[00:00:00.00] It's November 2020 and Panasonic has just released firmware updates for the Panasonic Lumix S1, S1R, S1H and S5 as well as for the G9 and the G100. Let's take a look at where to find them, how to install them and what they do for you.

[00:00:26.14] To find your update, navigate to the Panasonic Support page which is linked below and then click on either the Full Frame tab or the Micro Four Thirds tab depending on your camera system. You'll find a list of recently updated cameras, in this case the S1H, S1R, S1 and S5 along with dates of when that update was released.

[00:00:43.22] Again, under Micro Four Thirds, you'll also find the G9 and the G100 both released on November 24th as well. For this video, I’m going to go ahead and download the S5 update. To download it, click on the “Click to the Download Page” and from here, click on the Download button.

[00:00:59.15] While it's downloading, you can feel free to read through the release notes but we'll be covering those in just a moment. If you're looking for detailed instructions on how to update, you can also click here to open a webpage with detailed update procedures, but I’m going to take you through that procedure now.

[00:01:12.13] The first step is to ensure that you have a fully charged battery on your camera. So, if it isn't, go take care of that first. Next, get an SD Card and format that in the camera. You want that formatted in-camera for this procedure to work. Then take that SD card and pop it in your computer and copy the file we just downloaded onto the card like this…

[00:01:31.01] Your browser will download a .zip file which may auto expand to a .bin file. On macOS, you may actually see another dialog that tells you that it can't further expand the .bin file; ignore that. What you need is the .bin file.

[00:01:44.06] Take the .bin file and copy that to the root level of your freshly formatted SD Card. Eject that, and now let's go put it in the camera!

[00:01:55.22] Insert the card, turn on the camera and once again, make sure that you do have a full battery, then navigate to the Menu, starting from the Setup page, navigate to the bottom of that list where it says “Others” and then go to Firmware Version.

[00:02:09.26] At the top of the list, you'll see Firmware Update. If the button is not available, meaning that it is grayed out, this likely means that you have Bluetooth or Wi-Fi enabled on your camera. So, you'll need to turn those off first before you can run the update. To do that, back out of this page, go up to the IN/OUT menu and then over to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Inside of each one of these, you can turn them off. Once they're off, you can go back down to the Firmware Version page, Firmware Update… it'll scan the card and look for that update and assuming that it finds it, it'll offer you the ability to update.

[00:02:41.22] Select “Yes” and that's it. If however it says that it can't find the update file, that usually means one of two things; either the .bin file was copied to another directory on the card, not to the root level; make sure, once again, that it goes to the root level. That's the very top of the card. Or it means that the .zip file was copied to the card instead of the .bin.

[00:03:01.23] It's the .bin file and it has to be at the top or root level of that memory card. The update should only take a couple of minutes and once it's done, the camera will automatically reboot. If you want to ensure that the update was completed, go ahead back into the Firmware menu, go to Firmware Version and under here you'll see the current firmware version. As you can see here, it's says 2.0.

[00:03:20.29] Incidentally, if you're running an update on a G series camera, namely the G9 or the G100 for this November 2020 update, instead of navigating to a Firmware Update menu, you actually just press Play on the back of the camera once you insert that memory card.

[00:03:34.27] So, now, what is new in all these updates? Well, for that, let's step into the spreadsheet. All right, look, I was trying to build a grid that showed all the different feature comparisons across the different cameras and largely failed at that because it's just too complex. But here's the gist of it…

[00:03:48.02] There's lots of minor improvements among the entire lineup, largely bringing feature parity when it comes to autofocus across the S series.

[00:03:55.05] For specifics on these, just check out the website linked below, that'll show you all the different features. When it comes to video functions again, lots of minor improvements but a couple of big ones as well. The S1R can now shoot 5K internally and the S5 has gained 5.9K RAW output over HDMI. We'll take a look at that in just a moment.

[00:04:12.13] The S1 and the S1R have both gained the red record frame indicator showing you, with a big red box around the frame, that you are actively recording. The S1H and the S5 already had that but the S1H and the S5 also gained control over the horizontal and vertical LCD flip meaning, no matter how your camera is oriented, you can rotate the image on the LCD to match it.

[00:04:33.14] Of all of those new features, one of the most exciting ones is RAW output on the S5. So, if you have an S5, let me show you how to do this. You will of course also need an Atomos Ninja V to go along with this. I’ve got one paired up right here. So, let's take a look at how to activate RAW.

[00:04:47.08] In the menu, first navigate to the video page and then from here, scroll down to “Image Format 2” where you'll find a new menu “HDMI RAW Data Output”. Turn this on and it will bring up a dialog warning you that you cannot shoot internally while outputting RAW over HDMI.

[00:05:04.13] Go ahead and confirm that and then your attached Ninja V will recycle and bring up a new dialogue on its own screen. Here it's telling me that a RAW signal has been detected and that ProRes RAW codec is required. Go ahead and tap “OK” and incidentally if you've never shot ProRes RAW on your Ninja V before, you are going to have to activate it. It's a free activation but you will have to go to the Atomos website to activate that and there will be instructions on the screen.

[00:05:28.06] Once you do that, you're going to get a four digit code that you enter into your device and that's all there is to it. Now, you'll see that I’m in ProRes RAW, 5.9K 29.97 V-Log RAW and you'll see up here that the monitor is listed as PQ, that's Perceptual Quantization. That means that I’m going to see the full HDR image on my Ninja V. 

[00:05:46.21] Now, if you do this with your Ninja and it pops up and it doesn't look like HDR and we're not seeing PQ up there, that tells you two things; first of all you can easily switch that in and I’ll show you how to do that just a moment, but more importantly, it means that you need to update your Ninja.

[00:06:01.06] There is a firmware update for the Ninja V that will accommodate automatically switching into PQ. It does a couple other things as well of course, so you'll definitely want to update that.

[00:06:09.25] Let's go back to the S5 for a moment and take a look at a couple other options here. The Record Quality menu now has some new options. I’ve got my 5.9K RAW that I’m in right now, that is a 5888x3312 16:9 aspect ratio at 29.97p and you'll see at the top that it does say it is using full frame. That is the full frame sensor that it's utilizing.

[00:06:29.23] If I drop down to 5.9K at 23.98p, I’m still full frame but then if I drop down to the slightly larger than 4K, we could call it a 4.1K, you'll see that resolution is 4128x2176, that is a 17:9 aspect ratio. I can shoot that at 59.94, 29.97 or 23.98. However, those are all at an APS-C crop.

[00:06:51.18] So, depending on what you're shooting, of course you may or may not want that full 5.9K, but if you do drop down, you are going to be pushing into the sensor a little bit.

[00:06:58.29] I’ll leave this in 5.9K and then at this point, let's go ahead and turn off RAW output. When I turn off RAW output, we're going to see the Ninja refresh again and it may be that you are still in ProRes RAW mode up here. You can't actually record the ProRes RAW without a RAW signal, so you will need to switch out of that. And in fact if you haven't yet updated your Ninja, then the Ninja at this point is going to look really freaky weird. You're going to once again have to simply back out of ProRes RAW but getting that firmware update will at least keep the screen from looking odd, but it does appear that you still have to manually change codecs.

[00:07:31.27] To do that, just tap where it says ProRes RAW and here switch it from ProRes RAW to either DNxHR or most likely to ProRes. Tap “Confirm” and now you're back to normal shooting.

[00:07:42.05] There's a whole lot more to shooting RAW and I’m not going to go into all of that now because I did a video on this when the S1H gained RAW output capability, a little while ago. So, I’m going to go ahead and put a link to that video at the end of this video. So, if you're watching this and you've gotten this far and you're into shooting RAW, do make sure you watch that. There's a whole lot more that goes into it than what I’ve covered here.

[00:08:00.09] This is a pretty big update for a lot of the Lumix cameras. I hope this video helped you. And of course, as always, if you haven't yet, please do Subscribe, hit that Like button and we'll see you in the next video.