Panasonic Lumix S9 review

Lumix S9 overview

On the face of it, Panasonic’s Lumix S9 appears to be something of a bargain. For £1500 body only, it offers a full-frame 24.2-megapixel sensor, which brings with it a host of pictorial benefits over more modestly proportioned offerings: finer control over depth-of-field and impressive low-light capabilities to name just a couple.

Naturally, you can’t make a full-frame camera at this price point without some compromises, and the most obvious miss on the S9 is a viewfinder.

For stills photographers, this isn’t the best news, but for the camera’s target audience – social media content creators – it’s less of an issue.

Compact and lightweight, the Lumix S9 is eminently portable, though the body lacks any obvious grip for an assured hold.

Five-axis in-body image stabilisation does offer assurance in this respect. On its own, IBIS provides up to five stops of compensation, but add a lens with optical image stabilisation and the benefit extends to 6.5 stops.

Lumix S9 LCD

The three-inch LCD monitor has 1.84 million dots and offers the versatility of being vari-angle, so you can manoeuvre it into almost any position or spin it around to face you for selfies or vlogging.

Being used to a viewfinder, I found it took time to acclimatise to the slightly disconnected feeling of a screen. It must be moved away from the body for high or low angles, making accurate composition trickier.

Lumix S9 Autofocus

The touchscreen functionality does help for function setting or selecting a point for the hybrid AF system – which combines contrast and phase detection – to home in on.

In this respect, the camera performs well. Focus is acquired quickly for stills and is assured for movies; the AI-based subject recognition technology does its job well.

Even my hyperactive dog tearing around the beach excitedly was tracked sharply.

Using the Lumix S9

Like most mirrorless cameras, battery life takes a pounding – and that’s the case here, especially when you’re shooting video. The provision of a USB-C socket mitigates some of that problem, making it easy to charge on the go from a power bank.

I also found the camera quite slow to start up, which exacerbated the battery drain issues as, rather than switching off and on between shots, I just left it switched on so as not to miss a moment, draining the power.

Lumix S9 other features and performance

A good range of features are on offer, but the specification is definitely stacked in favour of the video user. For example, it’s the first camera to feature the MP4 Lite mode, which creates files that can easily be transferred to a phone for social sharing. MP4 Lite still gives you 4K 10-bit open gate recording, but only at 30p or 25p.

Also new is a companion app called Lumix Lab. Available free for both Android and iOS, the app allows fast file transfers from camera to phone and a modicum of editing prior to posting online. Photos and videos can be cropped, brightness adjusted or a LUT applied.

The app also provides access to LUTs made by creators, which can be downloaded and applied either to files or uploaded to the camera for future use. It’s a great way of being able to add extra functionality and they can all be previewed in the app so you know what you’re getting. The dedicated LUT button on the back of the camera makes them simple to access once transferred.

With a full-frame sensor, on-board ISO performance is impressive. All the native ISOs (100-51,200) show great stability in terms of colours, shadows and highlights. Digital noise is only really noticeable when you reach 12,800 and above, which makes for great low light performance.