A Mini Review

The VF4 compared to the GF1 EVF is night and day. There's no comparison. The best is to compare the GF1 EVF to a 1980s color tube TV set and the VF4 is a 2013 high end HD flat screen TV set. I was satisfied with the GF1 EVF mostly because I had nothing to compare it to. Now that I've worked the EVF for the GX1 and especially the VF4 / E-P5 I can't imagine going back. Also hat tip to Olympus for making the VF4 and E-P5 backwards compatible so the VF4 works with older PENs and you can slide older EVFs onto the E-P5, I wish Panasonic had been that forward thinking.

I haven't noticed any lag in the viewfinder in most of what I do. There's none when I making single frames or working in low fps (which I have set to 3fps). I have noticed lag when I work at high fps (which I have set to 7fps) and low shutter speed (say 1/30 or 1/15 and lower). I think it's because there's less time between each exposure. I'm not actually a very technical person so I don't know if that makes sense.

I love the Panny 20 and I was really nervous about pairing the 20 (and my Oly 14) to the E-P5. So far so good. I haven't had any banding issues. I am not a "pixel peeper," I open the photo in LR, make my edits and export the photo. I blow it up to 100% to check sharpness but so far I haven't seen any banding including in the few photos I've made at ISO1600.

The other complaint about the Panny lenses on Oly bodies is the noise (aural not digital) and constant focusing of the lenses. This has not been the case on my body. I do have continuous autofocus turned off though.

The 20mm f1.7 is the slowest focusing M4:3 lens I own. It was that way on the GX1 and it's that way on the E-P5. It's the lens' design. I wish Panasonic had redesigned the AF of the 20 when they released the Mark II of that lens last month but they didn't. It looks like all they did was update the lens' appearance.

jack

klopus wrote:

First thank you for an excellent and helpful review.

Besides DSLR I still have GF-1 (with low res EVF) and was thinking of upgrading to E-P5 + VF-4 over OM-D just on the merits of VF-4 alone. Can you please comment on your experience with VF-4? I'm concerned about lag and narrow dynamic range.

Also what's your experience with using Lumix 20 1.7 on the Oly body? I've read that with OM-D AF with this lens is slow and noisy and there's some banding.

Thanks again.