Category Archives: Micro Four-Thirds

Panasonic’s μFT cameras

Olympus 17mm f/1.8 MFT Zuiko – Part III

Micro Four-Thirds, Photographs

Some snaps.

You can read my review of the Panasonic GX7 here.

Part II of this lens review is here.

AF speed:

By way of preface, I can state categorically that the AF focus speed of the Olympus lens on my GX7 body is as close to instantaneous as is possible regardless of the lighting. Whereas I had a 30% rejection rate with the 20mm Panasonic because the lens did not focus in time, the rejection rate with the Olympus, based on the 193 images I snapped the other day, none at an aperture smaller than f/2.5, was zero. Such rejects as there were resulted from poor composition, weak subject matter and so on.

For the street snapper little more need be said.

Flare:

Before getting into the serious street stuff, let’s dispel any issues concerning flare, the other debilitating ‘feature’ found in the Panasonic optic. This unexciting image was shot with the sun in the frame, shining directly into the lens:


Minimal flare.

No modern lens I own, not even the 35mm f/1.4 Sigma for the Nikon, can hold a candle to this performance. One other note. The Olympus 17mm f/1.8 lens delivers exceptionally high contrast images (which goes hand in hand with its outstanding flare resistance), so much so that I found that I often had to turn down contrast (Down with the Highlights slider, Up with the Shadows one) when processing the RAW images in Lightroom 5.

Sharpness:

Resolution? The only thing to report here is that 18″ x 24″ prints, a medium far more demanding than any electronic display, are par for the course at any aperture you care to use. Stopping the lens down need only be done when more depth of field is required.

Is the lens as sharp as Sigma’s monster 35mm f/1.4 on my (even more gigantic) Nikon D3x? No. I doubt anything is, if you have the patience to actually find an example of the Sigma whose AF is properly adjusted – it took me three before I got there. Then again, the Sigma with no camera body weighs more than the GX7/17mm combination and the Olympus focuses noticeably faster.

Is the Oly sharper than the Panny 20mm? Who knows, given the Panny’s inability to lock in sharp focus in a reasonable time?

Pictures:

Here are some snaps from my outing, all taken in San Francisco on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, the city alive with shoppers and tourists. All were taken between f/1.8 and f/2.8, using RAW originals processed in Lightroom 5, with ISO from 400 (Kodak TriX lives!) to 3200. Mostly these are straight out of the camera, with no post processing other than RAW conversion to JPG and automatic application of my lens correction profile :


Lighting up. Nothing beats a 35mm (FFE) lens on the streets.


Selfie. The GX7/17mm Oly combination is almost impossibly responsive.


$5 pup. I snapped five in five seconds here – a buck a snap – and the fourth
caught the dog just so. The truly silent electronic shutter in the GX7 is a boon.


These charmers were getting a lot of attention.


Carving my pastrami at Lefty O’Doul’s.
The rye bread here is beyond fresh.
At f/1.8, ISO3200.


Dining al fresco on Maiden Lane. Quite lovely colors here.


Impossible not to make a donation when visited with warmth like this.
At f/2.5 and ISO400, this one made a gorgeous 18″ x 24″ print.


Uh huh.


Tattoo dude.


Looking up.


Toothless in San Francisco.


What happens when you listen to sell side stock tips.


Shoeshine man. The electronic shutter is inaudible at any subject distance.


Porsche girl.


Alone.


The sales pitch here was “Jesus is a Negro”.


Ritz Carlton guards making out like the CIA.


Beautiful color rendering. The GX7’s in-body OIS works well – this was at 1/20th.


The shallow depth of field at large apertures comes in handy.
The Oly lens has excellent resolution.


Some faces leave no time for composition. The last snap of this outing
and I was half dead from exhaustion, but could not pass this by.

Color rendering:

The color rendering is really pleasing in these images. Whether that’s due to the camera, the lens or both I have no idea, but the combination is right up there with Bogart and Bacall, Astaire and Rogers, and JP Morgan and systemic corruption.

Aperture priority operation:

I used the ‘A’ exposure mode for all of these snaps, with the electronic (silent) shutter, meaning that the only thing I ever had to fiddle with was the control wheel to change apertures. Panny really needs to update its firmware to allow one stop intervals between clicks, here. Only gear fetishists need the default 1/3rd stop steps, which only serve to slow operation down.

Electronic shutter math:

One caution – as I always use the silent electronic shutter in the GX7 – doing so with fluorescent lighting as the sole light source is not a great idea. You will get stripes as the tubes flash on and off during the exposure, as here:


In the little boys’ room. f/1.8, ISO 3200. Spare GX7 battery
is in the coin pocket in my jeans. The excellent
slip proof Upstrap is on the camera.

Be sure to read the Comment below regarding the use of non-OEM batteries.

Assuming a 60Hz flash frequency (US mains) the five cycles seen here suggest that the electronic shutter takes 1/12th second (5/60) to traverse/scan the field of pixels, which is why you get noticeable distortion of moving images taken using this shutter. You can bet that the scan speed will increase in subsequent iterations of this design, making for less movement distortion.

For my preferred subject matter, movement distorion is not an issue. If it’s an issue for you, use the faster traversing mechanical shutter in the GX7, which is some ten times faster in this instance. Why anyone would need the primary benefit of the electronic shutter – silence – with a moving subject is beyond me, so I fail to see this as an issue.

What I write is genre specific:

In these articles it is not my goal to comment on anything other than taking street snaps and making nice, big, sharp prints from them. If movies, landscapes, birds, bugs or sports are your thing this is the worst place to look for guidance. If you want to learn about the mind numbing selection of exposure modes, issues like framing rates, white balance and sensor aberrations or how well this gear compares with dozens of competitors, there are any number of fellows with white lab coats and zero imagination out there whose site content you should be reading instead.

Controls and ergonomics:

The knurled ring surrounding the shutter button is programmed to change apertures, being faster in use than the rear control dial. Other than the shutter release, it’s the only control used in the field, along with the C1/C2/C3 top right dial settings which are programmed to ISO 400, 1200 and 3200, respectively. ISO 3200 is the maximum the electronic shutter works with, which is just fine at f/1.8 in poor light.

Panny has some silly statements in its instruction manual as to the largest prints which can be made at different ISOs – silly on the conservative side, that is. Anything up to ISO 3200 will, given a modicum of technical skill, yield prints of any size your heart desires. Panasonic has made steady progress from the sensor found in its groundbreaking G1 and is to be highly commended for its efforts.


Street snapper’s dream machine. Amateur looks, state-of-the-art responsiveness.

The nice chromed protective lens filter is a 46mm UV from B+W and is a recommended accessory given the relatively exposed front element which, like the rear element, is plane on the outside, being neither convex or concave.

Finally, note that I dispensed with the duct tape on the top plate holding the EVF in place, replacing it with some double-sided sticky tape below the eyepiece, where it’s invisible.

Conclusion:

For years I have dreamed of a small, fast, automated digital camera and fast prime wide angle lens to do what the Leica M did so well for me on the streets for over three decades. Small with instant response, silent, unobtrusive, sharp. And with autofocus, please! Let’s not forget in-body OIS. Don’t-care-if-it’s-stolen cheap would be nice, too.

In the Panasonic GX7 mated with the Olympus 17mm f/1.8 MFT lens, I rather fancy that my dreams have been granted, and for less money than a couple of hours on the local shrink’s couch for far greater benefit. The sheer ‘transparency’ of this combination, placing fewer obstacles between the eye, the brain and the recorded image than ever before, redefines the street snapping standard for this devotee of the genre.

Recommended without reservations for like minded photographers.

Olympus 17mm f/1.8 MFT Zuiko Part II

Micro Four-Thirds

Very promising.

You can read my review of the Panasonic GX7 here.

Part I of this lens review is here.

Chrome and small:

A chrome body deserves a chrome lens, so that’s the version I chose of the Olympus 17mm f/1.8 for my GX7.


On the GX7.

Compared with the (really excellent, though constrained by its slower apertures) 14-45mm Panasonic MFT kit zoom, the 17mm Olympus is noticeably more compact. Weight is about the same, the metal exteriors of the Olympus seeing to that. Is it meaningful that the finish is metal rather than resin? No. As long as the result is small, sharp, fast and cheap, who cares? And, as I will illustrate, the Oly is all of those things. Say what you may about the construction quality of Leica’s 35mm f/2 Aspherical Summicron, throw-away cheap it most certainly is not. You can buy eight of the Olys for one Summicron and still have dinner money left over, not to mention AF into the bargain.


Compared with the Panny kit zoom lens.

Now anything is smaller than a Nikon D2/3/4 body, short of a Mack truck, but you can get a sense of the diminutive size of the lens on the GX7 here:


The warbler and the cuckoo. The awful looking black electrician’s
tape was replaced with chrome duct tape, below.

Ergonomic fixes:

First, a couple of fixes with silver duct tape are called for to enhance the functionality of the GX7.

Because Olympus uses a snap-back focus collar allowing engagement of MF, a piece of tape is stuck to the underside of the lens to prevent accidental engagement of MF mode. The spring detent is relatively weak and MF makes absolutely no sense with this lens, though I can testify to the smoothness of the MF action, with proper infinity and closest focus stops and no feel of grinding gears:


Tape prevents engagement of MF mode. The big arrow upper
right makes it easier to open the battery/SD card cover.

Then the hard-to-see-who-would-ever-use-this pivoting EVF eyepiece is taped well and truly in the normal position as it has shown a frustrating preference for getting dislodged with the GX7 slung over the shoulder. I admit that the superglue option is tempting here. You snap the camera to the eye and the bloody eyepiece is pointing heavenwards, accomplishing the twin results of ensuring you miss the snap and making sure you look like a dork.


Tape keeps the eyepiece where it belongs.
This is tough silver duct tape.

Lens correction profile:

Next, I created a lens correction profile as none seems available from Adobe – probably because on Olympus bodies vignetting and distortion are automatically corrected, not something available to Panasonic body users.

You can find the profile here (scroll to near the end, past all the yummy MF Nikkor profiles), download it and install it where indicated. Thereafter, if your camera’s import profile is set to automatically apply the lens correction profile, you will see this once your images are imported to Lightroom (or Photoshop):


EXIF data in Lightroom,
using my profile.

Why create a lens correction profile? Because, through f/5.6, the 17mm Olympus shows noticeable vignetting on Panasonic bodies, especially from f/1.8 through f/2.8, together with very minor barrel distortion at all apertures.

Camera orientation sensor:

Yippee! One of my (minor) grumbles about the outstanding Olympus 9-18mm zoom lens was that the orientation sensor was missing. Import of images to Lightroom, where the camera was held in portrait mode, would import in landscape orientation, necessitating these all be highlighted in Grid view and turned through 90 degrees. Not a big deal, but an irritant. Well, when I imported my first images from the Oly 17mm on the GX7, portrait snaps came in correctly oriented. So I went back and checked the GX7 with the Oly 9-18mm and, blow me down, those came in correctly too. So the fault appears to lie in earlier Panasonic MFT bodies which did not play well with Oly optics in this regard, and it’s nice to see this has been fixed.

Manual vs. autofocus:

MF is there if you must, but quite why you would want to use it beats me. It’s rather like a stick shift in a modern car where automatic gearboxes are far faster than any manual shift possible. The focus speed with AF is instantaneous to all intents and purposes. Need to focus off center? Pre-focus on the area of interest then take a first pressure on the button to lock focus, recompose and click. What could be simpler, faster or more accurate?

The provision of near-instant AF with the GX7/17mm Oly combination does more to obsolete any thoughts of a digital Leica M/35mm Summicron than any consideration of price, sensor size, quality of manufacture, bragging rights, you name it. I’ll have taken five perfectly focused images while the Leica user is still futzing with his focus collar, trying to get those small rangefinder images superimposed. As a street snapper, the Leica is obsolete regardless of affordability. Period.

Comparing the Oly optic with the Panny 20mm is no contest. In addition to awful flare, the Panny adds to its woes by making a noticeable grinding noise while struggling toward the focus point, where the Olympus optic is dead silent, making the Oly especially useful for movie makers. Sure the Panny optic is sharp, once it gets there (just avoid sun anywhere near the optical axis), but it’s probably best destined for architecture and landscape snappers with a tripod where focus speed is irrelevant. Static subjects, in other words. For that matter, an FF DSLR is a far better choice for this sort of work where definition tends to be the be all and end all, and weight is rarely a consideration.

To enter MF mode, the focus collar is pulled back toward the body where it clicks into place, disclosing the useless depth-of-field scale but providing real hard stops at closest focus and infinity. Nicely done. Focus peaking on the GX7 works fine (and especially so in poor light for MF mavens) but, for the life of me, I cannot engage the enlarged center of image focus mode which is so well engineered with Panasonic lenses. Switching the GX7’s body lever to MF makes no difference. If it’s in the extended instruction manual I cannot find it, but even a Talmud scholar would struggle to find anything in that abomination. Panasonic continues to make the worst user manuals in the universe.

Spare battery: Goodness knows who the supply chain genius at Panasonic is – probably Tim Cook moonlighting – but spare batteries for the GX7 remain unavailable, and will run $60 when they finally arrive in the US. I bought a $15 Wasabi spare and it works perfectly, both in the camera and in the charger. A spare or two make sense with the GX7 whose small size dictates an even smaller battery. You will be luck to get 300 snaps on a charge and if you pixel peep or use the camera’s wi-fi 150 is more realistic. Not great.

In Part III I will report on use of this lens on the streets.

Here’s a first snap at f/2, ISO1250:


Waiting for my French coffee and croissant.

Trust me on this one, you will like what you see.

Olympus 17mm f/1.8 MFT Zuiko – Part I

Micro Four-Thirds

A fix for what ails the 20mm Panasonic lens?

You can read my review of the Panasonic GX7 here.

I just ordered a 17mmm f/1.8 Olympus Zuiko AF lens for my Panasonic GX7 body. As the GX7 adds in-body image stabilization and as the Olympus lens is reputed to have very fast and silent autofocus, the combination of the small body and the 35mm (FF equivalent) fast prime lens proved irresistible. I paid $400.


Olympus.

The standard for comparison here is, of course, the 35mm Leica rangefinder optic which graced my Leica M2 and M3 bodies for over three decades. Whether as a modest f/3.5 Summaron, a better f/2.8 Summaron, and even better f/2 8-element Summicron and, finally, the ne plus ultra f/2 Aspherical Summicron, ‘Leica M body’ and ’35mm lens’ simply go together. Until modern AF and digital sensors came along, a Leica rangefinder body and a 35mm MF lens were the street snapper’s ideal. Then prices went stratospheric and now only investment banksters can afford them, for display in their china cabinets along with their trophy wives.


Leica. Note the corrosion
on the brass helix.

The specifications are similar, but the Leica optic uses heavy chromed brass in its construction whereas the Olympus makes do with plastics for the most part, set in a light alloy metal barrel. Both lenses come with engraved DOF scales, both quite useless given that such calibration is meaningful for a specific print or display size only. ‘Retro chic’ is the best (?) you can say of it, disregard it and get down to snapping.

The Leica optic is 1.4″ long as is the Olympus, with diameters coming in at 2.0″ and 2.3″, respectively. But the German lens weighs 12.8 ozs compared with but 4.2 ozs for the Japanese one. The Summicron focuses to 28″ while the Olympus goes down to 10″.

And there are two other factors to consider. The dated, overpriced Leica M body has no AF, and a tired optical finder whereas the GX7 boasts a stabilized body with an excellent EVF and full AF and manual focus modes. Any Panny owner, however inept, with but a few snaps under his belt will beat the Leica investment banker to accurate focus every single time and his success rate will be 100%. Guaranteed. And with the electronic shutter option in the GX7 he can do so in total silence. The Panny operator will also be able to use 2-3 shutter speeds slower owing to the (excellent) Panny IBIS, negating the advantage the Leica’s bankster owner’s claims for his bigger …. errr …. sensor.

Silly me. How could I forget. There’s a third and overriding factor. When it comes to total weight and cost, there’s no comparison. How do $10,200/36.8 ozs versus $1,400/18.4 ozs sound for the camera and body ensemble? No prizes for guessing which is the MFT version.

In Part II I’ll take a look at some ergonomic issues and fixes for this combination. Long time readers will recall the massive disappointment I had with the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 lens which was incapable of fast focus and made a lot of noise not getting there on time, only to deliver one of the most flare prone images I recall in any lens since my 1959 Kodak Brownie 620. That Panny lens was returned 400 images and one day later to B&H, in disgust. It’s since been updated in Version II with a metal focus collar but, by all accounts, remains every bit as flawed. The only consolation here is that the Olympus optic cannot possibly be worse. (Reminds me why I bought MSFT stock when Ballmer was finally booted out. His successor could not possibly be worse).

Flare – a sneak peek:

The reflected sunlight from the Transamerica building was so intense that it was impossible to look at, but if you can see any flare in the result your eyes are better than mine. OK, there is one pinhead sized flare spot visible in the top left of the building at the right if you look hard, but absolutely no overall veiling of the image. Remarkable.


Panasonic GX7, 17mm f/1.8 Olympus MFT at f/2.8. No filter used.

More on flare – or rather on its absence – later. No, I did not use the silly-priced $60 Olympus lens hood (maybe Leica makes it?) as I do not own it. Cheaper aftermarket versions exist but I will pass in the name of compactness.

Part II is here.

Panasonic Lumix GX7 – Part V

Micro Four-Thirds

Wi-fi.

Part IV is here.

There are excellent descriptions of how to enable Wi-fi in the GX7 at CameraLabs.

I’ll add some personal experiences below.

Wi-fi:

Wi-fi on the GX7 means that you can send images to your portable device of choice – cell phone or tablet, iOS or Android – after first having downloaded the Panasonic Image App from the AppStore (iOS) or GameStore (Android). The app is free. Further, once the GX7 is connected to the device, you can control just about anything on the camera – focus (using the touch screen on the cell phone or tablet), framing rate, movie mode, you name it. However, you cannot send or receive emails while the camera and device are connected as they share a wi-fi circuit unique to the two devices. So if you download images from the camera to your device, you must then switch to your regular wi-fi or cellular connection before these can be sent out.

Here’s the order of events to get wi-fi working:

  • Turn on the GX7
  • Hold the wi-fi button on the rear until the blue diode lights up
  • Go to Settings->wi-fi on your device, find and activate the GX7 wi-fi connection – it’s named ‘GX7-204E2A’. The first time you do this you will have to input the password shown on the LCD display of the GX7. Thereafter you can simply save this password to your device.
  • Open the Panasonic Image App on your device – your device will take 10-20 seconds to connect to the GX7. Sometimes this fails so turn the GX7 off and on and the app on the device off and on. Re-pair the wi-fi and try again after doing this. It usually works by the second attempt, worst case.
  • The Panasonic Image App will now display on your tablet or cell phone exactly what the lens on the GX7 is seeing. Magic! You can now control the GX7 fron your device.
  • Take a picture by touching the camera icon on your device. Enlarge any image to full screen by touching it.
  • You can now download the picture to your device by touching Playback on the device app, whereupon all the images on the GX7 will be displayed on the device in thumbnail format. Touch any thumbnail for a full screen view.
  • The Panasonic Image App does NOT recognize Panasonic RAW images. You will see a preview with a symbol but you cannot email the image. Thus you must set the GX7 either to JPG or RAW + JPG. In both cases, the JPG file will be both visible on the device and can be emailed out once you revert to your normal wi-fi or cellular connection.


The GX7’s wi-fi connection seen on the iPhone.


The GX7 under remote control by the iPhone, seen on the iPhone.
You can move the focus rectangle using touch-and-drag.
Touch the camera icon (circled) to take the picture.


Image downloaded to the iPhone. The logo indicates
this is a RAW image which cannot be emailed.

I have successfully tried the above with two iOS devices (iPhone5 and iPad Air) and one Android one (Nexus7 tablet).

While steup is a bit clunky, operation is simple and effective. It’s a nice feature to have if you want to email images on the run or control the GX7 remotely.

Panasonic Lumix GX7 – Part IV

Micro Four-Thirds

Manual focus lenses.

Part III is here.

The range of dedicated prime and zoom lenses from Panasonic, Olympus, Sigma and Leica for the MFT format is now very large indeed. Over 40 lenses and counting. But that does not mean that older manual focus lenses from other makers are useless.

The Panasonic GX7 is exceptionally well attuned to the use of these older MF lenses. Mine are Nikkors but adapters are inexpensively available for just about any lens on the planet, owing to the low bayonet flange-to-sensor dimension of the slim body. That means that infinity focus will be attainable on just about every lens ever made. This means owners of old – and superb – Canon FL lenses (which, unlike the EF line which came after, have proper aperture rings), and owners of old Minolta, Leica and Leicaflex lenses can also revel in modern body technology. Don’t buy any of that ‘made for digital’ bunk used to sell modern plastic-fantastic optics. The old Canon, Nikkor, Rokkor and Leitz lenses are some of the best optics every made and most can be had for a song.

On a technical note, the distance from the optical center (nodal point) of the adapted MF FF lens to the camera’s sensor will be large, thus mitigating the incidence of light rays striking the sensor at acute angles. The MFT format cherry picks the best definition in the center of the full frame image circle of these FF optics. This helps greatly by sidestepping edge aberrations, thus requiring no lens correction profile for the lenses I highlight below.

The EVF in the Panny MFT bodies has always excelled with MF optics as it automatically adjusts to the aperture, maintaining constant brightness. So you can enjoy the strange experience of taking your f/2 MF optic, stopping it down all the way to f/22 and the only thing you will see change in the finder is the depth of field! The image maintains constant brightness as the EVF’s circuitry instantly adapts.

Secondly, the outstanding central area focus technology from the G1 and G3 continues in the GX7. Switch the rear lever to MF, double press the rear control dial, and the central part of the image is magnified up to 10x for critical central focus, the magnification adjusted with the rear control wheel.

Third, used in Aperture Preferred exposure automation mode, exposure is automatic – and correct.

But the GX7 adds two new technologies missing from its predecessors. First, you can turn on focus peaking which will outline in-focus areas in green, yellow or blue – your choice. Sometimes this really helps, especially in poor light. At worst it does no harm.

Much more importantly, the GX7, for the first time in any Panny body, adds an in-body anti-shake stabilizer (IBIS) and Panny does not stop there. The body permits you to set the stabilizer to the focal length in use and three settings can be re-programmed and saved. You can also elect two axis or single axis stabilization, the latter for tripod use.

To simplify access to this stabilizer menu, I recommend programming one of the function buttons to ‘Stabilizer’. I assigned it to the LVF (Fn4) button which is poorly placed by the eyepiece for its default purpose of switching between EVF and LCD. I then assigned the EVF/LCD function to the QMenu (Fn1) button which I would never otherwise use. Thus the Stabilizer menu can be called up with one button push, rather than having to page through many menus. The extended operating manual explains how to pre-program focal lengths of choice into the stabilizer menu. Thereafter, a simple touch on your lens of choice on the LCD display, then a touch on ‘Set’, and you are off.


Three favorite MF Nikkors programmed into the in-body stabilizer.

Adapter: I use this $14 adapter for my Nikkors. It measures to better than 1/10,000th inch parallelism between the front and rear flanges, at which point my micrometer gives out, so it will be good enough for the most fastidious. There is absolutely no play on the GX7 on either the body or lens flange. Recommended. The adapter comes in a host of lens mount fittings. At the price asked, you can spring for one for each of your favorite MF lenses.


Nikkor to MFT adapter.

As I explained in my G3 review, few MF lenses actually make sense on the MFT body. You lose the automation and small size of MFT optics and have to add manual steps to make things work. But four of my Nikkors make eminent sense for use on the GX7:

55mm f/3.5 Micro Nikkor:

This outstanding (and very inexpensive) macro lens goes to half life-size on an FF body. It can be easily found for well under $100. On an MFT body it becomes an effective 100mm, doubling your subject distance for easier lighting, and now going down to life-life size without the need for any further adapters. MF is fine for contemplative macro use, making this a perfect companion to the GX7 body. Used on a tripod, the swiveling eyepiece and the LCD display make for ease of focus and composition. A perfect macro rig.

Here is the Micro Nikkor at closest focus – this is my D2x – at full aperture:

85mm f/1.8 Nikkor:


Same DOF as a 170mm lens at f/6.3.

This one needs little explanation. Imagine using a 170mm f/1.8 at full aperture with the bulk of an 85mm lens ….


With the 85mm Nikkor at f/1.8.

180mm f/2.8 ED IF AF D Nikkor:

This is actually an AF D autofocus Nikkor which is easily switched to MF. D lenses have aperture rings, discontinued in the later, and current, G range. There’s one reason to use this optic and that’s to enjoy f/2.8 at an effective focal length of 360mm, where it is simply stellar. With the current 400mm AF f/2.8 Nikkor retailing at $9,000, you can do the math. The IF focus is light and precise and focus peaking really works well with this lens, for some reason. Other than that the 45-200mm MFT Panasonic zoom, which is f/5.6 at the long end, is easier to use.


Hand held at f/2.8.

500mm f/8 Mirror Reflex Nikkor:

This lens is a natural for the GX7. The finder is bright, despite the slow, fixed f/8 aperture and IBIS adds what the G1/G3 sorely lacked. The outfit is very compact but you should seek out a support at all times, where possible. While there is no slapping nirror to hurt definition, the effective focal length is 1,000mm which is non-trivial to hand hold steadily, with depth of field being paper-thin. This dictates the use of the magnified central focus aid in the GX7 whenever possible. The exceptionally smooth operation of the focus collar in the Mirror Nikkor simplifies things considerably. The 1,000mm (effective) focal length is a nice step up from the 400mm (effective) limit on the Panny 45-200mm MFT optic.


This 3″ lemon was 10 feet from the camera.
500mm Reflex Nikkor. 1/100th second, ISO 400, tripod, electronic shutter with IBIS.

Effectiveness of the in-body stabilizer:

Testing with and without the stabilizer switched on I estimate that the in-body stabilizer in the GX7 is worth 2-3 shutter speeds’ improvement over a non-stabilized lens. It works as well with AF MFT lenses from Olympus (which have no in lens stabilization – I own the 9-18mm Oly) as it does with MF Nikkors.

Conclusion:

Manual focus lens use on the GX7 will never be as easy as with an Olympus or Panasonic dedicated autofocus MFT lens, but it makes sense for a few select optics. The required adapters for old Manual Focus lenses are very inexpensive and of excellent quality.

In Part V I’ll take a look at a new technology in the GX7, absent from the G1/G3 – Wifi.