Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1

Speed and Timing

Panasonic promises a top burst rate of 3 shots per second. Our lab tests surpassed these expectations, delivering a solid 3.3 shot per second performance, making it a respectable contender within the consumer SLR market.

The GF1 supports two burst mode settings: High at 3 frames per second and Low at 2 frames per second. When the camera is set to AFC mode, the camera will adjust focus between shots, cutting the burst rate.

In addition to the basic 10-second and 2-second shutter delay options, you can also choose to have three consecutive shots taken after a 10-second delay, handy if you’re racing to get into the photo.

Focus Speed

Autofocus performance has been a key strength of the Lumix G series from the start, and this continues with the GF1. The Live View autofocus on most digital SLRs is too slow to be practical when shooting moving subjects. Panasonic, though, has figured out how to make contrast detect autofocus nearly as fast as the standard SLR phase detect system, and certainly workable for all but the most sports-oriented photography. This is an area where the GF1 has a clear advantage over the Olympus E-P1, which suffers from pokey autofocus speeds.

The continuous autofocus in video mode pioneered on the GH1 is also implemented on the GF1, though without the single 10x lens super-quiet the company provides as the GH1 kit lens, you may pick up some focusing noise while shooting in continuos autofocus mode.

The autofocus system supports four modes: 23 Area, Single Area, Face Detection, and AF Tracking.

It is also possible to select between AF-S (autofocus single) and AF-C (continuous) modes. AF-S focuses when you press the shutter halfway and maintains that setting, even if you move the camera. AF-C keeps refocusing as necessary while you hold the shutter down, even if your subject moves, or you move the camera. Yet another set of autofocus options are prefocus settings, available through the custom settings menu. Here you can choose from Q-AF (Quick Autofocus), which tries to autofocus whenever the camera is held still, and C-AF (Continuous Autofocus), which attempts to maintain focus at all times, even if the camera is moving and your finger is nowhere near the shutter button, with compatible lenses. Confusing terminology rules here (having both Autofocus Continuous and Continuous Autofocus as distinct choices isn’t playing fair), but you do get a lot of flexibility to handle different shooting situations. Of course, using the prefocus modes is going to result in a significant battery life hit.

There’s a bright red autofocus assist lamp on the front left, right below the LUMIX logo, which does a nice job when the lights are low. However, the positioning isn’t perfect. It’s very easy to cover up the lamp with your right middle finger while shooting, especially if you have large hands.

Panasonic continues with its odd variant to face detection, which it calls face recognition. You can register up to six faces in the camera’s built-in memory, complete with name, birthday and a priority rating if you choose. Then, when the feature is turned on during shooting, those registered faces will be given preferential treatment when focusing and setting exposure. The name can even be displayed on screen, for no apparent reason. The face recognition concept does have some interesting benefits, though. When taking group photos (at a school concert, for example), it will help make sure your little darling is in focus rather than some random kid. And during playback, it’s possible to view only images which include recognized faces.

And, of course, there’s manual focus mode, chosen via an on-screen menu selection rather than a control on the lens. By default, a zoomed-in view of the scene (up to 10x magnification) appears when you start focusing manually, returning to normal view when you depress the shutter button halfway. In certain circumstances (when shooting on a tripod, for example) we found this useful, though having the rest of the screen disappear while trying to manually focus on a moving subject is less practical. You can also set the camera to allow fine manual focus adjustment after the autofocus system has done its business.