Panasonic LumixDMC-GF1

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What do you think about the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1?

Showing 4 comments

Alex Black (10:36 PM, May 01, 2010)

I bought the Panasonic DMC-GF1 recently, and took a few hundred photos with it on my recent trip to Hatteras, North Carolina. Its pretty awesome. I got the kit with the 20mm f/1.7 prime lens. Overall it met my expectations of having DSLR-quality in a small package. The photos look beautiful just like on my bigger DSLRs, and using the camera was easy and had a similar feel to a big DSLR, with most features available on dials/buttons on the button rather than in menus. The lens I was worried I would feel limited without any zoom. It wasn't as bad as I thought. I took tons of indoor shots with the camera, and didn't miss zoom much at all, it worked great for group shots, details shots, etc. I used it outdoors for landscape shots and it worked well, but it sucked for shots of people kite boarding and surfing, I'll have to look into getting one of the zoom lenses for it in the future :) The narrow depth of field is great, and having f/1.7 means I could take many shots in low light without a flash. I took lots of shots at f/1.7, 1/30s, with auto-iso enabled. Examples: - f/1.7, 1/30s, ISO 320 night shot - f/1.7, 1/30s, ISO 100, indoor natural light - f/8, 1/1000, ISO 100 landscape shot Size I've been shooting with my Nikon D700 mostly, and started to find it to be a beast. I love its low noise at high isos, and its image quality and speed to react/focus, but it is too big for average use. So, I loved how small the GF1 is. I felt like i could carry it around with me easily. Performance It felt quite similar to use the D700 in some regards. Focusing is fast, taking photos and reviewing photos is fast, I felt like I was using a responsive DSLR not a slow point and shoot. I didn't end up using much past ISO 800, presumably because of the wide aperture and lack of hand-shake when using the camera. I'll hopefully push it well past ISO 800 in the future. Features - The wheel on the back is great. I shoot in aperture-priority, and the wheel by default then changes the aperture. You can very quickly access exposure compensation by 'pushing' the wheel like a button. In manual mode you push the wheel to switch between changing shutter and aperture, which works reasonably well, a nice compromise from say the D700 which has 2 wheels (one for each). - It doesn't seem to have an orientation sensor, which means you have to rotate all your images after, feels like its 1999 again, but not a huge deal. - You can record movies in any mode by pushing the record button, or use the dedicated movie mode - You can *focus* while taking movies (unlike most DSLRs), its slow but works well. I had it on auto-focus, on the center point, and was able to pull focus nicely :) - I started using the camera on center-point focus, but changed to face recognition, which worked really nicely at f/1.7. It meant I didn't have to focus and recompose, instead I'd just compose my shot, touch the shutter release, and confirm that the camera focused on the person's face, then take the shot. Conclusion Definitely a fun camera, and for me its brought the fun back into photography. Though it will mean I have to spend some more $ on another lens at some point. Images: http://www.flickr.com/photos/noirs/4557745880/in/set-72157623940089672 http://www.flickr.com/photos/noirs/4556099889/meta/in/set-72157623940089672

babosa (6:06 AM, May 02, 2010)

Many thanks for this review. Is it a problem to have only a screen ?

Alex Black (0:46 PM, May 02, 2010)

Ah, good point, the GF1 has a screen but no viewfinder. When I first picked up the camera, I raised it up to my face as if to look through the viewfinder, but there isn't one! Most DSLRs have a fiewfinder. I didn't find it to be a problem. I quickly got used to using the screen. One nice surprise is that the camera previews the exposure on the screen, which I don't think all cameras do. So, when you're using exposure compensation you can see approximately how much effect your compensation has had, though it doesn't seem to be perfect. You can buy add-on viewfinders, I don't think I would though.

Alex Black (2:53 PM, July 10, 2010)

I do have one complaint about the GF1 so far, the AUTO-ISO feature is fixed to 1/30s, meaning, it only increases the ISO for you if the shutter speed falls below 1/30s, which often is not enough to avoid blur. Other cameras have a setting where you can choose the minimum shutter speed you'd like, so you could set it to 1/60s or 1/100s, and have the camera increase the ISO further. See: http://www.f9photo.com/node/48