Panasonic GF-1 / 20mm f1.7 mini review

[Dave Buchhofer]

So I've picked up a new toy this week, the Panasonic GF-1 kit with 20mm f1.7 (Effective 40mm in those mystical 35mm terms.) which i'm honestly finding to be a bit more useful of a focal length for my every day shooting than my d90 with 35mm (52mm effective)

 

there is a 2x crop factor on the Micro 4/3rds system, after a bit of research, there are currently two ways to go, the Panasonic system has the advantage currently of a nicer prime kit lens (the 20mm1.7), overall faster auto-focus acquisition, and a built in pop up flash, for those 'party' point and shoot times. the Olympus pen (EP-1/2) system has the advantage of in body image stabilization, and better out of camera jpeg rendering, and a nicer addon electronic viewfinder if finders are your poison.

 

I went with the Panasonic for the flash and auto-focusy speeds, since I've got a 3 year old boy as one of my primary test subjects, and he's starting to get quite fast!

 

I had a little chance to walkabout tonight in town while i was waiting for my takeout food to cook up, along with a few test snaps from the weekend, and I must say, I'm pretty damn impressed so far with this tiny system. i find its a bit large to actually be a fully pocketable camera, but for me, the responsiveness/speed/quality makes up for that so far, and i find it a solid complement to my other somewhat larger kit (nikon D90) and can see myself keeping it at hand a lot more than the full dslr setup.

 

I find that there is a fair amount of sensor noise on higher iso images, but personally don't find it too bad as long as you stay below 800, or pay attention to your gradients at 1600. I look at it as a reasonable compromise for the size as long as you keep it in mind while selecting your max auto iso / shutter / fstop.

 

Here are a few snappy images that I've pulled in the first few days of having the system. some of the following are pushed fairly far in lightroom, some are out of camera.

Edited March 9, 2010 by Dave Buchhofer

[Dave Buchhofer]

and a couple more shots.

[Stephen Thomas]

I have a friend who uses the GF1 and swears by it, and this is someone who also has £3000 Nikon lenses to play with! The HD movie mode is pretty sweet too, especially in black and white.