Panasonic GX1 fondle report

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Andy
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I had a good play with a GX1 in Park Cameras today. They have them in stock, body only, for £499 which is £50 less than a few days ago.

I already have the GF1 which I love. The GX1 is a clear step up though. The build quality is very apparent as soon as you pick it up. The excellent Panasonic menus are nice & recognisable, and the touch screen is well integrated. The larger rubberised handgrip is particularly nice.

I also tried the additional electronic viewfinder and thought it to be very good indeed. I'm sure it would be excellent in bright light which would render the rear LCD otherwise useless. The button to switch from EVF to rear LCD is likely to be quite annoying though as it's not very intuitive.

No real comment on image quality but if it's better than the GF1 it should be very good indeed.

I was toying between buying the GX1 and adding the Olympus 45 1.8, or buying the 45 1.8 and the Panasonic 8mm fisheye. In the end I went for the 45 and the fisheye as I have a lot of need for the fisheye for sports work (stadium views and suchlike), and could live with my GF1 for a bit longer.

The Olympus 45 1.8 looks a bit of a bargain by the way. A "real" 90mm 1.8 makes for a superb portrait lens and the bokeh is really excellent.

I've now got a very nice setup of GF1, 8, 14, 20, and 45mm primes that all fit into a diddy bag. Super.

Anyhow - if you are looking for a diddy camera with some excellent lenses, the GX1 certainly fits the bill.
 
Had a play with one in Jessops, unfortunately it was in one of there security things so didn't get a proper handle of it.

Impressions are favourable, AF is very quick. No worries about the sensor as it has the same one as the G3 so its already proven. One thing that I've felt about the GF1 is that it feels better with primes rather than zooms.
 
Had a play with one at Jacobs and planning on taking a SD card and checking it out at SRS when the 14-42 X lens comes out.

Was gonna buy a standard zoom for my K-5 but decided against it as if I want to take pictures of everything while walking about chances are I won't want a K-5 + 16-50 with me. Despite being a rather small built DSLR it still is not take everywhere with you portable enough. So a GX-1 with a 14-42 and maybe a couple of primes (45 1.8 and 20 1.7 spring to mind) would be much more convenient.

When I played with it I didn't particularly like the colour reproduction on the LCD but that might have to do with the setup/lighting and so on, will see how it does with colours when I pop my SD card in it and take the pics home to check out.

It does feel very very well made and thought out. The LCD is bright the AF is very fast and the menus look quite logical.Zooming in the picture was actually nice and noise free. I hated the stiffness on the non X zoom. A massive effort and resistance was not even.

Will wait for a month or two as the price is bound to drop and see what Pentax might come up with during January...
 
You can change the colours, contrast etc on the read LCD by the way.
 
Hoping they start selling it with the 12-35 when that gets released... :)
 
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