Panasonic G7 pros and cons please

Tatouzou wrote:

glassoholic wrote:

Tatouzou wrote:

My experience with G7 is:

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• no problem with shutter shock even with the 14-140, thanks to Panasonic automatically switching to e-shutter at speeds between 1/60 and 1/320

(...)

Is that switch to e shutter at speeds from 1/60 - 1/320 a default setting or needs to be enabled?

You have to switch to e-shutter-auto in the capture menu. You do it once and forget, the camera will remember.

It looks like e-shutter auto only applies to some specific Panasonic lenses.

Among the lenses I have (12-32 f3.5-5.6, 35-100-f4-5.6, 14-140 f3.5-5.6, 42.5 f1.7 and 25 f1.7), e-shutter auto only switches to e-shutter when using the 14-140 between 1/60 and 1/320.

e-shutter auto also allows you to use shutter speeds faster than 1/4000, not possible with mechanical shutter.

Another way to force the switch to e-shutter is to enable silent operation: it is a single command in the capture menu which switches to e-shutter and shuts off the red AF assist light and the shutter noise in the loudspeaker, allowing a completely silent and stealth operation.

The penalty for using e-shutter are:

• some banding may occur either in specific fluorescent flickering light or when shooting (very) fast moving targets (I never experienced it). This is inherent to e-shutter technology.
• the raw files are 10 bits instead of 12, which means you may loose 1 or 2 stops in shadow recovery ability in very high contrast scenes (I didnt really experienced it). In newer or higher grade bodies like GX8, there is no penalty, e-shutter raw files are 12bits like the mechanical shutter files, thanks to faster sensor reading.

Newer Panasonic bodies now have an electronic first curtain mechanical shutter, which eliminates shutter shock (so does my GM5).

Thank you!