Panasonic G85 from an Olympus user

Michael Meissner wrote:

I just went through the exercise of updating the firmware on the G85. In general, it is a lot easier than on Olympus.

On Panasonic, you copy the file to the SD card, make sure the batteries are fully charged, start the camera and hit play. While the directions talk about using an external card reader, I was able to just plug in the G85 to my computer, and copy the .bin file to the camera. If you are updating both camera and lens, you need to do it in two steps.

On Olympus you have to use a Windows or Mac computer that is connected to the internet to download the firmware. For me that is an issue, since I only use Linux systems (and I don't not have the Wine windows emulator installed), so I wait until my wife goes to bed and use her Windows laptop to upgrade the firmware.

Both Olympus and Panasonic will not let you go back to a previous version of the firmware.

I saw there was a new version of the software at 43rumors.com, and downloaded the software from their link. However, since 43rumors.com is based in Europe, they linked to the European panasonic facility, which had the G80 firmware. The US G85 will not install the G80 firmware. You have to go to the US Panasonic site for the firmware.

I also encounter similar situation for my GX85, when reaching the fw downloaded pop up page, dowloaded the wrong version (GX80 instead of GX85 which followed it) for my GX85. As expected, GX85 can't locate a valid fw file to update.

So I renamed the fw file (change it from GX80_V11 to GX85_V11) and problem solved. Basically it is just a file name problem. I suppose G80/85 might have similar issue.

In going to the Panasonic site, I couldn't initially find the support tab in the G85 page, and a chat window popped up. I got a particularly clueless person that did not seem to understand what firmware was.

In the case of USB cable, Panasonic uses the standard micro USB 2.0 cable, while in the micro 4/3rds bodies, Olympus uses its own 12 pin cable (the Olympus E-1/E-3/E-5 used a standard mini USB 2.0 cable). Fortunately, Olympus does use the same cable throughout the generations, so all of my micro 4/3rds cameras and tough cameras use the same cable. But, it is better to use the standard micro USB cable. I believe the E-M1 mark II will use a standard USB 3.0 cable.