Is the Panasonic S1 the Perfect Time-Lapse Camera?

If you were a time-lapse photographer about to buy yourself a shiny new camera, what would be your choice? Time-lapse aficionado Matthew Vandeputte was contacted by Panasonic asking him to try out the new S1, and to say that he’s impressed is something of an understatement.

Moving from a combination of the 1D X Mark II and a few 6D Mark IIs, Vandeputte was looking for something that boasts excellent dynamic range, and the S1 certainly offers that. What comes as a welcome surprise is just how many time-lapse and stop-motion features Panasonic has decided to cram into the S1.

As Vandeputte detailed in his tutorial, capturing a Holy Grail time-lapse, i.e. shooting a transition from night to day or vice versa, requires a lot of work, shifting the settings after every couple of exposures to match the changing light levels. Much to his delight, Panasonic has included the option to automatically level an exposure, removing much of the hard work required when creating these impressive shots. 

If you want to learn more, be sure to check out Vandeputte’s blog, which goes into a little more detail. If you've been using the S1 to shoot time-lapses and want to offer your thoughts, or if you have questions about how this new camera performs, be sure to leave a comment below.

Andy Day's picture

Andy Day is a British photographer and writer living in France. He began photographing parkour in 2003 and has been doing weird things in the city and elsewhere ever since. He's addicted to climbing and owns a fairly useless dog. He has an MA in Sociology & Photography which often makes him ponder what all of this really means.

Log in or register to post comments
8 Comments

Shooting timelapses on the GH5 is so freaking easy. I'm glad they made it even better on the S1

That is pretty kickass you can rely on it to adjust exposure that well.

Didn't Sony add the same thing in version 3.0 of the A7III firmware?

They did but I shoot Sony and not allowed to say that or I’d be called a Fanboy by the goons on here lol

spam.

Really cool with the timelapse features, especially being able to adjust the exposure automatically for the holy grail. Stop motion feature also nice, but less useful as shooting stop motion requires better tools than in-camera features and processing.

I'm really impressed with these new Panasonic cameras, especially their usability and features they offer. They seems like very photographer-friendly cameras, something other brands like sony lacks.

s