Getting a jump on things

To read the whole series on the Panasonic G1, click here

While I eagerly await the arrival of my Panasonic G1, I took a few moments to download the instruction book from the manufacturer’s web site.

With modern cameras more and more resembling computers, it makes sense to get a jump on things – the manual is no less than 167 pages long.

Here are some things I noticed:

• The functions of the cursor buttons on the back are completely different from those on my Panasonic LX-1
• There’s the equivalent of a ‘film plane’ mark on the top plate. Wonder who would ever need that?
• Panasonic does not list a wireless remote but aftermarket vendors on eBay sell them for under $40
• The LCD monitor can be turned ‘display in’ on the back of the camera – nice for protection and no distraction
• The charger connects to power using a cable – nice, as bulky chargers with pins on the body will often refuse to fit in tight places
• You can use the camera connected to the mains with a power cable
• SDHC cards up to 32gB are presently accepted
• A Custom Menu function allows you to limit LCD display to essential functions – that’s nice, given the sheer number of choices
• A World Time setting allows you to specify a second time zone
• Auto Review of pictures can be set to present everything magnified 4x
• There are seven brightness settings for the LCD monitor
• There’s a setting to automatically brighten the LCD in sunlight
• The swiveling LCD allows both landscape and portrait orientation of the camera at waist level
• There’s an EVF proximity sensor – like with the iPhone – which optionally switches off the LCD when the camera is raised to eye level
• The EVF has eyesight adjustment – hurrah!
• The battery is good for 330 minutes of continuous LCD use
• The digital zoom (ugh!) extends the 28-90mm lens to 55-178mm (full frame equivalents) by using 3.1 of the 12 million pixels
• One of the EVF display options allows all display clutter to disappear – ‘film mode’ with a dedicated top plate button. One of the first things I will set!
• There’s a small, built-in flash – useful for dynamic range enhancement (or limitation, more correctly) in bright sun
• The self timer has a three picture option
• The latest firmware upgrade, v. 1.2, claims to reduce noise at high ISO settings – I do not know with which version the camera ships
• There’s an option for 3 shot bracketing – just the thing for HDR photography
• Depressing the front dial allows switching between aperture and shutter priority auto exposure – this can be disabled
• A preview mode allows preview of the picture – here’s the wonder of an EVF – you can preview depth-of-field without the picture darkening. Is that magic or what? There’s a dedicated button for that on the lower right rear!
• There are three Custom Menu settings possible – hooray!
• You can choose three aspect ratios – 4:3, 3:2 (Leica) and 16:9 (widescreen)
• It looks like the 14-45mm kit lens has a non-rotating front element which will simplify use with a polarizing filter
• The screen can display up to 22 items of data – now do you see why I like the idea of switching all of this off?
  

• A 4gB SDHC card will hold 185 pictures in RAW format at 4:3 aspect ratio. Which means that 1gB is fine for me.
• Panny has done a careless job of converting the manual to a PDF and several pages are missing including, most frustratingly, one of the index pages.

I prefer to use Lightroom 2 for all my processing (and simply plug the removed SDHC card into my iMac using a card reader) and have confirmed that the latest version of Adobe Camera Raw built in to LR 2.4 supports RAW files from the G1. It’s not that the software supplied by camera makers is bad – I have no idea – I simply refuse to learn yet another interface when I am so comfortable with Lightroom.

Anyway, there’s lots to look forward to and one reader has reported that the EVF is quite usable. This is the key to the whole design. Remember Panny’s first awful attempt at an EVF in the Panasonic L1? At least they made that body look more like a Leica M, but everything else was wrong. Interestingly, this time Panny has taken the conservative route of emulating the pentaprism hump common to all SLRs of the past 60 years even though none is needed – there is no glass pentaprism inside. Panny has also admitted that they could make the camera significantly smaller (here’s hoping!) but have refrained from doing so, probably for marketing reasons. Mysteriously, they are marketing this as a trade-up camera for the point-shoot-and-miss crowd whereas I regard it as possibly the first viable option for the disillusioned-Leica-rangefinder set.

Finally, I took a moment to compare the size and weight of the G1 with the long deceased Leica CL which I mentioned here. The M2 is also compared, because it is the single greatest body Leica ever made. I think you may agree this is instructive reading – all data exclude the lens and are in mm/grams:

Leica CL: 121 x 76 x 32 365 grams
Leica M2: 138 x 77 x 33.5 580 grams
Panny G1: 124 x 83.6 x 45.2 385 grams

Interesting, huh?

Now all I have to do is wait for the UPS man!

In the meanwhile, you can enjoy a really fact packed review by Matt Grayson in this video – note especially just how small that body appears in his hands:

To read the whole series on the Panasonic G1, click here

In a moment of insanity occasioned by despair at anyone ever introducing a small camera with a large digital sensor and with low shutter and autofocus lag, I asked a fellow photographer whether the only choice was a Leica M8, a camera I have remorselessly trashed in these pages for its dated, inept technology, ridiculous price and poor execution. And it’s not like I’m some sort of Leica-hating nut, having used M2, M3 and M6 film cameras for 35 years.

The reply gave me a well deserved spanking. I mean what was I thinking of buying that piece of antique jewelry?

“Come on, Thomas. I know that engineers love shiny, well-machined metal, but an M8? I think it was The Master who called it “nothing more than a joke”. There was a TV show a while back in which a photographer might or might not have been the father of a young woman. He gave her an M8, and in trying to solve the mystery, I wondered whether he was her father because he gave her such an expensive gift, or whether he wasn’t her father and just wanted to get rid of it.

There are so many really interesting cameras around that are worthy of your attention. The LX3 is a real improvement on your LX1. There are the 4/3rds cameras, which might be useful with the pancake lenses. I just bought the new Panasonic ZS3 (TZ7 in Europe) which will fit into your 501s better than the LX1, despite its awesome 25mm-300mm lens. I was trying it out today, and you can see the results below. I was quite far away from the subjects when I took the shots.”

Well, anyway, getting an M8 would have involved an extended diet of crow, not to mention an extended diet, period, so I dropped the idea. The Digital Pen makes the mistake of not having a proper viewfinder – sorry, but LCD screens do not cut it, nor does an arm-outstretched posture work when snapping pictures, at least not for this photographer – so that idea went the way of the dodo. By the time you add the optical viewfinder you have bulk equal to a small DSLR – and a lousy viewfinder.

I have rethought what I wrote here and have ordered a Panasonic G1 camera. Having scanned the reviews and now that the camera has been on the market for some 9 months, I concluded that it might do the trick – a fast, small and unobtrusive street snapper at modest cost. Even experienced photographers seem more than happy with the electronic viewfinder and the responsiveness. Although the camera is not pocketable, it is reminiscent of my old Pentax ME Super of bygone film days and it’s not like I am going to be heart broken if someone steals it. Try saying that about that dated antique, the Leica M8. If you ever remove it from the display case at home, that is.

The Panasonic G1. In blue. On order now!

Mine will come in blue because that looks really amateur which is important to me. I hate black, there’s no chrome version and the red is over the top – British Racing Green would have been nice. It comes with a somewhat underwhelmingly spec’d 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens, but that optic has garnered uniformly fine reviews and the inclusion of an image stabilizer in the lens goes some way to making up for the uninspiring maximum aperture. And the 28-90mm full frame-equivalent zoom range is just what the doctor ordered. Further, the sensor dust cleaner should counter one of the biggest bugaboos of my Canon 5D – sensor dust.

The Electronic Viewfinder (EVF) has enjoyed generally positive comments except in really poor light. Those EVFs I have tried so far are, simply stated, just awful. And while I refuse to hold my camera two feet away from my face, the swiveling LCD screen suggests some intriguing waist level opportunities if the LCD screen is remotely usable in bright light. It should be fine, I’m guessing, in poor light where it takes the place of the EVF.

While you can adapt Leica M lenses to the body, the 2x focal length magnification factor makes most of these less than ideal, and users have commented on the poor performance of the 28mm and wider Leica optics at the edges of the frame, owing to the dated, non-retrofocus optical designs which place the nodal point too close to the sensor and its photosites. At least that’s what they meant! Plus you are back to fear of theft again – have you priced Leica M optics recently? I don’t mind wearing $10k on my wrist but on my shoulder ready to be snatched? I don’t think so.

But the icing on the cake here, if the G1 works out, is the prospect of a 20mm f/1.7 pancake lens (=40mm) which will take me right back to my New York days, if not to New York, and that lovely ME Super with its superb 40mm Pancake Takumar. The 20mm lens has not been released at the time of writing.

Meanwhile, if you want mind-numbing technical analysis of the camera, you need go no further than DP Review, which sets the standard for objective analysis and measurement of modern digital cameras.

By the way, if you wonder why the Leica name is missing from the lens on the G1 (Leica has designed many lenses for recent point-and-shoot Panasonic cameras), just read this piece between the lines to see how Panasonic thinks. They use software to correct aberrations rather than making ever more expensive optics. Surely this is the way of the future?

I’m off to find some blue tape to obscure those awful manufacturer’s markings on the front.

Will this be the ‘digital M2’ I have been waiting for all these years? Time will tell, but it’s not a very costly experiment.

Actually, you can double that, consonant with my strict principle that a dollar blown on a toy dictates that a like amount be sent to my better half. That’s also a compelling reason not to get an M8!