Results tagged “Panasonic”

Grab it here.

I’ve owned the GF1 for just under a month now, and have had the chance to use it enough to form some opinions on where it excels and where it could improve. In no particular order, here they are:

Auto ISO

The Auto ISO feature leaves a lot to be desired. It allows you to set a minimum shutter speed and it will adjust ISO up to keep the shutter speed above that value, up to a user-definable maximum ISO. Sadly, it doesn’t work in manual mode. I’d really like to be able to dial both shutter and aperture to a value and have the camera try and compensate with ISO to get the exposure right. Also, in Aperture-Priority mode, I’d like to be able to prioritize ISO ahead of shutter speed; right now the camera will push the shutter speed to barely hand-holdable levels while there are plenty of decent quality ISOs that could bring my shutter speed up and hold my dialed-in aperture.

P Mode

The P (Program) mode will stick at f/1.7 even when there’s plenty of shutter speed and ISO headroom to go for a smaller aperture. f/1.7 is really wide-open, with very shallow depth-of-field to be the go-to default. Yes, I can use program-shift to get an equivalent exposure with a smaller aperture, but I’d like it to start a bit smaller when appropriate. Likewise, the full auto mode also likes to shoot wide open even with plenty of available light, which is often not what someone like my wife would want in a point-and-shoot mode.

My Menu

I hate that “My Menu” isn’t customizable, but simply has my last used menu items. It sticks “format” as the top item when it’s the last thing you do, making it too easy to reformat your card accidentally.

Menus/Interface

I find the interface to be generally intuitive. A lot better than the mess Olympus made with the E-P1 menu system. The most common controls are pretty easy to get to.

Rear LCD/Optional Viewfinder

I generally want reviews and menus on the rear LCD and the current view and shooting info in the finder—it’s all EVF or all LCD right now. The LCD is beautiful. Upon review, it’s not quite as good as the D700’s but it’s close enough. It sure would be nice if the resolution and color rendition of the EVF were better. The refresh rate of the LCD is excellent. It’s not easy to make critical decisions with it in bright light/outdoors, but that’s to be expected. I wish there were better post-shot review options with the histograms.

Image Quality

Image quality is overall quite a bit better than the G9 it replaces in my stable. The noise gets pretty bad at ISO 1600, but it’s usable for most of my purposes. 3200 is only for use if it’s the only way to get some sort of shot, and there’ll be some real noise reduction post processing work necessary.

The Lens

Ooh, la, la. This is a sweet little lens! It’s fast, fast, fast, and has nice bokeh. On the down side, the manual focus ring gives no real feedback, and isn’t a pleasure to use, although it works better than most manual focusing on small cameras I’ve used. The lens cap sucks—it’s deep and pops off too easily.

Handling

The GF1 has proven to be a decent mountain biking camera, although it’s clearly not built for fast action. It works well when pre-focusing and shooting action; fast moving subjects coming at the camera are not handled super well by the AF. Shutter lag is minimal and power on time is good enough for me.

Conclusions and Comparisons

To date, this is by far the best compact camera I’ve used. Despite its drawbacks and high price, it has the best build, handling and image quality I’ve seen. The G9 was good in the build regard, not as close in image quality (although it was no slouch), but far off from a handling point-of-view. The menu system is much better than the E-P1 based on the brief time I handled one of those, and the EVF is a differentiator. I do wish the GF1 had the E-P1’s in-camera image stabilization—that would be killer for low-light pics like those I’ve been shooting on the bike. Overall, though, this camera wins.

The Canon G11 and S90 are now out and gaining a lot of buzz. It would take a very impressive camera to make me sell the GF1 at this point, and I can’t imagine that either of them will compel me to do so. Still, I’m interested to play with them and see what the state of the art from Canon is. The G9 has been a great camera, and I’m sure Canon isn’t out of this race.

Christopher Lane is in a similar situation, equipment-wise, that I am. I love, love, love my D700, but it’s just not practical to carry around. As anyone who reads this knows, I supplemented my Nikon with a Panasonic Lumix GF-1.

I completely understand Lane’s worry about the EVF; there’s no doubt that it is indeed “soulless”. However, in my opinion, it’s the best camera of its kind out there, and it’s one that I’m having fun carrying and shooting with. The lens really does make wonderful pics, and soulless or not, the EVF makes it feel like I’m shooting with a “real” camera instead of a P&S toy.

It arrived about 30 minutes ago. First Impressions:

• It is smaller on the camera than I expected, and the size of the view in the finder is also smaller than I expected.
• The resolution, while kind of low as was widely reported, seems fine to me. The zooming in effect while manually focusing works well in this context—perhaps I even like it better in the finder than on the camera back.
• The diopter adjustment is great—dialed it in and the finder is tack sharp.
• Having all of the shooting info that’s normally on the back (histogram, exposure controls, etc.) in the finder is nice.
• The finder can tilt upwards up to 90 degrees, which is handy.
• I wish that I could set the finder to have no post-exposure review, but still have it sent to the rear LCD, like a DSLR does.

More soon.

DPReview.com has their review of the GF1 up, and it's as detailed as usual. It did well:

Overall though - and I guess you probably already know this - I really loved the GF1, and will find it very hard to return it when this review is finished, meaning that I may have to wipe the dust and cobwebs off my wallet and actually hand over my own hard earned cash for one. The Olympus E-P1 now has some very, very strong competition in the form of possibly the most engaging and enjoyable camera on the market today. A compromise, for sure, but a surprisingly happy one.

Nice.

I just got a surprise shipping confirmation that the DMW-LVF1 electronic viewfinder for the Panasonic GF1 has shipped from Amazon! I say “surprise” because they never even changed the page to reflect when they expected to ship it, and I never got an update via email.

I can’t wait to get it—I love the camera, and really am looking forward to being able to hold it up to my eye like a proper camera.

I have my GF1. Oddly enough, a local camera shop got it ahead of Amazon--well ahead, apparently, since Amazon isn't supposed to get the 20mm kit I pre-ordered for some time. Initial impressions, with ~50 shots of random crap:

• Build quality is excellent, but not over-done. It's a nice package. It's a little bigger than the Canon G9, but not so much so that I'd put it in another category. I have a case that I use to store the G9 on my CamelBak while riding--the GF1 fits in it without the 20mm lens on, but not quite with. Pretty close, though.
• The rear LCD is amazing. It updates very quickly. It think it might be even better than the one on my D700. I'll have to look at them back-to-back.
• The menu system is pretty good. In general, I like the G9 menu system better, but that could be because I'm used to it.
• The camera reacts very quickly. It's a much more agile handling camera than the G9.
• The focus modes are a nice surprise. It has a "lock, then follow" mode that works very well with the baby running around.
• The _f_1.7 lens is nice. Leads to a nice bright image on the LCD, even in low-light conditions. I haven't shot enough to tell how sharp it is, but that'll take some time.
• The shop I bought it from didn't get the optional EVF in stock, so I've still got my order placed with Amazon. This camera cries out for it; I keep feeling like I should put it up to my eye, even though I rarely did that with the G9.

More to come....

Not many people can take a picture of a GF1 with a GF1, but this guy did. I just want my one!

People state-side are starting to take delivery of their GF1s if they ordered them from Panasonic’s online store, which I find pretty amazing, really. Other than Apple, I can’t think of too many electronics companies who actually ship orders to customers directly faster than Amazon can—certainly no camera company I’ve ever dealt with has. This has the effect of Amazon customers chomping at the bit to get their cameras. My pre-order hasn’t even been updated with a shipping date, which doesn’t fill me with confidence that I’ll get mine soon, although I can always hope. In fact, Amazon has a shipping date of tomorrow for the GF1 kit with the zoom lens and no date for the 20mm f/1.7 I ordered, whereas the people who ordered the 20mm are the ones getting theirs now and the zoom lens customers there haven’t heard anything. Weird.

I’ve been spending some time reading the boards about peoples’ impressions with the camera, and they’ve all been really good so far. The low-light capabilities seem good up to 800 and the 1600 results haven’t been half-bad either. The 20mm lens really looks to be stellar for a kit lens, which is refreshing; it’s half the reason I’m attracted to this camera.

Speaking of what attracts me to the GF1, the main draw was its size. That’s still the main “feature” of the camera (in fact, it’s really a little bigger than I’d prefer, but I realize that it’s the best physical size-to-sensor size ratio I’m likely to get in a package that handles well (the Sigma cameras have been dinged in reviews for being fairly slow to work with). I realize that means that other features have to be cut out. But there’s one feature I really wish the GF1 had: GPS.

As I mentioned earlier, my primary interest in this camera is as a take-everywhere camera. And by “everywhere”, I’m including mountain bike riding. That’s why size and handling are important—I need it to not weigh me down and I need to be able to draw it and have it ready to shoot quickly. But since it’ll be used all over the place, and bike rides can cover quite some distance, it would be wonderful to have the camera recording GPS locations for the shots.

That said, I already carry a GPS on my bike and the GF1 doesn’t include GPS, so I’ll probably look into syncing up their clocks and using software to add location info to the EXIF data to the pictures.

Lovely!

Competition for the E-P1? Awesome. Let's hope other manufacturers start competing in this space too. The Four-Thirds group may have found a great niche and real advantage here.