DP Initial review.

Does the S5 II do enough to be seen as a serious contender to the likes of Canon's EOS R6 II or even Nikon's Z6 II? It helps its case that Leica, Panasonic and Sigma are doing a good job of building a system around the L-mount, meaning there are many more native lenses available than for Canon or Nikon's mirrorless systems.

Ultimately, though, the S5 II seems likely to succeed or fail based on its AF performance. There's little reason to doubt it'll be a capable video camera, but the effectiveness of its revised AF system will help define how easy it is to shoot with for both stills and video, and in that department it's squaring up against some very capable competition.

Our first impressions are that the AF tracking in stills mode is stickier than the Nikon Z6 II's but a touch behind its Canon and Sony rivals, whereas for video it's better behaved than all but the Sony.

A potential pitfall is that one of its key stills features – 30fps Raw capture – exhibits significantly more rolling shutter than its most direct rival. The Canon EOS R6 II can shoot at 40fps with a readout time of ~18ms: around 30% quicker than the roughly 25ms the S5 II takes to close its shutter.

These are preliminary thoughts; we'll want to check the S5 II with more lenses in more shooting circumstances before drawing firm conclusions. Critically, it'll be a question of how well the stabilization and AF work together in run-and-gun video and stills capture. From our use so far, though, the S5 II appears to be in credibly me in the hunt. On that basis, it represents a big step forward for Panasonic, however you look at it.

https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/panasonic-lumix-dc-s5-ii-dc-s5-iix-initial-review

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/videos/photography/panasonic-lumix-s5ii-s5iix-full-frame-mirrorless-photo-video-cameras