The G2 and G10 tinker at the margins.

As I am so delighted with the Panasonic G1 I tend to keep a weather eye out for new gear in this line of micro four thirds cameras. My wish list is short and, I suspect, shared by many serious users of the G1:

• Drop the prism hump
• Delete the built-in flash
• Upgrade the EVF to avoid ‘burn out’ in bright light
• Move the eyepiece to the rear left
• Reduce noise at higher ISOs
• Improve iA to make it use faster shutter speeds
• Add a 10mm ultra-wide pancake lens

Well, the recent new product announcements from Panny address only one of these – possibly improved noise at high ISOs from an updated processing ‘engine’ – marketing gobledegook for software.

The G2. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

The new G2 adds 720p movie mode, SDXC card capability and moves around a button or two. I’m a street snapper – you can keep the movie mode. And one 8gB SDHC card holds 600 RAW images so the far greater storage promises of SDXC are not something I lust for. The EVF is unchanged. The G10 fills what must be a niche between P&S compacts and the G range, offering simplified controls in a G1 format body. And, curiously, the 14-45mm kit lens is now 14-42mm, deletes the OIS switch which is now a software function (no big deal for me as I always leave it ‘on’) and – this is the strange part – the lens actually gets slightly larger, if lighter. That makes no sense other than to accountants who are squeezing profit margin out of the product. Panny makes no claims for improved optical performance, so it’s hard to draw any other conclusion. Truth be told, the optics of my 14-45mm are so superb, even if the mechanicals are so-so, meaning a rough zoom ring, that I would hate to see things going backwards.

Sure, the G2 adds a touch screen for menu selections but for those like me who hardly ever use the LCD screen, this is a solution looking for a problem.

So it’s hard to see these new models as anything more than minor refreshes while we all wait for a GH2 with a proper viewfinder and some new compact lenses at the very wide end.