GX7 review (my first review!)

GeorgianBay1939 wrote:

After spending a couple of days experimenting with different layouts and button assignments, I arrived at a combination that pleased me a great deal and made me appreciate the new layout.

I am very interested in what you ended up with.

FN1: AF-ON
FN2: Quick Menu
WHY: AF-ON is a button I hold down for long periods of time while framing a shot. Therefore, I want that func. assigned to a button that lets me hold the camera comfortably while pressing that button. Quick Menu, on the other hand, isn't usually a button I need to press while framing or following a scene, so I moved it to a less grip-convenient spot.

FN3: Silent Mode ON/OFF
WHY: It's a mode I use fairly often to either reduce shutter shock at long shutter speeds or because I want to be stealthy.

FN7: Wi-Fi
WHY: I don't use it a lot, but I hate digging through the menus for it.

Rear dial: adjusts exposure compensation without having to press it, first.
WHY: I adjust the exposure comp. a lot.

Flash > Auto Exposure Comp: ON
WHY: With that set to ON, press the rear dial allows me to adjust the flash exp. comp. with the front dial.

Touch Screen: ON
Touch Tab: ON
Touch AF: AF
Touch Pad AF: Offset
Direct Focus Area: OFF
WHY: I like to retain the existing settings on the 5-way controller pad and use the touch screen to adjust the AF point.

I am a solid believer in Gollywop, Anders, GB etc and a solid disbeliever in the "Exposure Triangle" (having "been there" and suffered).

What did you do? Any advice to a learner?

Sorry, I'm not familiar with the term, "exposure triangle." I just try to capture the important tones in the scene, which is not always the same as getting the right final exposure.

Dynamic range also seems improved. Processing the raw files in Lightroom, there doesn't seem to be as much headroom in the highlights, as compared to my Nikon D300 or even my Sony RX100 II. So I've been shooting with a tendency toward underexposure. Still, I haven't run into many situations where highlights were blown out except in some scenes where it was quite obvious that there'd be a problem. In other words, I haven't been surprised by blown highlights. I've just noticed that there doesn't seem to be as much room to recover highlight detail. OTOH it also seems like I don't have to recover highlights as often as I did on my GH2, either.

Others have suggested a similar lack of headroom. Does this mean that you are required to give more room to the histogram in LV? to the RGBY histograms in chimp view? that you have to reset (downwards) the White point in LR? That you can't de-compress as much using the Highlight slider in LR? OR???

I've been experimenting with leaving the exp. comp. set to -.3 EV and other times leaving it set at 0 EV. I still don't have enough experience with the camera to say this with certainty, but so far I think it's better to shoot slightly underexposed at or near base ISO. It seems to lift detail out of the shadows without much of a noise penalty. At higher ISOs when the light is worse, I will often over-expose a bit and not worry about blown highlights. Something's got to give when the dynamic range drops in the higher ISOs, and in those cases the shadow detail is generally more important to me.

Hope that helps, Tom.