Panasonic S5 First Shots: Lab sample images from Panasonic’s enthusiast full-frame camera

by William Brawley

posted Thursday, September 3, 2020 at 6:50 PM EDT

Click here to browse through our Panasonic S5 First Shots

Update (9/21): It was brought to our attention that there was a minor focus discrepancy between the S5 and S1 with our original set of S5 First Shots. We have now re-shot and replaced our S5 lab sample images.
Update (9/22): After some further investigation, we think an element we use for alignment in our testing scene has shifted slightly, so the angle and focus were both a bit out on the S5's shot compared to the earlier S1 series. It'll take us a couple of days to get it all sorted out, but stay tuned, we'll have new shots up ASAP!

Panasonic's recently announced enthusiast full-frame mirrorless camera, the Lumix S5, arrived at IR headquarters ahead of announcement but was quickly swept away out to the coast for an in-depth hands-on review from Dave Pardue. It's now "back home" and has received some proper lab treatment in the form of our First Shots image quality testing.

Sporting the same 24MP full-frame CMOS sensor and Venus Engine as found in the higher-end S1 camera, the new Panasonic S5 offers a wide ISO range, spanning a native low ISO of 100 up to ISO 51,200. For additional flexibility, the S5 offers an expanded low ISO of 50 and two expanded high ISO levels, 102,400 and 204,800. Furthermore, thanks to its in-body image stabilization, the S5 also includes a High Resolution shooting mode, which is now capable of both RAW capture and JPEG image creation in-camera, with a resolution up to a whopping 96-megapixels.

In addition to our standard First Shots series, using the Lumix S5's native 24MP resolution, we've also included a series with the 96MP High Resolution mode. Our standard S5 First Shots series are offered across the full expanded ISO range, and as usual, we have two series, one with default in-camera Noise Reduction processing and another at the camera's lowest setting. The High Resolution mode has a more limited ISO range, going from Low ISO 50 up to just ISO 3200.

As always, we have both straight-from-the-camera JPEGs as well as RAW files available for download for all First Shots series over on the Panasonic S5 Samples Page. For some side-by-side image quality comparisons, you can use our handy Comparometer tool, which allows you to see the S5's sample images against pretty much every other camera we've lab-tested over the years. Below are a pair of side-by-side comparison crops from the Panasonic S5 against a few other 24MP full-frame enthusiast competitors in the Sony A7 III and Nikon Z6:

Panasonic S5 vs. Sony A7 III - ISO 6400