Panasonic G85 from an Olympus user

Michael Meissner wrote:

I'm still trying out the camera in my house, so I haven't done any real shots with it yet.

I've played with my three cameras (E-M1 mark I, E-M5 mark I, and G-85) and 4 lenses (Olympus 12-40mm pro, Olympus 12-50mm, Olympus 14-150mm mark II, and Panasonic 12-60mm), and of the three, the E-M1 mark I seems to be the fasted to achieve a focus lock, the E-M5 mark I is the middle, and the G-85 is the slowest.

This was done using a single small focus point on each of the two cameras. I haven't checked the other focus modes.

I have my Olympus cameras set up so that I can use the arrow pad to change focus points when I'm using the EVF (i.e. not using the 4 arrow keys for their normal pre-defined meaning). There doesn't seem to be anything similar on the G-85. Instead, the G-85 I seem to have to use the touch screen. Like the E-M10 mark II (and probably Pen F/E-M1 mark II), you can use the touch screen to set the focus point when using the EVF. Unfortunately, you do have to be careful, as your nose can set the focus point. I suspect this will be a mixed blessing to have to use the touch screen. I wish there was a way to do this simply with arrow keys without using the touch screen (which might be folded back into the camera).

One thing that Panasonic does is when the camera is focusing, it can either enlarge the area around the focus point within the screen or using the whole screen, so that you can better check if something is in focus. On the Olympus you can have a button toggle whether the enlarge the focus point on the whole screen or not (and if you are doing manual focusing, automatically enlarge the area). This is a positive thing, and it would be nice if Olympus thought about doing this in future generations of the camera.

While I'm on the subject, the G-85 does have a menu item for power zoom lenses. You have to mount a power zoom lens (like the Olympus 12-50mm), and it will enable it. You can control the speed of the power zoom (low, medium, high), and also whether to show the focal length while you are zooming the lens.

Likley other members had solved the issue on using 4-way cammander keys to move your focus point in tradtional manner.

Regarding Touch AF (Use LCD) and Touch Pad AF (Use evf), if the fopcus point has been moved accidentally, we can simply touch the LCD any where (to make the focus point be movable/resizable) and hit "Disp" key plus a half press of shutter. Your run away focus point would return to the center immediately.

Wishing it might enhance your enjoyment on using the touch LCD....