Panasonic Lumix S5 IIX Teardown
By Phillip Andrew Iglesias
The Panasonic Lumix S5 IIX is a hybrid photo and video camera targeted at professionals and content creators with its hefty features.
The camera was made available on May 26, 2023, after the Panasonic Lumix S5 II was released earlier in January. The S5 IIX comes as a more video-centric camera than the S5 II.
As for its specifications, the camera boasts a 24.4MP CMOS sensor without a Low Pass Filter, L-mount for Leica lenses, two memory card slots for SD/SDHC/SDXC UHS-II, 6k video with no crop at up to 29.97fps, and weather sealing.
First, we targeted the camera’s baseplate and removed three Philips screws. As usual, this is the first point of access to get inside the camera.Â
Turning to the port side, we opened the dust cover and found five screws for removal.
There were two screws that held the eye cap in place.Â
Removing the eye cap revealed four screws along with the diopter screw.Â
Here we removed the aforementioned screws. We needed to be careful removing the diopter screw—the plastic felt soft, so there was a possibility that the screw could’ve been stripped.
Under the rubber thumb grip towards the backside, we removed one silver screw.Â
Underneath the rubber grip on the side, we removed two screws next to the memory card door.Â
The rear panel smoothly separated from the body.Â
Interestingly, the disassembly of the back panel felt similar to a Canon EOS R5 and Nikon Z camera series.
Next, we disconnected both ribbon cables from the motherboard to remove the back panel fully.
The EVF ribbon was also disconnected from the circuit board.Â
We saw a bracket under the circuit board, so the top panel definitely needed to come off. At the front of the camera, we removed two screws just above the lens mount.
Peeling back the rubber palm grip on the front, one silver screw below the shutter button was removed.Â
Back on the port side, we found no screws under the rubber grip.
One screw was removed just under the remote port.
Ten ribbon cables were detached from the circuit board.
The circuit board was held down only by four silver screws.
We removed two screws just above the EVF connector.Â
Despite removing the screws and cables, the top panel wouldn’t budge. After looking around the body, the last screw was hidden under the white balance button.
The top panel came off with ease after removing the screw. We found that the weather sealing is not connected to the top panel of the body.
The circuit board power ribbon cable was removed from the battery slot—this was held down with two screws and a bracket.Â
A two-wire pigtail connection was removed at the bottom of the board.Â
Finally, the circuit board was removed, the cables disconnected, and the screws unfastened.
At this point, we were one more layer away from reaching the sensor. This bracket was held down with five screws.
We took out the port dust cap assembly.Â
Panasonic decided to wrap this bracket under the battery slot housing. We had to remove two silver screws to remove the battery slot assembly.Â
We removed the plastic cover and disconnected a ribbon cable after accessing the inside of the battery slot.
Here, we unfastened one screw and removed the circuit board inside.
The battery slot housing was removed.Â
Two more screws were removed from the bracket.Â
The bracket was removed after unfastening those screws.
Panasonic used springs for this camera’s focus adjustment. The sensor was held down with three T6 Torx screws.Â
With the sensor removed, the camera is now ready for an infrared conversion!
We would rate the Panasonic Lumix S5 IIX camera a 4/10 in disassembly difficulty. According to our technician, there were a few notable similarities between this camera and the Canon EOS R5 and the Nikon Z cameras, including similar ribbon cable locks. Interestingly, our camera technician said it reminds him of the Sony A1. Could it be that Panasonic took design notes from Sony? We can’t say for sure.
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