A week's experience on G85

alcelc wrote:

You've provided a lot of useful information.

Note: Assign Exposure Compensation to a fn key is the only way to call up the "Exposure Bracketing" and "Flash Adjust" by the up/down & Left/Right cursor keys on G85. Unlike GX85, push the back dial will enter similar operation.

A useful feature is 'Exposure Bracketing' will bracket ISO when using manual mode with Auto ISO. It compensates to some extent for the very basic Auto ISO implementation on the G80.

Weakness on G85: Since G85 controls Burst by the Drive Mode dial (on top left) and AFS/AFC by AF mode lever, these 2 options cannot be stored in C mode, whereas GX85 can. Hence for a C mode which should need AFC or Burst, I must select those options on the Drive Mode Dial or AFS/AFC lever after C been called up. Quite inconvenience for the style of operation I am used to.

I also found this a bit inconvenient compared to Olympus cameras, which can store these settings in the custom menu.

9) Highlight protection tendency: Very similar to GX7 and GX85. Tested with zebra at 105%, use either center metering or multi metering, compared shots taken at the point before zebra appears, then a few shots of +1/3ev each. Examine the histogram in-camera playback as well as on Faststone, it suggested that G85 has a room of 1/3ev (need further testing for the 2/3ev) before actual highlight will be overblown (on SOOC jpg). Hence, watch the zebra, +1/3ev (or +2/3ev, not 100% sure yet) after zebra appears could guarantee a 100% ETTR. It could avoid excessive noise due to underexposure and a more vibrant SOOC output.

Not sure if this is useful for you but ISO 100 produces a +2/3ev brighter image so can act like an automatic ETTR function.

12) Low Light AF: I personally felt that GX85 can do better (faster AF, more snappy AF acquisition) on using the same lens despite Imaging Recourse had put the LLAF of GX85 at -5.6ev whereas G85 at -6ev).

AFC and AFF on the G80 doesn't work in what Panasonic calls 'low light situations' and the camera defaults to S-AF. In my experience 'low light situations' can also mean a variable aperture lens zoomed to the F5.6 end of the zoom, under indoor tungsten light. Useful to be aware of it.

I think the G80 is still a good camera for the price.