Digital Camera Review

Digital Camera Review

Sep 25, 2008 - By Steve Morgenstern
Completely new camera formats don't come along that often, but we've just had our first hands-on with one; the first camera that uses the new Micro Four Thirds format. We spent some quality time with a pre-production sample of the Panasonic G1, the first camera in the recently announced Micro Four Thirds format. The G1 is an interchangeable lens camera that looks like a shrunken SLR, but works very differently, with photo composition handled on the live LCD screen instead of through an optical viewfinder. We were impressed overall with the camera's performance, but still wonder if there's actually a market for a camera that's significantly smaller than a traditional SLR, but still much larger than a pocketable point-and-shoot. Panasonic has not announced final pricing or availability yet, but we expect that it will hit the market before the end of the year for about $800. Our first impressions review based on our tests with a pre-production unit follows.
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Manual Control Options
Manual focus is available, using the elecronic viewfinder of the full-screen Live View display, and manual exposure options include full manual, shutter-priority and aperture-priority shooting.

Focus
Auto Focus
After working with various SLR Live View modes which stammer and stutter when asked to auto focus quickly and accurately, we anticipated problems with auto focus on the G1, which is basically attempting the same technically difficult feat. In the most impressive aspect of our pre-production camera shooting, we found auto focus blazing fast and rock-steady, equalling anything we've experienced with a standard SLR.

Auto focus uses 23 focal areas, either all together or via single-point selection. It can be triggered when the user half-presses the shutter button or set to continuous auto focus, sacrificing battery life for extra-fast response times.

ISO
ISO settings range from 100 to 3200.

White Balance
In addition to automatic white balance, there are five white balance presets: daylight, cloudy, shade, halogen and flash. It is also possible to take a manual white balance setting by shooting a white or grey card, and store two settings if you plan to return to a particular shooting situation. Direct color temperature setting of white balance is also supported, along with the option to tweak any of the presets along the blue/amber and magenta/green axes.

Metering
The G1 uses a 144-zone multi-pattern metering system. Multiple-zone, center-weighted and spot metering are supported.

Shutter Speed
Shutter speeds range from a fast 1/4000 second to 60 seconds (most systems cut off at 30 seconds or less), plus a Bulb setting that maxes out at about four minutes..

Aperture
Available aperture will, of course, depend on the lens used. The kit 14-45mm lens offers an aperture range of f/3.5 at its widest setting to f/5.6 at full telephoto.

Image Stabilization
The G1 relies on optical image stabilization in the individual lens.

Picture Quality / Size Options
Three aspect ratios are supported: 4:3, 3:2 and widescreen 16:9. Maximum image size, in the native 4:3 format, is 4000 x 3000 pixels.There are no really small size options suitable for emailing, but it is possible to resize an image in playback mode.

The camera supports JPEG, RAW and RAW+JPEG shooting, with JPEGs stored at standard or fine quality settings.

Picture Effects Mode
Panasonic couches its image effects as different "film modes." These include Standard, Dynamic, Mature, Smooth, Nostalgic and Vibrant in color and Standard, Dynamic and Smooth in black and white. There are also two user-selectable film type options which instantly bring up a full set of hue, saturation and brightness parameters while shooting.
Modes Page 6 of 8 Conclusion
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