Panasonic GF1, First impressions!
After many months, even years, of agonizing over camera specs, own priorities, needs and wants I finally caved in and ordered a new camera. The problem was mainly that I wanted DSLR-quality pictures and infinite tweakability but I'm really lazy when it comes to carrying a camera around. This has finally been solved with the new class of very small DSLR-like cameras, I say "like" because technically they aren't a Digital Single-Lens Reflex camera but reach almost the same picture-quality. In fact, my new purchase, the Panasonic GF1 is an EVIL-camera, Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens. Enough about the geeky semantics though, here is how it looks:
It weighs just under 500 g (475 g to be exact) when setup like on the picture, battery inserted, memory-card, 20 mm lens and strap. It's clearly larger than most point and shoots but super-zooms can be bulkier. The main difference is that with the super-zoom's you are stuck with the built-in lens while EVIL cameras, like this based on the Micro 4/3:s format, have interchangeable lenses like the acronyms suggests.
I picked it up from the post office just today so clearly I'm in no position to criticize or praise the camera too much but I'll give a few initial thoughts here since I was asked to and I want to share!
Basically it does what I wanted it to do, first of all it takes great pictures while still keeping the size down. It focuses fast, it takes 720p video and in general feels great to handle and carry. It feels well built but not too heavy.
The downsides are that it still is almost 500 g and it doesn't have big comfy grip like super-zooms and DSLR:s have, it makes a loud clicking sounds which will feel great for the DSLR-fans, and I agree that it sounds satisfying, but at the same time it would be nice if it kept quiet.
Anyway, I won't make any more judgments about it now, instead I'll post a few sample pictures (click to reach Flickr for full-resolution version if you are of the pixel-peeping kind). I haven't edited the pictures at all, just loaded them off the camera (in RAW-format) and uploaded using iPhoto. Will be looking into digital darkroom software soon. Oh and there's a video too.
