settings has been removed on the newer model as there's simply no room to accommodate it, one of the few design concessions of this Mark II compared to its predecessor.

On the other hand, if you have been considering the Lumix S-series but were put off by the relatively large size of the flagship S1 bodies, then the S1 II is definitely small and light enough to warrant a second look at the range.

The Panasonic S1 II has the same tank-like build quality and weather-proof exterior shared by all of the other Lumix S-series cameras. Its magnesium alloy full die-cast dust and splash-proof body has all of its main seams tightly sealed against moisture ingress.

The S1 II is fully weather-sealed and splash/dust-proof and freeze-proof down to -10 degrees Celsius (the cheaper S5 II only goes down to 0 degrees Celsius).

The Panasonic S1 had one of the best, if not the best, electronic viewfinders that we ever had the pleasure of using, and happily the new S1 II continues to use exactly the same viewfinder as the original model.

The OLED unit has a resolution of 5.76-million-dots, offers 100% field of view, and a magnification ratio of 0.78x with a 50mm lens at infinity. It operates at a native rate of 120fps with a minimum lag of less than 0.005 sec, which helps to make it completely flicker-free.

The S1 II uses the same 3.0-inch, 1.84 million-dot vari-angle LCD screen as the S5 II model, which offers slightly less resolution than the original S1's screen but a lot more versatility.

This can be tilted all the way out to the side of the camera, turned forwards for selfies and vlogging, and turned towards the back of the camera to help protect it when the camera isn't being used. It's very useful as an aid to shooting video as well as more unusual compositions when you can't always get an eye flush to the viewfinder.

You can also freely rotate the monitor while a cable is still plugged in to one of the four ports on the side of the camera, making video production even easier.

The S1 II has the joint-best in-body image stabilization system of any Lumix full-frame camera, offering 8 stops in the centre and 7 stops at the edges of the frame and 7 stops even in the telephoto range with Dual I.S.2.

There's an Active I.S. mode which provides highly stable video recording by optimising horizontal, vertical and rotational correction. This is especially effective in traditionally challenging conditions for handheld shooting, such as using telephoto lenses or filming while walking.

There's also a newly developed cropless E.I.S. video distortion correction option which helps stabilize video footage without cropping the angle of view, although this feature only works with a few wide-angle lenses that can apply in-camera corrections.

There are two memory card slots, with the S1 II utilising one UHS-II SD slot and one XQD / CFexpress slot housed in a dedicated compartment on the side of the body.

The S1 II offers up to 320 shot battery life when using the Live Viewfinder and 360 shots when using the rear LCD screen, slightly worse than the original model, increasing to around 1,100 shots using the Power Save LVF mode.

The Panasonic S1 II features a newly developed partially stacked 24.1 megapixel full-frame CMOS sensor, which is a first for the Lumix range. This new sensor allows the S1 II to offer higher speed burst shooting and video recording modes than the S1 IIE. It uses the latest generation Venus image processing engine.

There is a special High Resolution mode which captures 96-megapixel equivalent photos by rapidly taking 8 separate images and combining them into one.

This mode no longer requires the camera to be mounted on a tripod or other stable surface to ensure sufficient sharpness. The newer S1 II can additionally capture its high resolution images whilst hand-holding the camera even at the full 96-megapixel resolution, which makes it a lot more versatile than its predecessor, although it's still best suited to non-moving subjects.

The S1 II has an expanded ISO range of 50-204800 which is ever so slightly better than the S1's 80-204,800 range.

Dual Native ISO is a new feature on the S1 II that is borrowed directly from the S1H and Panasonic's broadcast line of video cameras. This automatically switches between native ISO settings of 80 and 400 without increasing noise by changing the way the camera reads out the image sensor.

You can manually switch between the LOW and HIGH settings or choose Auto and rely on the camera to do so at various ISO levels.

As you'd expect of a serious camera launched in 2025, unlike its 6-year-old predecessor the new S1 II has a hybrid contrast and phase-detection auto-focus system with AI tracking that quickly and precisely detects human eyes and faces and follows a subject’s movements smoothly.

Offering fast and dependable 779-area metering, the new system is able to detect target subjects in difficult conditions such as low light and backlighting and, once locked on, will remain tracking them even with other moving objects in the frame.

Sadly, there's no Automatic Detection option that can be turned on to seamlessly switch between Human / Animal / Car / Motorcycle/Bike / Train / Airplane as on some rival models, so you still have to dive into the main menu system. Autofocus works in low light all the way down to -6 EV with the 50mm F1.4 lens fitted.

The partially stacked sensor inside the S1 II allows it to shoot at a phenomenal 70fps high-speed blackout free with full-time AF/AE using the electronic shutter, or 10fps with the mechanical shutter.

The SH pre-burst mode even starts taking pictures for 1.5 seconds before the shutter is fully pressed, ensuring you never miss a shot. It can shoot stills at 1/16,000sec in the Electronic Shutter Speed Priority mode and video at up to 1/10,000sec.

The original S1 featured 4K video recording at up to 60/50p in 4:2:0 8-bit quality directly to SD- or XQD-card or 4:2:2 8-bit through HDMI for up to 30 minutes, while 4K/30p and Full HD could be recorded without a time limit.

The S1 II much faster sensor ups the ante by offering high-speed video modes including C4K/4K 120p and 5.8K 60p. In addition 5.1K Open Gate recording at 60/50p is available on the S II, another Lumix first, and a future firmware update promises the addition of multiple frame marker displays and Arri Log C3 compatibility.

Other standout video highlights of the more expensive model include up to 5.9k 60p recording with no crop, internal RAW recording in 5.8k 30p and C4K 60p to a CFexpress Type B card, and 32-bit float audio support for the first time on Lumix full-frame cameras.

It also provides HFR (High Frame Rate) recording at up to 120fps and Slow & Quick capture at up to 180fps and has a full-size HDMI Type A terminal.

The S1II is compatible with the LUMIX Lab smart phone application, enabling you to load LUTs directly into the camera.

A new LUMIX Flow app has recently been launched to enhance production workflows across various scenarios, such as short films, documentaries, music videos, and corporate promotional videos. This app offers a range of features, from storyboard creation and shooting to file organization.

Following on from the S1R II, the S1 II supports tethering via Capture One, assisting various creators across various production scenarios.

Now let's take a tour of the S1 II's body and external control layout.

Starting at the front of the Lumix S1 II, the wide L lens mount dominates proceedings, along with a hand grip that, while narrower than those typically found on a semi pro DSLR, nevertheless feels just right for the S1 II’s own shape and build, enabling the camera to be operated with just one hand.

With the lower three fingers of your right hand curled around the S1 II’s grip, your forefinger is free to alternate between rotating the front control dial that sits slightly proud of the grip at its topper-most edge, and the slightly raised and angled shutter release button just atop it, which is responsively springy.

Sitting just behind these controls are three small raised buttons. From left to right, these are for manually adjusting white balance, light sensitivity and exposure settings. The Panasonic S1 II's layout feels ergonomic and its operation – particularly of such key and regularly used features – well thought through.

Unlike the previous S1, there's no top-plate LCD screen on the new Lumix S1 II. Instead the large shooting mode dial has been moved from top-left on the S1 to top-right on the S1 II, and there's a Burst/Bracketing Shooting dial in its former position.

This smaller but still chunky, roughly ridged and raised dial over at the left hand edge of the camera has 6 different settings, which variously provide quick access to the self-timer, time-lapse, high resolution, burst shooting (2 modes) and normal single shooting modes.

Underneath the dial is a shiny red ring, just like on the S1-series cameras, which has perhaps been deployed to lend the cameras a more professional air.

Underneath that again is a brand new dial for quickly switching between the Stills, Video and Slow and Quick modes, which is a great addition that we wish Panasonic had also adopted on the S5 II.

Stereo microphones and a vacant hotshoe for an accessory flash are slotted directly on top of the EVF. There’s no built-in pop up flash on the Panasonic S1 II, which is probably to be expected on a more advanced camera.

The chunky, roughly ridged and raised shooting mode dial over on the top-right makes it easy to adjust settings ranging from Intelligent Auto focus to program, shutter priority, aperture priority or manual pretty quickly. On the same dial we also get no fewer than four custom modes that work for both stills and video.

The on/of switch is more of an actual lever which sits underneath the shooting mode dial, another slight point of difference to the S5 II. This is quite stiff in operation – you almost have to force it – which, to give it a positive spin, means this is a camera that is almost impossible to accidentally activate or deactivate.

Flick this lever to on and the camera is ready to take the first shot just as quickly as your finger can move from it to the shutter release button just in front. There’s no waiting around with the S1 II - it’s ready when you are.

The control dial at the front of the handgrip is mirrored by one the size of a five pence piece that sits on the top plate at the back. Here it readily (and again, ergonomically) falls under the thumb of the right hand; thereby continuing to give the impression that the layout has been well thought through.

Completing the S1 II's top-plate is a one-touch movie record button, finished in the same metallic dark red as the ring which sits underneath the drive mode dial. Just like the shutter release button, again this has a nice springy feel to it that makes it easier to locate and activate.

With chunky lugs for attaching the shoulder strap provided out of the box to be found left and right of the camera, the right-hand flank provides a port protected by a sliding switch that allows for the insertion of two memory cards, one UHS-II SD slot and one XQD / CFexpress slot.

The four individual ports on the left-hand flank provide a means of connecting an accessory microphone and headphones, plus USB-C and full-size HDMI leads, the latter a notable upgrade from the original S1.

The rubberized flaps protecting these feel a little flimsier than the rest of the camera, and time will tell whether these become worn and stop adhering so precisely over time.

Moving to the rear of the Panasonic S1 II, again this is button festooned without feeling over-bearingly so. 

The top-left of the back of the camera is where we find the playback button for reviewing stills and video, along with a new Lock switch that prevents the current camera configuration from being inadvertently changed.

There's a small, dedicated LVF button on the side of the pentaprism for manually switching between the rear LCD screen and the EVF, which perhaps feels a little redundant given that the camera automatically switches to the EVF when you hold the camera up to your eye (this setting can be turned on and off as desired).

Directly to the right of the EVF is a tactile circular switch for changing the auto-focus mode from single to continuous to manual focus, into which is set the AF area button for selecting one of the seven available AF modes. You can choose from Tracking, Full Area, Zone (Horizontal/Vertical), Zone, 1-Area+, 1-Area and Pinpoint.

Along with the afore-mentioned 8-way AF joystick, the small AF On which can be used for back-focusing completes the S1 II's very handily-placed collection of focusing controls.

This being a Panasonic camera, we’re provided with the very useful Quick menu short cut button – located via the button marked with an enigmatic ‘Q’ situated to the right of the LCD - which gives completely customizable quick access to 12 of the camera's key settings.

Menu/Set, Display and a shared delete/back button are also to be found at the rear of the S1 II, along with a familiar multi-directional control pad, encircled by a scroll wheel for maximum fluidity of operation.

The menu screens are comprehensively featured but pleasingly legible and intuitively navigated. That said, it was also nice to have the configurable Quick menu feature in order to circumnavigate them when we wanted to get to the relevant setting swiftly.

At the base of the camera we find a single screw thread for attaching the S1 II to a tripod, located directly in line with the central point of the lens mount.

Image Quality

All of the sample images in this review were taken using the 24 megapixel Fine JPEG setting, which gives an average image size of around 12Mb.

The Panasonic Lumix S1 II produced still images of excellent quality during the review period.

This camera produces noise-free JPEG images from ISO 50 all the way up to ISO 6400, with significant noise first appearing at ISO 12800. The faster settings of 25600 and 51200 display quite a lot of noise, but they're still fine to use for making smaller prints and web images. You should avoid using the expanded ISO 102400 and 204800 settings if possible.

The High Resolution Mode is capable of creating 96 megapixel images, while the various Photo Styles and Filters allow you to quickly and easily customise the look of the camera's JPEG and Raw images before you take them.

Noise

The expanded ISO sensitivity can be set between ISO 50 and ISO 204800 in full-stop increments. Here are some 100% crops which show the noise levels for each ISO setting, with JPEG on the left and RAW on the right.

JPEG	RAW
ISO 50	ISO 50
ISO 100	ISO 100
ISO 200	ISO 200
ISO 400	ISO 400
ISO 800	ISO 800
ISO 1600	ISO 1600
ISO 3200	ISO 3200
ISO 6400	ISO 6400
ISO 12800	ISO 12800
ISO 25600	ISO 25600
ISO 51200	ISO 51200
ISO 102400	ISO 102400
ISO 204800	ISO 204800

File Quality

The Panasonic Lumix S1 II has 2 different JPEG image quality settings available, with Fine being the highest quality option. Here are some 100% crops which show the quality of the various options, with the file size shown in brackets.

Fine (10.9Mb)	Standard (4.3Mb)
RAW (29.6Mb)

High Resolution Mode

The Panasonic Lumix S1 II's High Resolution Mode combines 8 shots into a 96 megapixel image to create a 12000x8000 pixel super high-resolution photo. The resulting Raw files are 165Mb in size. We found during testing that selecting Mode 2 in the Motion Blur Processing sub-menu produced the sharpest images.

Off	On

Photo Styles

Panasonic's Photo Styles are preset combinations of different sharpness, contrast, saturation and noise reduction settings. The available Photo Styles are shown below in the following series, which demonstrates the differences. There are also six Custom options so that you can create your own looks.

Standard

Vivid

Natural

L.ClassicNeo

Flat

Landscape

Portrait

Monochrome

L.Monochrome

L.Monochrome D

L.Monochrome S

LEICA Monochrome

Cinelike A2

Cinelike D2

Cinelike V2

Like709

V-Log

REAL TIME LUT

Filter Effects

The Panasonic Lumix S1 II offers a range of digital filter effects that can be applied to both JPEG and Raw files, with 8 different options available in the main menu.

Expressive

Retro

Old Days

High Key

Low Key

Sepia

Cross Process

Bleach Bypass

Sample Images

This is a selection of sample images from the Panasonic Lumix S1 II camera, which were all taken using the 24 megapixel Fine JPEG setting. The thumbnails below link to the full-sized versions, which have not been altered in any way.

Sample RAW Images

The Panasonic S1 II enables users to capture RAW and JPEG format files. We've provided some Panasonic RAW (RW2) samples for you to download (thumbnail images shown below are not 100% representative).

Sample Movies & Video

Product Images

Conclusion

The more expensive S1 II improves on the slightly cheaper S1 IIE model in quite a lot of ways, principally by offering higher speed burst shooting and video recording modes.

They offer exactly the same design and user experience, though, so choosing between them essentially boils down to which image sensor you prefer - the S1 IIE's conventional CMOS sensor or the S1 II's newly developed partially stacked sensor.

This new sensor gives the S1 II a clear lead in all-out speed, allowing it to offer significantly faster burst shooting rates and more advanced video recording modes than the S1 IIE

The latter include C4K/4K 120p and 5.8K 60p, plus 5.1K Open Gate recording at 60/50p, another Lumix first, all of which will surely tempt videographers to opt for the S1 II.

Other standout video highlights of the more expensive model include up to 5.9k 60p recording with no crop, internal RAW recording in 5.8k 30p and C4K 60p to a CFexpress Type B card, and 32-bit float audio support for the first time on a Lumix full-frame camera.

The partially stacked sensor inside the S1 II allows it to shoot at 70fps high-speed blackout free with AF/AE using the electronic shutter, far surpassing the already impressive 30fps rate provided by the S1 IIE.

The S1II shares exactly the same design and build quality as the flagship S1R II - the only way to differentiate between them is via their name badges - so you get the same user experience on both cameras, making for an easy upgrade path from this model in the future if you decide you need more resolution.

Overall, the S1 II is the most capable Lumix full-frame model to date for shooting wildlife, sports and action, whether you're shooting stills or recording video, and it's also a great all-round camera too.

Ratings (out of 5)

Design	4.5
Features	5
Ease-of-use	4.5
Image quality	4.5
Value for money	4

Main Rivals

Listed below are some of the rivals of the Panasonic Lumix S1 II.

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