Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1 Comparative Crops

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1 fits somewhere between a fixed-lens camera and a DSLR. It has a much larger sensor than the former and is much smaller than the latter. Image quality should be closer to a DSLR and can be seen from the 100% crops below. The same image was taken with fixed ISO on each camera at each of the GF1's ISO settings. The remaining settings were left on automatic.

The crops below show that all these cameras produce very usable results up to ISO 400, with the DSLR obviously showing the sharpest results. Note that all digital cameras make a compromise between noise and details by applying some form of noise-reduction. The Pentax K-7
Pentax K-7 being very confident of its sensor applies very little noise reduction which is why more grain can be seen. For both the Fuji Finepix F200 EXR
Fuji Finepix F200 EXR and the Panasonic GF1, softness increases steadily at each ISO. By ISO 800, the Fuji has clearly lost enough sharpness to reduce the maximum print size. Noise is now readily apparent. It takes one more stop for the Panasonic to reach that point. The DSLR remains usable for an extra stop over the Panasonic GF1.

In terms of image noise and details, it seems the Panasonic has managed to balance those well, performing about 1½ stops better than the best ultra-compact and just about 1 stop below a modern cropped-sensor DSLR.