Ergonomics & Interface

Considering the size of the lens mount, the GF1 seems tight. There is barely enough space to grip the camera on one side of the lens and about half that much on the other. There is barely any space above or below the lens. The lack of hand-grip is striking with a small protrusion on the front and back to help secure the camera. They do the job. There are loops for a strap on both side. A wrist-strap would probably work best while a hand-strap or neck strap blocks the index-finder from comfortably reaching the shutter-release which lies flat on top of the camera. It is usable but not ideal. An idea might be to place the shutter-release in front, similarly to the lens-release but higher and on the opposite side. It would certainly make it more comfortable. The movie-record button suffers from the same problem.

The camera rear is dominated by the 3" LCD screen. What is not covered by the LCD is covered by buttons, 12 to be exact. There is about one square inch of space below the control-wheel to rest the thumb. The LCD generally shows a clear and smooth image. This being the only viewfinder on the camera, it should be fully Live-View. Unfortunately this is not the case. It does cover 100% of the frame, is capable of autofocus and shows accurate colors, at least after calibrating it. What it has problems with is exposure.

The display varies with exposure compensation but it is not representative and does not change according to the exposure-parameter under control. To see the effect of exposure, one must use the Preview button which first shows the correct depth-of-field and then use the Display button so that it shows the right brightness level. It is really inefficient to need this many button presses to see an approximation of exposure. Furthermore, the Panasonic Lumix GF1simulates blurring from shutter-speed when the Display button is pressed. This causes the display to become out of sync with the scene. Maybe there is a use for this, but not being able to see exposure and maintain a live-display is a serious problem.

The single control-dial is problematic. Not because there is only one, most entry-level DSLRs are like that, but rather because of how it works. The single dial takes the role of two by also acting as a button. When pressed, the dial switches its behavior. In Manual mode, as expected one behavior is to control shutter-speed, the other it to control aperture. In other modes, the dial switches between the parameter under control (Aperture for A, shutter-speed for S and shift for P) and exposure-compensation. There is no EC button here so any accidental movement can set the wrong exposure. During the review period this happened often. There was a similar problem with the Canon S90 in P mode as well but higher-end models usually find a way to avoid this, like the dial-locking switch on a Canon EOS 7D. The remaining buttons are fairly well placed, easy to press and mostly well-labeled. They are a bit soft though, so a number of them got pressed accidentally. However, there is no problem using any of these buttons with gloves on.

The Panasonic Lumix GF1 has two menu systems, the Quick Menu (Q. Menu) and the normal Menu (Menu/Set). Panasonic should really read their labels again because many are quite cryptic. Stabilization has three options: Mode 1, Mode 2 and, you guessed it, Mode 3. The menu system is 21 pages long with quite a few capabilities such as a choice of four aspect ratios (4:3, 3:2, 16:9 and 1:1). The sensor has a 4:3 aspect ratio, other aspect ratios simply crop from there. Not having to deal with an optical viewfinder allows a lot of flexibility in displaying various aspect ratios, guides and information. The GF1 has a very useful movable live-histogram and a plethora of overlaid information. The view is quite cluttered even when certain options are turned off. It would be better if those options and default ones did not need to show an icon (LCD mode, i.Exposure, Image quality, Video quality, etc). There is a mode where the icons are pushed slightly outside the image frame but they still cover up the edges more than necessary.

Evaluation unit courtesy of Photo Service

Image Quality & Performance

The intention of a camera such as the Panasonic Lumix GF1 is to stay flexible, provide the best image quality and be as small as possible. It seems that this digital camera achieves this quite well. Flexibility is provided by the lens mount and quality is provided by a sensor much closer in size to that of a DSLR than to one of a compact camera. As such, image quality is very high compared to a compact while not so far from an entry-level DSLR of a year or two ago. This is really good considering the GF1 is half the thickness and smaller in every dimension.

The GF1 produces reasonably accurate image colors in Standard mode with just a little more contrast than reality. White-balance is also reasonably good in automatic and excellent when manually set. One thing that this digital camera does extremely well is metering. The default multi-segment metering produces well exposed photographs and rarely over-exposes large areas. Due to its less than stellar dynamic range, the GF1 clips more than a typical DSLR and its histograms reflect this by ignoring very small spikes at the extremes of the luminance range. Those spikes do show up in the RGB histograms available in Playback mode.

Image noise is kept under control by some aggressive noise-reduction. Until ISO 400, details are plentiful and there is little noise to be seen. At ISO 800, things get softer due to noise-reduction which does its job of hiding image noise in all but the darkest areas. At ISO 1600, we see more softness and more noise, both are balanced well as none jumps excessively. At ISO 3200, things get quite noisy and much softer but are still usable for small prints. Sharpness on an interchangeable lens camera like this one depends on the lens used. Same thing goes for distortion and vignetting.

Speed is arguably the most important weakness of small cameras. A great deal of slowness is usually attributed to the contrast-detect autofocus system but Panasonic is showing otherwise. The Lumix GF1 focuses quite fast but nowhere near the focusing speed of a DSLR. A few ultra-zooms match or possibly beat its speed but not by much. There is a bit more shutter lag than ideal. It may actually be more of a display-lag. as the circuitry to generate the preview must take some time to do so. Continuous drive mode suffers from this, as the display is severely behind the action, making it utterly useless.

Power on and off are quick but not instant. The remaining operations are quite responsive. This digital camera is shooting-priority and resumes very fast. Playback is really fast with only scrolling at low magnification being slower. There is a special stability-detection feature that starts the focusing system before the shutter is half-pressed. Since lenses are zoomed mechanically, zooming is as fast as you can do it and completely precise. Very few fixed-lens cameras remain with mechanical zoom rings. Battery-life is quoted at 380 shots per charge. This is lower than all but the smallest cameras. For reference, most DSLRs can do at least twice that much.

Overall Score: Excellent   Buy it from:

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Conclusion

There are almost no similar cameras, so one has to consider the compromise in choosing the Panasonic Lumix GF1. For the ultimate in image quality one should to a recent DSLR. For the ultimate in speed, one should go to a higher-end model of DSLRs as well. For absolute portability, there are ultra-compacts. This leaves the GF1 square in the middle. If both quality and portability are needed, the Panasonic GF1 makes an attractive middle-ground. The last factor to consider is versatility. In that regard, the Micro Four-Thirds mount is designed for compatibility with new Micro Four-Thirds lenses and existing Four-Thirds ones as well. Few such lenses exist, but this is bound to change. Olympus' Zuiko lenses are legendary and many of them unique to the Four-Thirds format. Also because of the short back-focus distance of Micro Four-Thirds, more adapters can be made to this mount than possibly any other existing mount.