cliffpatte
Speed camera anarchist
On a mission yesterday to buy something that I never found, I went into a couple of camera shops and had a play with a Panasonic Lumix G1. This camera is the first production model using a micro 4/3rds mount and missing the mirror box.
Essentially it is optically identical to the Lumix L10 (and the Leica equivalent) but missing the mirror, so that the lens can be smaller and the gap between lens and sensor has been shortened.
Hefting it in one hand and comparing it to an L10 in the other, it is really tiny. In fact it feels similar to the FZ7 Lumix which was always OK but not comparable to a micro 4/3rds camera that can take (with a mount adapter) any 4/3rds lens from Olympus, Leica, Panasonic etc
I didn't get a chance to compare image quality between this and one of my cameras, as I didn't have a spare SD card to stick in it, but based on the review / preview screen it looks better than the FZ7 and certainly is comparable to something like the Fuji S5 with a kit lens.
I'm not sure if I had one whether I would keep the default kit lens on it for long as it doesn't open very wide, but rumour from the shop keeper (classic camera) is that they will soon have an M Mount adapter and the idea of a small camera that can take a summicron 35 or 50 with a crop factor of 2 is certainly quite appealing.
I'm not sure if you could take an OM lens and OM-4/3rds adapter and stick that on the micro 4/3rds adapter and get it to work, but it would certainly open up possibilities for recycling some top quality glass in my loft including an interesting OM 180mm lens.
The only potential down-side with this camera system is that doing away with the mirror box makes you reliant on a digital viewfinder. Obviously it won't be as good as a Nikon D3, but what was surprising was that in manual focussing mode you could see enough to be able to focus accurately in shop levels of light. It also has, in auto focus mode, square or rectangular shapes showing you what it is focussing on, so you can adjust which zone you want for shots with foreground and background blur effects (subject again to that apertuire limit on the lens itself and the sensor being half 35mm size).
Cliff
(oh well it's nearly christmas)
Essentially it is optically identical to the Lumix L10 (and the Leica equivalent) but missing the mirror, so that the lens can be smaller and the gap between lens and sensor has been shortened.
Hefting it in one hand and comparing it to an L10 in the other, it is really tiny. In fact it feels similar to the FZ7 Lumix which was always OK but not comparable to a micro 4/3rds camera that can take (with a mount adapter) any 4/3rds lens from Olympus, Leica, Panasonic etc
I didn't get a chance to compare image quality between this and one of my cameras, as I didn't have a spare SD card to stick in it, but based on the review / preview screen it looks better than the FZ7 and certainly is comparable to something like the Fuji S5 with a kit lens.
I'm not sure if I had one whether I would keep the default kit lens on it for long as it doesn't open very wide, but rumour from the shop keeper (classic camera) is that they will soon have an M Mount adapter and the idea of a small camera that can take a summicron 35 or 50 with a crop factor of 2 is certainly quite appealing.
I'm not sure if you could take an OM lens and OM-4/3rds adapter and stick that on the micro 4/3rds adapter and get it to work, but it would certainly open up possibilities for recycling some top quality glass in my loft including an interesting OM 180mm lens.
The only potential down-side with this camera system is that doing away with the mirror box makes you reliant on a digital viewfinder. Obviously it won't be as good as a Nikon D3, but what was surprising was that in manual focussing mode you could see enough to be able to focus accurately in shop levels of light. It also has, in auto focus mode, square or rectangular shapes showing you what it is focussing on, so you can adjust which zone you want for shots with foreground and background blur effects (subject again to that apertuire limit on the lens itself and the sensor being half 35mm size).
Cliff
(oh well it's nearly christmas)
