Hands-on with the Panasonic Varicam S35 by Matthew Jeppsen - DP Notes

Two cinematographers take a quick look at the new 4K Varicam

February 9, 2015

A few years ago, Panasonic showed early prototypes of what would become the 4K Varicam, their S35 digital cinema camera. That model is starting to trickle out into the wild, and DP Noel Evans has shared his findings after using the camera on a project. Watch below.

For my tastes, the skintones shown in this video under low-Kelvin tungsten light look a bit too yellow/green and pasty, and also over-saturated at times. In contrast, the daylit and night-time sodium vapor-lit (?) skintone examples looked fairly neutral and pleasing for the most part. It’s hard to tell from a web video what came from the camera image profile vs what came from the grade, so I would definately like to see more examples from this camera.

In general the image looks very clean to me, even at the 5000 ISO base option. As a shooter, that makes me very happy…it’s a good thing to have many different cameras to choose from for different projects! As Noel puts it, digital cinema cameras each have their own unique look and image qualities, not unlike film stocks. I’m glad to see Panasonic making a comeback with this camera, it’s been too long.