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I made a mistake on the video you're about to watch, so the original version has been pulled from YouTube, and this version has corrections inserted where needed. Here's the deal… I made this video to show which of the LUMIX S1II's many, many, many! resolution and frame rate combinations cropped into the image and/or limited the autofocus capabilities. And here's what happened. I recorded the camera's view via the HDMI output; the problem I learned later is that by connecting the HDMI output, that itself changes some of the autofocus capabilities. So the bad news is, the original video was incomplete and arguably inaccurate. The good news is, by having to correct this, we now have even more information – we now have a complete matrix of crop and autofocus capabilities, both with and without an HDMI recorder or monitor attached. And that's an important inclusion – even if you're just using the HDMI output to monitor, but are still recording internally, the camera makes no distinction between the two. If it's limited on HDMI output, it's limited on HDMI output.

Finally, because I had to make a chart to figure all this out, I now have a chart to include at the end of this video. Screenshot that and stick it on your phone or whatever to keep handy if you want, but more importantly, bookmark photojoseph.com/S1IIcrop as I'll put the chart there, and on that one, I can continue to update it if any more corrections or additional info come to light. So… here we go. Again.

Yeah, the LUMIX S1II (S1 Mark Two) has a lot of different recording modes… different recording modes, crop ratios, aspect ratios. It's kind of… it's kind of crazy. And there are questions about which aspect ratios, which formats, which frame rates, will do what kind of cropping, if any at all. So here's what I'm aiming to do with this video: answer that question as well as another common question, what autofocus modes are available in these different aspect ratios and crop ratios? In fact, is PDAF — phase detect autofocus —available in all of them or does it revert to contrast based detection in some of them? So we're going to try and answer all of those questions today. This is going to be a bit much, there's a lot to go through here. I'm going to fly through it; I'll chapter market as much as I can, but feel free to grab screenshots as we go to compare things on your own if you need to. But let's just dive in.

So here's how this is going to work. First of all, you can see what the camera is currently shooting. I've set up this ruler in the frame. We're currently in 6K Open Gate mode. So you're seeing the entire frame on here and you can see that the zero is perfectly centered in the frame and on either edge of the ruler it stretches out to 11 centimeters and just at the hairy edge of that 11. So you will very clearly be able to see when the frame has cropped in. If I have the information, I'll put the crop ratio on screen; for those that I don't, well, you can do the math if you really want to. Also, we're going to take a look at the autofocus modes in each one of these shooting modes. You can see all the focus modes that are available right now; the two that are grayed out are only available in still photography mode. So we're looking at these five. You've got your tracking, you've got your multi area, your zone, your one area plus, and then your one area. And each one of those can have human or other animal object and so on detection, either on or off.

So we're leaving it at this mode right here. If any of those other ones get grayed out, then you know that they're not available in that shooting mode. Let's jump into the format list and start by looking at how many there are. If I hit the display filtering button down at the bottom, you'll see that there are 114 different combinations. This is the filtering page if you haven't seen it, which allows you to filter by frame rate or resolution or codec, or any variety of things. So you can find the specific setup that you're looking for. And for those of you that want to know every single recording mode that there is in this camera, there's 144 of 'em. I'm going to run through 'em all. One second of pop starting now.

We are going to start by looking at the 6K 3:2 aspect ratio mode, which shows that there are two results. I hit Display/OK, and it shows those two' 6K30 and 6K24. By the way, the camera is currently set to NTSC mode, so we're going to see 23.98, 29.97 59.94 and so on. If you put the camera into PAL mode, then you would see 25, 50, 100 and so on. The highest frame rate that you'll see in this mode is 240 FPS. If you were shooting in PAL mode, that would be 200 FPS. If you are a PAL shooter and you want that 240 mode, you can just switch the camera over to NTSC, shoot at 240, go back to PAL for your other work. So these are all available. I'm sticking with NTSC for this presentation because that's what matches.

Alright, let's start with the 6K30. That's actually where we were already. And you can see here there is no crop. We're seeing the full frame and we're seeing the full 3:2 aspect ratio. If I go into the autofocus settings, then of course that's where we started and that's what we've got. If we see a frame rate like this, 6K30 and we have everything available, I'm not going to bother going down the list because if it's at the top of the list, it's going to be lower as well. However, if whatever setting we're at, we see a crop or an autofocus limitation, then I will drop down the list until we either lose that limitation or get to the bottom of the list. That's the protocol. Let's keep going. So 3:2 aspect ratio, full 6K, no limitations whatsoever.

The next mode I'm going to go to is another 3:2 mode called a 5.1K mode. And this is really interesting because you'll see in the description it is still full frame. We are getting a little bit lower resolution; 5088 by 3392. However, we're getting 60p and when we look at this mode, we'll see that we are not cropping. So this tells us that you can do Open Gate 60p full frame… you're just at a little bit lower resolution; 5.1K instead of 6K. That is remarkable and that is one of the really, really cool features on this camera. We look at the autofocus modes and you'll see that we have lost face detection. So here we have all of our focus modes, but we don't have face available. 

Okay, insert time, this is the first one that is different. Here we are in 5.1K 60p, and here you can see that the autofocus actually has full autofocus support without HDMI monitor. So you have everything including the tracking and the subject detection.

Next, let's go into the standard 4K modes. We're going to go just down to straight 4K, 16:9. Hit Display/OK to filter by that.

And the top 4K mode is 4K120. We'll select that. And we see here we are cropping. The actual crop ratio is onscreen right now, so at 4K120, that's the crop that you'll get. Check out our auto-focus modes and just as before, we no longer have face detection available. Without an HDMI connected, however, 4K 120p does still get tracking. It doesn't have subject detection, but it does have tracking. Now let's see how we get rid of that crop. Let's drop down to 4K60 and see what happens. In 4K60 we can see that we have dropped our crop and if we look at our autofocus modes, our face detection is available. So this tells us that in 4K60p, we have full frame, full width, no crop with full face detection. So everything you want is available at 4K60. When you go to 4K120, that's when you crop in a little bit and give up that face detection.

Next, let's take a look at cinema 4K. Display filtering… to C4K. And again, we'll start at 120p; C4K120p. Here we're getting a slight crop. It is a different crop than we had in 4K, but we are still getting a slight crop in here. When it comes to autofocus, once again, we are giving up our face detection. Like 4K 120p, Cinema 4K 120p also does have tracking without the HDMI connected. It does not have subject detection.

Now let's drop it from C4K120 to C4K96; a frame rate that we didn't have in 4K mode. In C4K96, we have our uncropped image back and our face detection is back. So if you're shooting cinema 4K, you can go up to 96 frames per second and maintain the full width of the sensor and the face detect. Next we're going to check out this really funky, cool new mode CinemaScope 4K. This is cool because it is a 2.4:1 crop ratio.

This also starts at 120p. So let's check that one first. Cs4K at 120p has no crop. So in this mode, CinemaScope 4K, you have no crop to the image. Basically the camera's got less data to process on the top and bottom, giving it a little bit more room to work on things on the sides… I guess, I don't know. I'm not an engineer, but that's what we get. When it comes to autofocus, we are however, losing face detection. Without HDMI connected, you do get tracking. No subject detection, but you do get tracking.

Let's take Cs4K down to 96p and see if that changes anything. Same no-crop of course, and face detection is back. So Cinemascope 4K96p gives us everything. There's another CinemaScope crop ratio. Let's filter by that. And that is the 6K, 2.4:1. We have four results here and 6K 2.4:1 we can shoot up to 60p.

And in 60p we have no crop and we're giving up our face detect. Without HDMI connected, we get everything. We get tracking and subject detection. So this is a big difference between HDMI in and out where you had none of those. Without HDMI, you get it all back.

Drop that down to 48p… so again, 6K Cinemascope 48p, no crop, still no face detect. Without HDMI connected, as we would expect, you also have everything back. You have tracking and subject detection.

6K CinemaScope 30p. Of course there's still no crop and we get face detect back. So 6K CinemaScope 30p, we get our full width and our face or other object tracking autofocus back. I think we've exhausted those. Let's take a look at the 4.8K 4:3 aspect ratio. I'm sure a lot of you're wondering what in the world is the point of shooting a 4:3 aspect ratio on a 3:2 sensor at this high resolution. Why give up the sides of the frame if you don't have to? Well, Cam Mackey explained this in one of his videos…

“Let's talk about 4:3 mode and what's could be handy for”

…where he's talking about shooting with anamorphic. When he shoots 2x squeeze anamorphic lenses, he doesn't want full 3:2 wide; it's just too much. He wants to have that 4:3 wide so that he can see in camera the CinemaScope aspect ratio that he's going to get. And that's what the 4:3 aspect ratio here is for. So 4:3 aspect ratio in 60p, still full frame. Let's see what this looks like. Now of course we are going to see some cropping because we're naturally cropping off the sides of the sensor. So that's what the crop looks like there. We are still seeing the full height of the sensor and if we look at the autofocus modes, we have dropped the face and object detection. However, we still have all the other modes. In 4.8K 4:3 aspect ratio 60p, you get everything without HDMI connected. You have tracking and subject detection. And if we drop this down to 48p, we're still in the same autofocus limitations; without HDMI connected, of course, you once again have subject tracking and subject detection. And 4.8K at 30p… we've got our face and animal and object autofocus detection back.

So 4.8K at this 4:3 ratio at 29.97. You get everything back. There's an even smaller one at 3.3K 4:3 aspect ratio. This one is an APS-C crop on the sensor. So if you're shooting with a lens that is designed for a Super35 sensor, which of course is smaller than full frame, it's pretty close to APS-C, then that is what this mode would be for. So with this mode set, we can go up to 120p. So obviously we're cropping into the sensor. First of all, it's APS-C; that's kind of the point. And we're getting a further crop because we're going a 4:3 aspect ratio, not a 3:2 ratio. So this is what you would expect. Of course you're cropping into the sensor here and the autofocus is all modes minus the human and object detection. Without HDMI connected, we have tracking but not subject detection. That's the last of the insertions for corrections. What we've learned here is that without the HDMI connected, you will have subject detection if you are under 120p in NTSC or under 100p in PAL. So essentially anything under 100 frames per second, you will have your full subject detection without HDMI connected.

Let's drop 3.3K down to 60p… 3.3K60, it looks the same. So here we now have all of those subject detections back and we're shooting in that APS-C crop and the 4:3 aspect ratio. That means the only thing left is Full HD, so 1920 by 1080. Here we can go all the way up to 240 frames per second; so the highest frame rate possible on this camera. Let's see what that looks like. Here in Full HD 240p, we are seeing a crop and if we look at the autofocus modes, we see only one area mode available, which tells me that we are now in contrast based autofocus. We no longer have phase detect autofocus. Not to be confused with face detect every time I said… that “phase detect” versus “face detect”… probably should have sent “object detect”…

We now have contrast based in 240p. We're not going to see a difference in autofocus modes until we get to potentially 120p. So we'll drop down to Full HD 120p. And here we have phase detect and subject detection back again. So Full HD 120p, you have all of those features and of course you also have no crop. So that covers all of 'em. I think… I think I got 'em all! If I missed any, let me know in the comments and I'll look it up and I'll respond to you there. And then I'll pin that comment to the top. There we have it. There's a lot of shooting modes in this camera. If there's something else specific you want to know about the S1II by all means let me know and I'll see if I can make a video on it. If you want to discuss this camera at length in depth, you can hit the comments or even better visit my Discord. The way you get to my Discord is by becoming a channel member. Click that little join button somewhere down there underneath the like and subscribe button and you'll be able to gain access to my private Discord server where there is a LUMIX room, chapter, category… whatever the things are called in Discord. I dunno, you'll figure it out. See you in the next video.