Panasonic Lumix GF1 Review

As I mentioned in my "About" box to the right, I use a Canon EOS 20D and a new-fangled micro four thirds camera. Well, that micro four thirds camera that I use is a Panasonic Lumix GF1 and these are my impressions.

What I like:

• The size, with the 20mm lens that comes with the camera, is truly exceptional. My old Pentax 35mm camera has finally found its spiritual successor. That Pentax body, a K1000 from the late 1970's, was super-compact, built like a tank, and accepted Zeiss. It was such a fantastic camera, it received a continual manufacture longer than any camera body that I know of, from 1976 to 1997.
  
  Leica has always followed the general formula of small body, great glass, and simple function, so I guess it's of little surprise that they and Panasonic work closely. But even they got bigger than their original cameras, and they always cost your first-born. The Pentax sold for a relatively paltry $299 and came with a great 55mm f/2 lens. Conveniently, according to The Inflation Calculator, that $299 is worth $1,118.85, which is right in line with GF1's $899 price. If you once loved a Pentax, you owe it to yourself to try this camera.


• For a sensor that's about two-thirds the area of an APS-C camera, the low-light performance is excellent. Recording high-def video while driving at night results in a low-noise, brightly exposed roadway. It blows things like the Flip and other YouTube-ready recorders clear out of the water.


• The rear LCD works better as a viewfinder than you'd expect. While I had some issues with keeping the camera perfectly stable while also holding it far enough away to see the screen, I adapted. Still, the large display, depth-of-field preview, and live-view of the results of your work makes this perhaps the best trainer camera on the market.


• It's almost pocketable. It will fit inside of a big jacket pocket. If you've ever held an old Pentax, it's similar in size. It's comparable to super-zooms from the major manufacturers, and it blows them clean out of the room on every metric. Yes, this costs a lot more than a super-zoom, but you can buy the camera, and every focal length from 14-200mm (28-400mm 35mm equivalent) for less than the cost of a single pro-sumer DSLR body from Nikon or Canon, and this will provide similar low-ISO results.


• The button layout is pretty good considering the size of the body.


• The micro four thirds system makes an excellent family camera kit. As I mentioned, you can buy the body, and two more lenses, the 45-200m and 14-45mm, for about $1,540. That's less than just the body of the Canon EOS 7D. That isn't cheap by any measure, but considering what the size allows you to do, namely carry it about, the maxim of "the best camera is the one you have with you" means one hell of a camera.


• Finally, image quality. Photos are almost noise-free up to ISO-800, but get pretty dirty at 1600. Still, it destroys every super-zoom and compact camera on the market. I think I would have liked fewer pixels and more ISO, but as it stands, in high-light situations, this camera resolves a bucket-load of detail. Far, far, FAR more than a compact, more than the Canon G11 or Leica X1, and about as much as a prosumer DSLR like the EOS 50D. The lenses currently available from Panasonic are also fantastic. Considering the size, price, and target market, Panasonicthehedgehog is producing what can only be called some of the best lenses on the market with price considered.


• Fantastically fast autofocus. Much faster than other compacts and the Olympus Pen EP-1.

What I don't like:

• The low-light photography performance is not comparable to larger-sensored cameras like the Nikon D300 or Canon EOS 50D, which are similar in price. Even my old EOS 20D outperforms the GF1 at ISO above 800. Like I mentioned before, I would have liked fewer pixels and more ISO, but the balance as-is is good.


• The shutter/aperture adjustment dial feels cheap and is hard to move quickly and easily. Compared to the two-dial setup of larger SLR's this is cumbersome and slow.


• The flash is stupid. I wanted the larger sensor to have more chances to not use the flash. Built-in flashes are weak and crappy, and this is no different. They wash-out the image and give all photos taken with it a snapshot quality. I guess it's useful in a pinch, but I would have preferred smaller size and lower weight.


• The sensor's dynamic range far exceeds a compact camera, but is still noticeably lower than a full-format or APS-C. I'd like some more range, which could have been achieved with a lower pixel count. This can be remedied to a degree by shooting in RAW and working some Photoshop magic on it, but the raw materials just aren't as good.


• The overall layout is not conducive to heavy photography. Quickly changing parameters, such as flash level, requires digging into a menu, and adjusting speed and aperture with the same janky jog dial is slow. The space taken up with the crap flash could have been used for more controls, which would have been much preferred for a frequent and heavy photog. If size isn't a concern, I'd go with an APS-C SLR camera. The GF1 outperforms entry-level cams like the 500D/Rebel or Nikon D3000, but even there the ISO performance out of the APS-C cameras is better. By the time you get to the 50D or D90, which are both about $200 more than the GF1, resolution and ISO performance are both better.


• SD cards are not known for blistering speeds, and the difference between high-end CF cards is very noticeable in burst mode, shooting in raw, and extracting files from the card. I understand that size is a serious concern, but when raw files can be over 15MB each, and the fastest SD cards on the market max-out at 30MB/s, I yearn for a CF.

The micro four thirds market is just starting, and I think the future is bright. Canon and Nikon have been slow to do anything in the entry-level SLR market that might threaten their profitable high-end. Also loathe they have been to do anything that would disrupt their lens market which currently flows neatly in both price and quality from compact, super-zoom, and APS-C to full-format.

This oligopoly of the market has only gotten worse in the digital age, and the micro four thirds standard is the first one to truly offer something different to lure people away from Can-kon. It's high-quality, undercuts the leaders in glass quality, and offers a compact shape that simply cannot be had elsewhere. This is, hopefully, a new era.

Everybody Eats Berries

Nobody needs a berry spoon.

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Mommy and Baby Bush Wallpaper

Every time I find a scene with lots of contrasting colors and exposures, I wish I had better glass. God dammit, why do good lenses have to cost as much as a house?

Regardless, I thought this scene was cute. It made me think of a mother and baby bush, holding hands as they looked out over the water.

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Seagull in Flight Wallpaper

I managed to nail a pretty sharp photo of a seagull in the sky.

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Another Forest Path Wallpaper

This one isn't very good, so I played around with the levels and contrast to an extreme degree. Hey. It's not like I'm selling anything. If you like it well enough, I hope you enjoy it on your desktop.

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Water & Bubbles Wallpaper

Some bubbles in my fish tank with ambient light. One of my favorite desktops, yet.

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Forest Scene Wallpaper

Pretty boring, but hey, it's a desktop wallpaper. If it was too interesting, you'd never get any work done. Not like you do, anyhow, you lazy bastard, but might as well not make it any worse.

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Leather Wallpaper

A piece of leather. It's a continuation of my quest for great textures.

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Waving, Fiery Tree Wallpaper

I'm trying to get better at capturing interesting motion shots. This is one of my first that is usable as a desktop. The high winds were causing the tree to move so much that the final shot makes the tree almost appear to be on fire. Very cool.

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A Return to the Wall.

That forest wall is making a comeback. I bumped up the reds and browns and used an image with the wall to the right, for your desktop full of icons.

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Sidewalk Grate Wallpaper

I was roaming around Providence while my girlfriend was in an appointment and snapped some photos on Benefit Street. I loved the texture of the aged metal.

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A Random Flower Wallpaper

I bought this plant at Wal-Mart as a gift, so of course it ended up hanging in my dining room. Much to my pleasant surprise, these weird, almond shaped extensions of the plant produce these pretty, bluish-purple flowers regularly. So I took a photo. Of course, I have crap on my lens. I always have crap on my lens. Macro photography is the worst for that. Focus up close, and BANG, there it is. Shit. All OVER the lens. Thank God for the rubber stamp tool.

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Red Maple B&W Wallpaper

I took a photo of a red maple set against the sky that had some fantastic colors. The sun was beginning the set, resulting in a faded blue backdrop to the still-vibrant red leaves. I had no idea which direction to take the photo, so I just removed all of the color completely. I'll upload other versions, too, but this is the first.

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Reeds at Night Wallpaper

Some reeds in my yard. Actually, I think they're shoots from some hostas. Enh. Doesn't matter.

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A Bare Tree at Night Wallpaper

Long exposures in low light, more so than anything, reveal shitty lenses. My lenses aren't shitty, but they aren't really good, either.

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Rainy Window Wallpaper

It took me forever to get a clear shot. It's freakin' hard to focus on rain drops on the other side of a window. But after much trial and much tribulation, I got it. It looks good, I think. And, as usual, goes very well on a desktop. Enjoy!

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Spooky Moon Wallpaper

A photo of the moon through branches of a tree.

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Stone Wall Wallpaper

An old stone wall from the farms that used to be in this park near my house.

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Faded Wood Wallpaper

My photography has moved on into a quest for textures. Since I'm doing this primarily to give people good desktop wallpapers, open expanses of texture with no real focus are sometimes the best backdrop to a desktop full of broken shortcuts and porn.

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Llama Wallpaper

This llama was at a local harvest festival. They make the weirdest noises. It's almost like Marge Simpson's worried whine, only higher-pitched.

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Excitement For The 7D

I'm a big Canon fan. I've been using my 20D for many years now, have a few Canon lenses, and have been thinking about upgrading to the full-frame EOS 5D. I have not ruled out the possibility of going whole-hog and buying the EOS 1Ds, but considering that it is over twice as much as the 5D, I'd have to think about it for some time.

My favorite glass, though, has got to be with Sony. Sony has the only autofocus Carl Zeiss lenses on the market, which is a big plus. Zeiss isn't the clearest glass on the market, but when it comes to macro photography I can think of none better. The bokeh in Zeiss lenses is just dream-worthy. Obviously, there's Leica, which gives boners to the best photographers worldwide.

I actually think Leica is overrated. I've never had dealings with Leica equipment that I couldn't have achieved with Canon, Nikon, or Zeiss hardware for, at times, one-third the cost. Leica is just so god-awful expensive. For the price, I expect to be able to take Pulitzer-worthy photos and then have sex with the lens.

Leica has produced some serious magic, though, with their recent release of a medium-format digital in an SLR body. Before digital, there were a wide variety of medium-format cameras that didn't require large, modular constructs. Mamiya made one, as did Hasselblad, Fuji, Leica, and almost every other major imaging company on Earth.

But after the emergence of digital, medium format completely disappeared except for a few companies catering to the ultra-high-end of the market. Hasselblad, Leaf, Phase One, and Mamiya are pretty much it. And with prices exceeding forty-grand for a single lens-body-back combo, and lenses which run $5,000 or more, these are out of the price range of everyone. In fact, these companies don't actually sell anything. They are run by succubi that live off of the crushed hopes and dreams of photographers everywhere.

The other problem is that digital is much more flexible than film. Photos that can easily be printed up to 11"x17" with whatever Photoshopping is required to get it up to snuff. When the gap between a $30,000 Mamiya and a $7,000 Canon is as small as it is today, the old Med-For companies have a terribly hard time explaining their existence.

But as digital moves forward, funny enough, the companies that have put medium format into question are putting their own high-end gear into question. For example, I'm in love with the Canon 5D, which costs less than half as much as the 1Ds, and produces photos that are nearly identical. Digital is leveling the playing field in almost every way.

Previously, to get the best shots, you needed to process your own film. You needed to use special film like Kodachrome, Fujichrome, of Cibachrome. You needed to buy TONS of film so you always had supplies to take more shots. You had to buy from special catalogs and stores and owned equipment made by companies no one but you could pronounce. You needed expensive equipment to process your shots with burn and dodge. No longer.

Digital allows anyone to be a post-processor. All they have to do is learn a few tricks in Photoshop and they're off and running. No one needs to mess with film, which removes one of the major barriers in enjoying easy photography. The removal of film removes the need for all of the ancillary equipment required for that film. You don't need exotic films to achieve the colors you want. The internet allows you to shop from every brand and country on Earth. Flickr, Picasa, and Facebook have turned our entire lives into an unending stream of photos. We are all photographers capturing every moment of life. The job of the photographer has been strongly marginalized by photographic clearing houses like Dreamstime, where everyone is a potential pro. Digital has democratized what was once an exclusive domain.

Obviously, this pisses off a lot of pro-togs out there. How can they be special if everyone is like them. I think this is the main reason so many photo art students stick with film. Not because of quality, but because it's the only way that they can feel special and artsy-fartsy.

To demonstrate this, I've tracked down full-size images from the Canon EOS 1Ds, EOS 7D, and the Mamiya ZD. I would have used the DM, but sample images from it have yet to come out. Besides, this is probably a good approximation of the new DM22 22MP camera that will be selling for $10,000 later this year.

Moreover, the ZD is only three years old and cost $12,000. I could buy a whole bevy of Canon lenses for the same price and expect an investment of that size to remain cutting edge for more than a couple of years. Considering the speed of development with Canon and Nikon, the value proposition of medium format as a long-term investment is severely limited.

To quote Mamiya's website, "Other digital camera backs or 35mm-sized DSLRs simply cannot compare!" Well, Mamiya, I disagree.


Just look at this photo comparison. Ignoring different framing, it's obvious that both the 1Ds and the ZD outperform the 7D, but is it worth upwards of six times the 7D's price? And it's also obvious that the ZD slightly outperforms the Canon, but is that worth twice the price?

In my opinion, recent developments in lower-end cameras that cater to the pro-sumer market are starting to cannibalize the high end. Medium format is especially useful for studio photography, but it's there that the differences between formats is least visible in the digital world. It actually begs the question of why medium format is desireable at all, from a technical standpoint.

Obviously, from a business standpoint, the allure of medium format is undeniable. If you're a pro trying to sell your services, you want to look like a pro and that you do not fuck around. People will likely take you less seriously or consider you lower on their list in comparison to another pro who has equipment with names which they cannot pronounce. So from that perspective, medium format is a must.

But what about the markets where medium format isn't a consideration? The markets where the pro doesn't care about others' perceptions of her? It's here where the value of the high-end full-format is shrinking. Why bother with the 1Ds when the 5D, or even the 7D will do?

Perhaps it's for this reason that Canon has, I think, been purposely ignoring the APS-C, pro-sumer end of the market. Canon might have you with their lenses, but that's a once-in-a-decade purchase. The only place where Canon repeatedly gets money out of you is the camera body, so it's in their best interest to force you into expensive bodies.

The glass available for 1.6x cameras from Canon has been woefully lacking for the past few years. Canon calls it the EF-S line of lenses, the S signifying that this is the APS-C-sized sensor. But whether the sensor and camera are up-to-snuff has been meaningless since the good lenses are only available for Canon's full-frame cameras.

Yes, you could simply put the EF lenses onto an APS-C camera, but the 1.6X crop factor pushes the limits of usability on many of the lenses. Canon has been ignoring the pro-sumer market for self-serving reasons. The market both deserves and wants better glass.

It's because of this that I'm excited about the 7D. It shows that Canon is getting more interested in the lower-end, pro-sumer market and, perhaps, this new high-performance APS-C camera is the bellwether to a new wave of APS-C lenses that don't stink. I don't know why this is the case, but the economic downturn likely has something to do with it. It doesn't matter. Just so long as Canon finally starts delivering to a market that simply doesn't want or need the cost and weight associated with full-frame gear.

Forest Path Wallpaper

It's a little out of focus, but that kind of adds to the moodiness of the shot.

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Banana Leaf Wallpaper

A leaf from a dwarf Cavendish banana plant that I'm growing.

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And here it is with a different tint to it. I wanted to upload the verdant version, but this golden version at the extreme end of the tint scale just looked too cool to not offer up.

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W. T. F.

Ok, this has been pissing me off for some time.

Why are artists obsessed with the idea that art is valuable? It's not! But that's a good thing. Because the internet has revealed that most art never did in the first place.

What the internet has done is open the doors of production and distribution. Unfortunately, that's where art used to make its money. An image was valuable because it was hard to get. This wasn't because artists tried to make it hard to get, although many did just that, but because of the state of the world.

To get an image, it had to be painted, or printed, or silk-screened, or SOMETHING. Little ones and zeroes could not be simply beamed across fiber-optic lines from California to Kathmandu. This resulted in a natural scarcity and value to produced art.

For many forms of art, that's no longer the case. Anything that can be reduced to ones and zeroes is now, effectively worthless. That's not to say everything in the world of produced art is worthless, but what can be perfectly recreated is.

Photography people seem to think that the photos that they have taken are somehow worth something. I can't even stress how wrong that is. The photos that I have taken and posted online? Worthless. The photos in the future? Soon to be worthless.

And that's not a bad thing! Far from it. It frees the average artist from the old chains of the art community. Previously, every step of the way required a passing grade from arbiter of taste. Be it a magazine, a gallery, or a critic, you had to impress someone. No longer shall artists suffer the tyranny of the art world. Now, they can directly serve their art to the hungry masses. Just because the old profit model was predicated on this now-defunct art environment doesn't mean the money is gone. In fact, there's more money to be made than ever before.

Many elements of photography are still valuable. For example, high-quality prints of your work are worth something. It's difficult to produce them, requires time and energy and a detailed knowledge of how to correctly translate digital, three-color, RGB (red, green, blue) images from a computer monitor to the ink, four-color, CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) images that are produced in print shops. It is that knowledge, work, and time that is valuable. The image itself is not. The goal of a photographer is to find ways to make money from what is scare and valuable and use what isn't scare to accentuate that process.

You want evidence of this? Just go to Deviant Art, or any artist's personal website. They've got images of their work galore... in low resolution, with watermarks all over it. Guys, if someone wants to steal your work, it's really easy to remove a watermark.

I went to Deviant Art and grabbed one of the top, all-time works. It's really quite good but has that massive watermark on it. You can view the artist's page here.

Here is my work at removing his watermark. You can still see traces of it, but that would be easy to remove with more time. My current work took, and I timed myself, slightly less than eleven minutes. It takes me longer to poop.




He rationalizes the watermark by complaining how people were passing off his work as their own, so he had to. But that doesn't matter. They're doing ADVERTISING for you, you idiots. People will see the work and want the artist. It doesn't matter if some dude is lying, because when they hire him and discover he sucks, they'll start trying to find the real artist. Or come across you by chance when researching the work. And if the thief tries to sell the work, then you can find out and simply sue him for very direct, cut-and-dry, copyright infringement.

Basically, the only way to stop people from copying your work is to destroy it before uploading it, which kinda' defeats the point.

On Photographic Reviews

This bring me to the second part of my rant: photographic review websites.

I can't even begin to describe how much they annoy the shit out of me. They seem to protect their images from their reviews as though they're worth their weight in gold.

Unfortunately, they truly are worth their weight in gold. Zero. It drives me up a wall when the shites... Freudian typo... sites put up their cropped images at JPEG 50. I don't five a shit what the image looks like in JPEG 50! Give me the goddamn RAW files! Give me .png files or JPEG 100's! I'm interested in THE CAMERA, not how good Photoshop is at compressing fucking JPEGs!

Give me the rawest image you can, so I can make my decision. That's why I'm going to your website. It doesn't matter if I found your image elsewhere, eventually I'm going to go get it directly from the horses mouth, because the creation of new work is always valuable. I want it new, when you write, as quickly as possible. As such, I'm going to be at your doorstep waiting for you to publish.

I found out about DPreview.com from a message board. Someone had copied all of these images. He didn't give any credit. He barely typed anything. I asked from whence the images came. Someone on the board said they looked like they came from DPReview. If that guy had not STOLEN their work, I might have never known about them. I now visit DPReview once a week and have purchased camera equipment via their links.

I don't mean to pick on DPReview. If anything, they're the best site on the net when it comes to not being idiots with their photos. They provide raw files, full-size jpegs, and tons of interactive images. No surprise, then, that they're the biggest camera review site on the net. (Seriously, they're fantastic. Go there)

But DPR is the exception. Even big websites like Cnet, don't give you anything. Go here to view the gallery of Nikon D3 photos. I've also ripped one from them.

How the FUCK are you supposed to determine anything from that? Give me the whole damned image or don't freaking bother! At the resolutions they're using, it would be impossible to tell the difference between the D3 and a camera that costs one-third as much.

If you're producing a product, namely art or a review, do everything you can to produce the best product and get me to spend money. Acting like some artistic miser gets you nothing, and writing a review for a camera that NO ONE who can afford it will ever read are not the ways to go about it.

Pond Grass Wallpaper

Some pond grass.

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