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A brief initial review of the GX9 vs GX8

Started Oct 23, 2020 | Discussions thread
photofan1986
photofan1986 Veteran Member • Posts: 3,841
Re: A brief initial review of the GX9 vs GX8

Congrats on your new camera! I had the Gx7, the GX80 and finally the GX9, along with the Gm1 and GM5, and I must say the output from the camera is probably the best I've seen (maybe slightly inferior to the G9, which has similar color output but more sophisticated noise reduction).

Big kudos to Panasonic that has improved its color science drastically over the years. My first Panasonic was the Lx5, which I could not keep as the white balance/color rendition was really horrible. I was used to Canon and Fuji compact cameras at the time, and the Lx5, while having great ergonomics and a nice lens, produced awful looking portraits.

The GM1/Gx7/GM5 were nice, but not quite there yet. The GX80 generation was, to me, a misstep as it produced some weird looking blocking artifacts along with magenta blobs on faces. Fortunately, the Gx9 fixed this and then some.

I let the Gx9 go recently and replaced it with the E-M5.3, but it's not all rosy. 
On the one hand, Panasonic has improved its jpegs quality a lot, while one the other hand, Olympus seems to have been stagnating since the E-M1.1 (or even EM5.1). Auto white balance is still as bad as before, and the range of settings is still almost unusable. 
I never thought I'd say this one day, but to me, it's clear that Panasonic Jpegs are now better than what Olympus offers.

 photofan1986's gear list:photofan1986's gear list
Fujifilm FinePix F200EXR Panasonic Lumix DMC-GM5 Sony a7R III Olympus E-M5 III Panasonic Lumix G 20mm F1.7 ASPH +15 more
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