Thursday, October 18, 2012

Panasonic G5 – Review Part 1 – The arrival …

Well, the arrival was about a week ago, and coincided with the sale and shipment of my D7000. In fact, in the last couple of weeks I have sold the body, the grip, and 5 or 6 lenses. It’s moving quickly and I have mostly replaced my system already.

Here is what I have so far:

  • Panasonic GF3 and 14-42 X Vario PZ Power OIS as a kit
  • Panasonic G5 as a body
  • Panasonic 45-175 X Vario PZ Power OIS
  • Samyang 7.5mm Fisheye
  • Olympus 45mm 1.8

This is a fairly complete kit with power zooms from 28mm EFL through 350mm. The fisheye gives me a 15mm viewpoint and does a wonderful job with sharp corners and no CA to speak of. And the 45mm is 90mm EFL at 1.8, which gives DOF equating f/3.6 on FF at 90mm. That’s some lovely subject isolation.

The G5 has been breathtaking for me. I love the interface, although I have had to learn a whole lot of tricks and buttons. But it feels a lot like the GF3 so I am not bothered about all that learning curve.

Image quality is superb … I use the electronic shutter, which is limited to 1600ISO, but I have strong OIS so there is little need to go faster. If you really need more speed, then the Olympus and mechanical shutter makes a lot of sense.

So let’s have a look at a few preliminary images …

I started by shooting my keyboard lamp. And I could see right away that I was going to love this zoom lens … look at the clarity and the nice blur and bokeh at 28mm EFL at f/5.6 … quite surprising …


Panasonic G5 + 14-42 X Vario pz  1600iso  f/5.6  1/50

Later that evening, Nick showed me the perfect steak that he had just cooked. Very impressive indeed …


Panasonic G5 + 14-42 X Vario pz 1600iso f/3.5 1/15

Well, that was just a quick introduction to my new main camera. Fantastic! I love carrying it and shooting it …