The mirrorless full-frame cameras of the Lumix-S family from Panasonic play in the upper league. Does the range of Lumix S lenses meet the requirements?

Alliances shape Panasonic’s camera business: after the company had held the flag of the Micro Four Thirds system together with Olympus for many years, it expanded it two years ago Portfolio towards mirrorless full format. Here, too, Panasonic does not compete as a lone warrior, but forms the L-Mount Alliance together with Leica and Sigma. The basis is Leica’s established L-Mount, a bayonet that is suitable for use with APS-C and full-frame cameras. One advantage of the cooperation should be the combined power and the different target groups: Photographers can freely combine the cameras and lenses of the three manufacturers. In this way, the right technology can be selected – depending on requirements and budget. Right from the start, the system offered sufficient options for “early adopters”.

Panasonic’s L-mount cameras operate under the brand name Lumix S. With them, the manufacturer is pursuing a similar product strategy as its competitors Sony or Nikon and is mainly aimed at ambitious photographers and professionals. The manufacturer now offers four cameras: The Lumix S5 as an entry-level camera with 24 Megapixels, the S1 (also with 24 megapixels) as a higher quality all-rounder, the S1R as a photo flagship with 47 Megapixels and the video specialist S1H, which is designed as a professional video camera – and has, for example, a built-in fan and film recordings in 6K with 24 Frames per second allowed.

All cameras are very solidly built and sealed against dust and splash water. They offer good video capabilities by default and have additional functions such as a high-resolution mode with up to 187 Megapixel resolution (S1R) on board. The sensor is provided with a five-axis image stabilization on all models. This can be combined with the image stabilizer of lenses, which Panasonic offers for some optics.

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