Panasonic GX8 'Kerchunk''.

Adrian Harris wrote:

Panasonic GX8 'Kerchunk''.
A cautionary tale.

Although primarily an em1-mk2 user I still frequently use my GX8 for walk-around or non critical photography applications (It's also lighter and I love tilting EVF.).

But ever since my GX8 returned from having its misaligned sensor fixed (many years ago) it has frequently shook a small amount and made a soft 'kerchunk' sound when taking pictures.

I tried stabilisation on and off and even different lenses, shutter speeds and f stops, plus I have always used the electronic shutter, but never got to the bottom of the cause. Until ...

Yesterday sat quietly waiting for a coffee to arrive I was messing around trying different ISO's, F stops and shutter speeds to see if I could consistently achieve sharper images when the Olympus 75-300 mk2 was attached.

Finally I thought I would try the mechanical shutter and could only vaguely remember how to turn it on - or so I thought!

On my old GX7 it was the bottom left button, but pressing that on the GX8 activated nothing and I was sure I remembered correctly from when in the distant past I had used the camera with flash?

Fortunately I still keep all my camera user manuals on my phone and as the coffee still hadn't arrived I decided to look up how to activate either electronic or manual shutter (talk about being a beginner). Trying to find it I came across 'silent mode' - which I have never activated, but thought let's have a play. And to my surprise it was switched on. It must have returned from the servicing centre with it enabled and I was not aware.

Switching OFF silent mode allowed the bottom left electronic/mechanical button to function once more - and - most importantly, now switched to 'electronic', the 'kerchunk' and camera shake vanished for good!

Well I just thought I would warn everyone. Never to old to learn.

While your experience and advice is good, I should perhaps point out that all the buttons are customisable and many, perhaps most of us will have the buttons doing different functions to yours. For instance, my 'silent mode', electronic shutter activation is through using the Q menu, which itself is customised, rather than an exterior button.

Thought I'd mention it in case some people were hunting around and not finding the controls mentioned.

By the way, it was probably disabled when you had the camera back and you enabled it, not the other way about. Could be wrong though.