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A compromise for stills, but well-suited for videographers

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matthiasbasler

matthiasbasler

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Have this camera half a year now and have mainly used it for:
  • animal/zoo photography/filming (with Lumix G Vario 100-300 mm/ F4.0-5.6 II, H-FSA100300)
  • everyday photography and filming (with Lumix G Vario 12-60 mm F3.5-5.6 ASPH, H-FS12060E)
  • nature photography (with both lenses, as sees fit)
  • timelapses (even day-to-night)
I put together a lengthy review on amazon. Here are the most rememberable aspects, especially when compared to classical APSC mid-level DSLRS:

Pro:
  1. Features. This camera has an awful lot of them. From a very good time-lapse photography mode, over a useful in-camera HDR to 4K photo mode, filters, sweep panorama and focus stacking. You name it and the camera has it. (Except, perhaps, high-speed videos.)
  2. Video mode. The video features are intuitive to use (something I cannot say about much more expensive Nikon DSLRs). Sharp 4K videos at different framerates and quite a few video features (zebra patter etc.) are sufficient even for enthusiasts. And, the 4K video is stabilized both physically and electronically!
    The camera even has a microphone jack - if you are serious about sound, use it!
  3. Size and weight: If you want to travel light and the image quality of a small-sensor compact camera is insufficient for you, you might be tempted to try this one out. It sits in the middle between those compact cameras and APSC/FF camera both in size and weight (including the lenses) and image quality.
    I mean: 1.1kg with the telezoom (200-600mm eqiv.) and battery is really nice!
  4. Image stabilization: Works really well, both for stills and video. I was able to get some sharp shots at 300mm from a moving safari car. Not always, of course.
  5. Customization: Almost every button and the "digital" buttons on the touch display side bar can be customized. If used properly, this can make the camera a joy to use (... except for changing the focus).
  6. Water and dust proof body and kit lenses: The camera survived the spray of the Victoria falls without any issues. (A friend's EOS Rebel camera didn't.)
  7. No loud mirror. With the sounds turned off and in EFC (electronc first curtain) mode, there is not more to notice than a muted "clickclick". (With electronic shutter the camera is absolutely silent, but this mode has other drawbacks.)
  8. Articulated display: I just love these. Have helped me so often ...
Indifferent:
  • Viewfinder: The digital viewfinder might not be as responsive on quick pans as an analogous one. But after a few minutes I completely forgot it is digital and enjoyed the benefits of white balance, filter and exposure preview and seeing exactly the crop of the scene I will record. Plus, on dark scenes it will "pump" so you can still see something and frame your shot correctly.
  • Autofocus: Autofocus is quick with both lenses, though not always spot-on with the tele zoom. As with other cameras I had, this camera has a tendency to prefer set the focus on contrasty background foliage instead of the animal standing before it. Not clever enough. The way of setting the AF point is very cumbersome with this camera (unless you engage the tochpad for this, which has other drawbacks).
  • Many functions mean you need several days of "learning" to use this camera.
Contra:
  1. Image quality: It is unfortunately exactly the image quality (especially with JPG) which is the main tradeoff of this m43 camera. A sensor around half the size of APS-C, combined with slow kit zooms and a heavy-handed approach to noise reduction means that above base ISO 200 you often end up with images having lost much of their texture, especially in dark areas. I had image samples where I was really shocked during a comparison, realizing that the camera had removed any details from a stone wall in shadow or where a meadow looked very unnatural. Avoid "iDynamic" in this respect!
    I recommend to reduce noise reduction in the image styles, but only shooting RAW allows to get the full potential out of this camera. But this means large files and extra time for processing the images. :-(
  2. Slow kit lenses: While the kit lenses are small, light, weather-proof and well-suited for video, they are slow and thus neither suited for low-light photography nor for cases where you want to get a nice smooth background. Their bokeh is often ugly and distracting, being ring-shaped (!) if the background isn't very far away.
    The 100-300 tele is nice on a sunny day, but not something to use handheld during cloudy winter days.
  3. Poor software. You can download an outdated and limited version of what is considered the weakest RAW conversion software (SilkyPix). Not nice. I purchased PS Elements and their RAW converter delivers so much better results! (RawTherapee is another alternative.)
    Also this is the first camera whose image transfer software does not allow to store the images in the naming schema for folder AND images the way I want it. Again, I have to use 3rd party software. The enclosed image viewer is called "Photo Fun Studio". You can imagine what the target audience is ...
  4. Poor defaults. I already noted that noise-reduction is way too strong by default, but other default settings make things like deleting images rather cumbersome. I can only recommend to read the whole (digital) manual and test f.e. which function is best placed on one of the hardware buttons. (I found HDR rather important.) There's no custom menu.
  5. Many functions, but not perfect. HDR images always come with a loss in detail (even from a tripod), the sweep panoramas often show artifacts (if not shot from a tripod) and the focus stacking does sometimes deliver strange results. If you want best quality, do all these things in post production.
  6. Internal micro: If you care about sound in your videos, do not use the internal microphone. It fails completely if there is any wind. (Not that external microphones cost a fraction of this camera.)
  7. Never go on a shooting trip without one (better two) spare batteries.
Verdict:

If image quality is your main objective, better get an APSC Nikon (or another brand, if you prefer). Not that much heavier, but with much better JPGs (and more headroom in RAW files). This is not the camera for the typical studio photographer.

If, on the other hand, you want a light travel and hiking camera and/or enjoy the step up (in image quality and functionality) from a small-sensor compact camera or smartphone, you likely get very happy with the G85/G81/G80 indeed.

If you want stabilized quality 4K video in a compact package and cannot afford a GH4/5 (or think it is over your head), then this is your camera.

Final note: Unfortunately the "detailed scoring" section has no "travel photography" and "videography" sections, as this would be the one where this camera fits perfectly.
 
That's a solid list of pros and cons.

I wonder what your rationale was for getting the camera. You must have known it was not APS-C.
 
Mark9473 said:
That's a solid list of pros and cons.

I wonder what your rationale was for getting the camera. You must have known it was not APS-C.
Click to expand...
+ 1
Mark9473 said:
compared to classical APSC mid-level DSLRS:
Click to expand...
A comparison to other mirrorless would have been more helpful.

Kelly
 
Mark9473 said:
I wonder what your rationale was for getting the camera. You must have known it was not APS-C.
Click to expand...
Yes and no. First, I never had a m43 camera before.

My rationale was that
  1. I wanted 4K video, camera timelapse and focus stacking in one camera. Which basically points to a Panasonic camera of this sort.
  2. I needed a light, water/dust resistant camera, since it should be used in Africa, hand-held. (And for this purpuse it did very well!)
  3. I wanted, for the first time, to try out a mirrorless camera for silent shooting.
  4. I believed the 2x crop factor would give me an advantage over an APS-C tele for shooting distant wildlife. (I did not anticipate that the advantage was eaten up by the lower resolution over, lets say, a 24 MP APS-C sensor.)
  5. The test images here on dpreview indicated the camera created JPG images equally in noise behaviour to the older EOS 650D (APS-C) I have. But admittedly I was fooled by the strong default noise-reduction, which made the test shots look good but didn't show just how much detail was smeared away. I had to find that out myself later. I better should have looked at the RAW images!
Additionally, hardly any review mentions the bundled software or even judges it. So this part came as a surprise for me.

Then a colleague brought a FF camera with a 100-400mm lens for the same purpose of wildlife photography and I compared some shots. That was when I really started realizing what the advantages and limitation of every system are.

That said, although it is still not the perfect camera for me, it nicely complements my other cameras in areas like video or time-lapse. And its definitely not a bad camera!

Matthias
 
KCook said:
A comparison to other mirrorless would have been more helpful.

Kelly
Click to expand...
Yes, but you know ... I'm not a commercial review company who gets a handful of cameras of every type to compare. I can only compare what I have (or got lent by others), and this is my first mirrorless and first m43 camera.

Comparisons of near-equal competitors are usually well covered in professional reviews such as on this site.

Matthias
 
I'd like to add a note to my above review (it seems can't edit it afterwards):

I was interested in how the G81 (G85) RAW noise levels compare to the Canon EOS700D (technically identical to my 650D) and one from new Nikon D5600 since some of my colleagues praise Nikon cameras for their superior image quality. (No flame wars please!)

Sure, I'd compare apples with peaches... two APSC DSLRs with 3:2 image ratio against a m43 camera with 4:3 sensor. The EOS 700D from 2013 against two cameras from 2016. And yet, for me personally these three were competitors (owning two of them).

I downloaded three ISO800 test chart RAW images from dpreview and processed them with CameraRaw 9.10, as it gives me the best results of all RAW converters I have available and supports all cameras. I developed the unchanged image, a version with noise reduction set to a sensible 30 and one with +2EV overexposure and no NR to check dark areas.

The result is ...

The noise level is more or less identical to my naked eye on a full-sized image. The only difference is the resolution: 16MP (G81), 18MP (700D) and 24MP (D5600). Basically the 700D offering the same image height, but some more width than the G81.

What this imho means is that there isn't that much difference in high-ISO-performance between the G81/G85 and both APSC cameras from 2013 and 2016, the only visible gain of the D5600 being the additional resolution and the possibility to downscale the image in order to further reduce noise. But RAW-wise the G81 does keep up well against the two competitors with larger sensor. That soothes a lot.

What it also means is that if I complained about the image quality in my review, I was strongly influenced by my experiences with JPG images. In medium resolution they are usually very crisp - sometimes even a touch overprocessed showing stair artifacts, but it really is the noise reduction which can cripple images, most visibly when iContrast is on and the camera pushes dark areas such as needle-leaf forests in a landscape scene, smoothing away any detail.

I did not compare things like dynamic range, since the test chart images are not suitable for this.
 
matthiasbasler said:
I'd like to add a note to my above review (it seems can't edit it afterwards):

I was interested in how the G81 (G85) RAW noise levels compare to the Canon EOS700D (technically identical to my 650D) and one from new Nikon D5600 since some of my colleagues praise Nikon cameras for their superior image quality. (No flame wars please!)

Sure, I'd compare apples with peaches... two APSC DSLRs with 3:2 image ratio against a m43 camera with 4:3 sensor. The EOS 700D from 2013 against two cameras from 2016. And yet, for me personally these three were competitors (owning two of them).

I downloaded three ISO800 test chart RAW images from dpreview and processed them with CameraRaw 9.10, as it gives me the best results of all RAW converters I have available and supports all cameras. I developed the unchanged image, a version with noise reduction set to a sensible 30 and one with +2EV overexposure and no NR to check dark areas.

The result is ...

The noise level is more or less identical to my naked eye on a full-sized image. The only difference is the resolution: 16MP (G81), 18MP (700D) and 24MP (D5600). Basically the 700D offering the same image height, but some more width than the G81.

What this imho means is that there isn't that much difference in high-ISO-performance between the G81/G85 and both APSC cameras from 2013 and 2016, the only visible gain of the D5600 being the additional resolution and the possibility to downscale the image in order to further reduce noise. But RAW-wise the G81 does keep up well against the two competitors with larger sensor. That soothes a lot.

What it also means is that if I complained about the image quality in my review, I was strongly influenced by my experiences with JPG images. In medium resolution they are usually very crisp - sometimes even a touch overprocessed showing stair artifacts, but it really is the noise reduction which can cripple images, most visibly when iContrast is on and the camera pushes dark areas such as needle-leaf forests in a landscape scene, smoothing away any detail.

I did not compare things like dynamic range, since the test chart images are not suitable for this.
Click to expand...
You can turn down the jpg noise reduction if its too strong for you. Look up noise reduction in the online manual
 
matthiasbasler said:
I'd like to add a note to my above review (it seems can't edit it afterwards):

I was interested in how the G81 (G85) RAW noise levels compare to the Canon EOS700D (technically identical to my 650D) and one from new Nikon D5600 since some of my colleagues praise Nikon cameras for their superior image quality. (No flame wars please!)

Sure, I'd compare apples with peaches... two APSC DSLRs with 3:2 image ratio against a m43 camera with 4:3 sensor. The EOS 700D from 2013 against two cameras from 2016. And yet, for me personally these three were competitors (owning two of them).

I downloaded three ISO800 test chart RAW images from dpreview and processed them with CameraRaw 9.10, as it gives me the best results of all RAW converters I have available and supports all cameras. I developed the unchanged image, a version with noise reduction set to a sensible 30 and one with +2EV overexposure and no NR to check dark areas.

The result is ...

The noise level is more or less identical to my naked eye on a full-sized image. The only difference is the resolution: 16MP (G81), 18MP (700D) and 24MP (D5600). Basically the 700D offering the same image height, but some more width than the G81.

What this imho means is that there isn't that much difference in high-ISO-performance between the G81/G85 and both APSC cameras from 2013 and 2016, the only visible gain of the D5600 being the additional resolution and the possibility to downscale the image in order to further reduce noise. But RAW-wise the G81 does keep up well against the two competitors with larger sensor. That soothes a lot.

What it also means is that if I complained about the image quality in my review, I was strongly influenced by my experiences with JPG images. In medium resolution they are usually very crisp - sometimes even a touch overprocessed showing stair artifacts, but it really is the noise reduction which can cripple images, most visibly when iContrast is on and the camera pushes dark areas such as needle-leaf forests in a landscape scene, smoothing away any detail.

I did not compare things like dynamic range, since the test chart images are not suitable for this.
Click to expand...
and never used Panasonic's software for processing my photos. I doubt the majority use their camera brand's software, else software like Lightroom wouldn't dominate.

Anyhow, glad you tested this out as we have (mostly) came to the same conclusion. M43 in general has caught up to APS-C. Sure, not quite but close enough.

Next time you go to Africa, look into getting the Panasonic 100-400mm...and compare that with APS-C's equivalent (125-500mm?). Panasonic may still lose in ultimate IQ but I would think the combination would be just a tad smaller and lighter :)
 
peppermonkey said:
Next time you go to Africa, look into getting the Panasonic 100-400mm...and compare that with APS-C's equivalent (125-500mm?).
Click to expand...
Provided that I ever get to see Africa again, I would certainly not aim for even longer focal lengths, as they are basically useless there. During the day it is very hot in the savannah, resulting in rather blurry images due to the air turbulences when photographing far away object (which is why someone buys a telephoto lens).

Instead I would rather try and aim at a faster lens, even if it is only 300 or 250mm, so that for subjects close enough to get useful photos, I can get the best possible image quality for animal photos (blurred background and low noise).

Or maybe I'd use a FF camera with the Sigma C 100-400mm and create image crops when needed. Yes, this combination is heavier, but should have a quality advantage.

But this is all theory for now.

Matthias.
 
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