Just bought a new camera for 2022 - the small but mighty GX85

[kye]

42 minutes ago, ac6000cw said:

Me too, but I suspect heat issues would make that difficult in something as small as the GX80/GX85 body.

I own a GX80 (the European spec GX85), and use it often as a 'travel cam' with a Pana 14-140 or Oly 14-150 lens on it - makes a nice 'super zoom' equivalent camera that will fit in a small camera bag. Sometimes take along the light/cheap Pana 25mm F1.7 for low-light situations. It's just a nice, solid-feeling camera to use.

(Main downside for me is the poor, noisy, distorted on-board sound).

Cool to hear it's working for you, I would imagine that it would be quite flexible with those lenses.  I shot a fair amount with the XC10 with it's 24-240mm equivalent lens, and the framing potential for quickly grabbing shots was really good.

Interesting about the sound.  I haven't heard any reviews of that yet, but I'm not worried.  I find that for travel I'm typically interested in having location audio but typically keep it low and underneath music to give a sense of ambience rather than it being used for proper dialogue.

I'm also relatively unfused about audio quality.  Well, I've been playing with hifi for about 25 years and am actually super-critical of audio, so critical in fact that below a certain level of quality my brain simply turns that critical part off, kind of like how food critics wouldn't be critical of fast food in the same way they're critical of fine dining.  So naturally, that makes all audio basically under that threshold and so I pretty much don't care.  It's quite a useful thing actually 🙂 

[QuickHitRecord]

A few clips with the G85, trying to answer the question, "can I walk with it?". So, several longer walking shots:

I was expecting a resounding "No", but the answer is "sort of". If I had a top handle and had used a wider lens or my focal reducer (or a Power OIS lens), I might have gotten away with it.

Not wild about the color straight out of camera, but we can't have everything. This is a pretty fun camera to use. I owned an Olympus EM10iii for a while and I much prefer this. From time to time, I film protests. I think this camera would be a good fit for that.

[kye]

39 minutes ago, QuickHitRecord said:

A few clips with the G85, trying to answer the question, "can I walk with it?". So, several longer walking shots:

I was expecting a resounding "No", but the answer is "sort of". If I had a top handle and had used a wider lens or my focal reducer (or a Power OIS lens), I might have gotten away with it.

Not wild about the color straight out of camera, but we can't have everything. This is a pretty fun camera to use. I owned an Olympus EM10iii for a while and I much prefer this. From time to time, I film protests. I think this camera would be a good fit for that.

Very nice!  I like the overall production - shots, editing, music, colour.  It's hard to make a "silent" (no dialogue) edit but this is quite engaging.

Walking is always a challenge.  I find walking with a cup of water to be a good exercise, and if you're not allowed to spill anything, you can just have a bottle with some water in it and try to keep the surface calm.  I find it's the moment that your foot hits the ground that sends the biggest shock through your body, which is what the "ninja walk" mostly concentrates on, a sort-of placing your foot and then rolling onto it instead of just putting it directly down with your weight at the same time.  An alternative is to walk on your toes, which adds another joint into the cushioning process (the ankle).  I've heard from runners that we're not meant to run on our heels, and certainly if you look at other animals and compare bones structure and contact points they are basically walking on their toes too.

My approach for minimal run-n-gun (shooting with just camera and lens and nothing else - I wish there was a word for this) is to either shoot with 180 shutter and ND and try to be stable, or to expose with SS and stabilise in post.  If you do the latter then there will be no motion blur when objects move, but also no blur when you walk as the short SS will create crisp frames and the stabilisation will arrange those crisp images so that one frame doesn't move that far from the previous one.  It's a matter of taste and of situation and subject matter.  If your subjects aren't moving much then there would be very little blur anyway, so it doesn't matter so much.

The batteries for my GX85 arrived today, but the camera itself is remarkably close to the exact opposite side of the planet from me!

[BTM_Pix]

1 hour ago, kye said:

My approach for minimal run-n-gun (shooting with just camera and lens and nothing else - I wish there was a word for this)

Its more or less Dogme 95 without the tapes.

Maybe time to update the manifesto and create Dogme 21

[QuickHitRecord]

7 hours ago, kye said:

Walking is always a challenge.  I find walking with a cup of water to be a good exercise, and if you're not allowed to spill anything, you can just have a bottle with some water in it and try to keep the surface calm.  I find it's the moment that your foot hits the ground that sends the biggest shock through your body, which is what the "ninja walk" mostly concentrates on, a sort-of placing your foot and then rolling onto it instead of just putting it directly down with your weight at the same time.  An alternative is to walk on your toes, which adds another joint into the cushioning process (the ankle).  I've heard from runners that we're not meant to run on our heels, and certainly if you look at other animals and compare bones structure and contact points they are basically walking on their toes too.

Yes, this was all heel-to-toe ninja walking on uneven ground at 17mm. The focal reducer will add a little weight and widen the shot the next time I go out. My camera also came with a Lumix 12-60mm Power OIS lens that I was planning on selling to bring the total camera cost down to around $325 (if I hadn't found this deal, I would have gone for a GX85). I might have to give Dual IS a try before I do. A top handle kind of breaks the rules in terms of a minimal setup (the whole point of this camera for me), but now I'm curious. I've been mostly a Canon shooter so IBIS is a new tool to me.

[Mark Romero 2]

9 hours ago, QuickHitRecord said:

A few clips with the G85, trying to answer the question, "can I walk with it?". So, several longer walking shots:

I was expecting a resounding "No", but the answer is "sort of". If I had a top handle and had used a wider lens or my focal reducer (or a Power OIS lens), I might have gotten away with it.

Not wild about the color straight out of camera, but we can't have everything. This is a pretty fun camera to use. I owned an Olympus EM10iii for a while and I much prefer this. From time to time, I film protests. I think this camera would be a good fit for that.

I like your sample video!!! I am envious: I have been feeling a bit lethargic lately. There is this art and garden center that is literally five minutes down the road from me with beautiful fall colors that I have been meaning to shoot the last three years and... I just can't be bothered. Instead, I spend too much time on youtube looking at reviews of camera gear that I know I am never going to buy...

I like the colors, and I like the overall look, but I think that we are just headed for a world where everything has to be 4K sharp or nobody under 60 is going to appreciate it. 

[QuickHitRecord]

1 hour ago, Mark Romero 2 said:

I like your sample video!!! I am envious: I have been feeling a bit lethargic lately. There is this art and garden center that is literally five minutes down the road from me with beautiful fall colors that I have been meaning to shoot the last three years and... I just can't be bothered. Instead, I spend too much time on youtube looking at reviews of camera gear that I know I am never going to buy...

Thanks! Getting going is always the hard part. And shooting something is always better than shooting nothing. Upgrade obsession is a hollow pursuit. I get sucked in too, though lately I find myself bored by videos that are trying to sell some expensive thing that is going to possibly make an incremental improvement to my kit. I hope you make it down to your art and garden center. I think you'll be happy that you went.

[PannySVHS]

I love my GX85. The colours are great once graded. Love the palette and grading is pretty easy for this little beauty. It is very tactile and ergonomic body, great pleasure to use with many great features, such as 4K photo for 4to3 and 1to1 ration filming with 4Kish resolution. 2xDigizoom even giving good results, despite obvious aliasing. Shot some awesome photos with it with two C-mount beauties, Fujinon 12mm and Angie 75mm both super16 lenses. I would love this body with GH5(2) features.:) Would be my to go camera forever.

[fuzzynormal]

On 10/26/2021 at 5:27 AM, John Matthews said:

I do see a significant difference between downresed 4k and 1080p native (regardless the reasonable bit rate).

On my old Gx7, it's 1080 somehow outperformed other cam's downrez'ed 4k.  Not sure what was going on with that LUMIX generation's sensors and internal processing, but it offered pretty sweet IQ to my eye.

Sadly, I lost that camera. [sad face]

[John Matthews]

15 minutes ago, fuzzynormal said:

On my old Gx7, it's 1080 somehow outperformed other cam's downrez'ed 4k.  Not sure what was going on with that LUMIX generation's sensors and internal processing, but it offered pretty sweet IQ to my eye.

Sadly, I lost that camera. [sad face]

I had a GX7 for about a month, then the GX80 came out and I sent it back and got the GX80. In that time, the GX7 outperformed the GX80 in 1080p by far. My current GM1 also does. The curious thing about the GX80 was that if you didn't turn down ALL noise reduction, the image wasn't great (in terms of detail), even in 4k. At 24 and 25p the GX7 image was really good, not so much at 60p with clear moiré. I never really compared the a GX7 image with a GX80 downresed though, but my felling is the GX80 would perform better.

[kye]

On 10/26/2021 at 2:48 AM, John Matthews said:

The GX85 continues to be a great. I had it for over 2 years and I took videos and photos that I'll cherish forever. I only sold it because I mistakenly thought something Sony and FF would do better and they were from a technical point of view, but it was much bulkier and not as fun to shoot with. I've taken a tonne of shots with the 14mm f/2.5 too- loved that combo for over a year and a half. In 2019, when I decided I'd never leave M43 again, I've been looking for that lens. Sometimes, you can find it for about 100 Euros.

Can't wait to see the results you get with the combo!

Yes, the promise of greener grass tempts us all from time to time!

What were you filming and what lenses were you using?

On 10/26/2021 at 2:53 AM, fuzzynormal said:

I shot a doc series for our local PBS station with a couple of these guys.  Worked like a charm.  The exact reason M43 is a good format for me is embodied in this sort of gear: low-profile with impressive IQ.

I have a vague memory of someone shooting with a compact camera and Voigtlander MFT primes - was this you?

I'm keen to hear more about which lenses you were using and how you were using them?

On 10/26/2021 at 8:27 PM, John Matthews said:

I think you've looked at this a lot more than me. I like detail, but many images look better with the lower resolution.

I like that. Wouldn't be easy if the only thing that counted were pixel counts?

It's completely un-scientific, but I've never been able to see a significant difference between 50Mbps long-GOP and 200Mbps ALL-I on the same camera. However, I do see a significant difference between downresed 4k and 1080p native (regardless the reasonable bit rate). Usually, it's unnecessary detail IMO. I'm sure you can see more of a difference when pushing the image though.

I think it depends on the quality of the in-camera processing.  I've compared my GH5 in 5K vs 4K vs 1080p modes across a range of lenses and apertures and found that:

• In most tests the resolution of the lens (eg, when at wider apertures) or my (unreliable) ability to nail focus was the limiting factor
• I couldn't tell any difference in resolution between the 5K and 4K when put onto a 4K timeline (it's an unfair test but no-one watches 5K files so it's a real-world advantage)
• The differences between the 5/4K and the 1080p were only visible by pixel-peeping a single frame where there was no motion, but when viewed full-screen at a sensible viewing distance no differences were apparent, even on the clips where the pixel-peeping revealed differences
• Addition of almost imperceptible amount of sharpening in post easily overwhelmed any differences in resolution between the modes

I'll likely be using the GX85 in the 4K mode to get the higher bitrate so it's a moot point for here, but an interesting technical side-note nonetheless.

On 10/27/2021 at 12:13 PM, arson519 said:

i bought one two months ago because i love the size and ibis but i haven't really tested it out yet. i would love a gx85 style gh5

What are you shooting with it and what lenses are you using?

I'm keen to hear how people are using these little cameras.

On 11/1/2021 at 6:21 PM, BTM_Pix said:

Its more or less Dogme 95 without the tapes.

Maybe time to update the manifesto and create Dogme 21

I've been having an ongoing conversation with @mercer about the DSLR revolution and the promise vs reality of what technology has done for film-making.

The view that I've come to is that:

• 35mm film cameras and film stock used to be hugely expensive and impractical, only studios could afford to make films, and the size/weight/loudness of the camera meant that films were managed like production-lines with specialised technicians in every role, and traditional "coverage" became the standard
• Super-16 film stock became good enough for cinema and cameras light enough to enable filming handheld in available light, which opened up film-making to those outside the studio system, and this spawned the French New Wave and the radical innovation that came with it
• The DSLR revolution happened, effectively providing the camera and unlimited film stock for free (compared to celluloid).  People predicted that this would revolutionise cinema yet again, like the French New Wave had done.
• This didn't happen.  At this point the camera / media had become a minor component of a feature film and it made no appreciable difference to the extraordinary logistics required to produce a quality piece of cinema - writing, production design, locations, art department, hair/makeup, cast, crew, grip, time in post, negotiating the maze of distribution, and challenge of monetising, etc.
• It did, however, create a revolution in video.  Instead of the "Digital New Wave of Artistic Cinema" we got the "Digital Video Explosion", including Wedding Videography, Engagement Videography, Stealth Marriage Proposal Videography (bring your camo and long lenses!), Vlogs, Social Media "stories", memes, viral videos, "Influencer" as a profession, the sharing of a thousand trillion instances of someone saying "this video is sponsored by", and the sharing of one trillion instances of someone saying "burnout".

I'm not really sure what the role of something like Dogme 21 would be.  Curious to hear your thoughts though!

On 11/2/2021 at 12:55 AM, QuickHitRecord said:

Yes, this was all heel-to-toe ninja walking on uneven ground at 17mm. The focal reducer will add a little weight and widen the shot the next time I go out. My camera also came with a Lumix 12-60mm Power OIS lens that I was planning on selling to bring the total camera cost down to around $325 (if I hadn't found this deal, I would have gone for a GX85). I might have to give Dual IS a try before I do. A top handle kind of breaks the rules in terms of a minimal setup (the whole point of this camera for me), but now I'm curious. I've been mostly a Canon shooter so IBIS is a new tool to me.

Have you tried shooting slightly wider and stabilising in post?  It dissociates the motion blur from the movement in the frame but for shots without much movement it can be quite effective.  

I've been shooting with my GF3 and 14mm lens.  It has a rather soft 17Mbps 1080p image and is auto-everything so in bright light has short exposures and this no motion blur.  However, when I stabilise the footage the combination of the wide lens and the low-resolution codec mean that it's indistinguishable from a properly shot clip as any motion blur would have been so small in the frame that it would have been obscured by the resolution anyway.

To this end, the lower quality frees me to shoot more rough-and-ready and to process more heavily in post and "get away with it", so my inner camera nerd can just put IQ to one side and the creative parts of my can proceed unaffected.

On 11/2/2021 at 7:20 PM, PannySVHS said:

I love my GX85. The colours are great once graded. Love the palette and grading is pretty easy for this little beauty. It is very tactile and ergonomic body, great pleasure to use with many great features, such as 4K photo for 4to3 and 1to1 ration filming with 4Kish resolution. 2xDigizoom even giving good results, despite obvious aliasing. Shot some awesome photos with it with two C-mount beauties, Fujinon 12mm and Angie 75mm both super16 lenses. I would love this body with GH5(2) features.:) Would be my to go camera forever.

I'm planning on using mine with many of my vintage lenses, so I'm really looking forward to that. 

I have a strange fascination with vintage primes that I can't quite define, and TBH I don't actually understand.  For example, I have a Voigtlander 42.5mm f0.95 lens, which actually has significant vintage-like qualities in vignetting edge softness and softening at wider apertures, BUT I still gravitate to the Helios / SB combination whenever I pass my lens collection.  The Helios is inferior in basically every way to the Voigtlander, but there's something there that I can't explain.

The entire principle of Go Shoot is that I can pick up the camera and whatever lens(es) I am curious about and go shoot some footage and then edit it up into a little project.  I frequently use these opportunities for lens testing or other "research" purposes.  I expect that will continue - and maybe even expand!  

On 11/4/2021 at 12:40 AM, fuzzynormal said:

On my old Gx7, it's 1080 somehow outperformed other cam's downrez'ed 4k.  Not sure what was going on with that LUMIX generation's sensors and internal processing, but it offered pretty sweet IQ to my eye.

Sadly, I lost that camera. [sad face]

I keep sharing screengrabs with some forum members from my GF3, which was released around the time of the GH2, and the feedback has been universally "that camera is so small/cheap that it almost doesn't deserve to have an image that nice come from it"!

There is something enticing about getting great images from a cheap setup.

[Emanuel]

1 hour ago, kye said:

I've been having an ongoing conversation with @mercer about the DSLR revolution and the promise vs reality of what technology has done for film-making.

The view that I've come to is that:

• 35mm film cameras and film stock used to be hugely expensive and impractical, only studios could afford to make films, and the size/weight/loudness of the camera meant that films were managed like production-lines with specialised technicians in every role, and traditional "coverage" became the standard
• Super-16 film stock became good enough for cinema and cameras light enough to enable filming handheld in available light, which opened up film-making to those outside the studio system, and this spawned the French New Wave and the radical innovation that came with it
• The DSLR revolution happened, effectively providing the camera and unlimited film stock for free (compared to celluloid).  People predicted that this would revolutionise cinema yet again, like the French New Wave had done.
• This didn't happen.  At this point the camera / media had become a minor component of a feature film and it made no appreciable difference to the extraordinary logistics required to produce a quality piece of cinema - writing, production design, locations, art department, hair/makeup, cast, crew, grip, time in post, negotiating the maze of distribution, and challenge of monetising, etc.
• It did, however, create a revolution in video.  Instead of the "Digital New Wave of Artistic Cinema" we got the "Digital Video Explosion", including Wedding Videography, Engagement Videography, Stealth Marriage Proposal Videography (bring your camo and long lenses!), Vlogs, Social Media "stories", memes, viral videos, "Influencer" as a profession, the sharing of a thousand trillion instances of someone saying "this video is sponsored by", and the sharing of one trillion instances of someone saying "burnout".

I'm not really sure what the role of something like Dogme 21 would be.  Curious to hear your thoughts though!

(...)

I'm planning on using mine with many of my vintage lenses, so I'm really looking forward to that. 

(...)

There is something enticing about getting great images from a cheap setup.

I am not them as you know well haha (sorry, couldn't resist! : ) but I think you summed it up rather fine. You see? We have more to unite us than the opposite. Phew :- )

Well.

Filmmaking didn't change in any way other than as for experimental stuff, documentary and narrative included and new ways of multi windows for international release and exploitation, not available before.

Without mention the 100,000 bucks mark as starting point, where you had to be in the past to take off from, going with film processing and lab bills, as average for a feature film.

You can begin now already from that basis, with no-budget mantra in mind nowadays. Likely you reached that milestone per se : )

The matter is that we're hardly able to set it up below than a low budget, feasible today for a portion of the seven digits, at least, you had the need onetime.

Much less, actually.

With the same equipment both professional and amateur use or alike.

Drone shots, as for instance, when wisely and creatively used, bring a production value formerly only watched in mere hollywood standards.

 

- EAG

[John Matthews]

4 hours ago, kye said:

What were you filming and what lenses were you using?

With the GX80, I was filming the same stuff I film today: just family and home video (in fact, my most important footage to me). Nowadays, I do a lot more live streaming as I teach English more and more over Skype (currently using a GH2 connected to a Atem Mini with a mixer and AT 875 R shotgun mic).

For a long time I was obsessed with detail as my previous cheap camcorders and gen 1 DSLRs just didn't cut the mustard, but now I think a detailed 1080p image with good out-of-camera colors would suffice. So basically, I started filming in 4k because I was dealing with the trauma of previous cameras I've owned. I wonder how many of us do the same?

I'm sticking with M43 as I just don't see any major benefit of the FF cameras. Also, I prefer a challenge in shooting with cheaper gear and getting similar to better results. There's no fun for me in having the best gear with the expectation of "best results". Lastly, I don't like the idea of walking around with a bank on me, hoping that no one's going to steel my gear. Everything I buy can be replaced easily and efficiently on the used market.

[John Matthews]

6 hours ago, kye said:

what lenses were you using?

Forgot to answer all your question.

The GX80 had the 14mm f/2.5, 25mm f/1.7, and 45-150mm f/4-5.6.

After having sold everything in 2019, I'm repurchasing the 45-150mm f/4-5.6 and planning to repurchase the 14mm f/2.5 (for the size on my GM1)

I currently have too many lenses:

Olympus: 17mm f/1.8, 14-42 ez, 12-40 pro, 75mm f/1.8.

Panasonic: 14-42 pz, 20mm f/1.7

SLR MAGIC: 8mm f/4

Of all these lenses, I prefer the Olympus 17, 75, and SLR MAGIC 8mm. I could do almost everything I do with these lenses.

[kye]

4 hours ago, John Matthews said:

With the GX80, I was filming the same stuff I film today: just family and home video (in fact, my most important footage to me).

Absolutely - I'm right there with you.  

I think that family videography (at home or out and about) is as different and distinct a genre as basically anything else in film-making.  Unfortunately, there is little around that takes it seriously, and there's almost no work publicly available so there's not much to reference either.

4 hours ago, John Matthews said:

For a long time I was obsessed with detail as my previous cheap camcorders and gen 1 DSLRs just didn't cut the mustard, but now I think a detailed 1080p image with good out-of-camera colors would suffice. So basically, I started filming in 4k because I was dealing with the trauma of previous cameras I've owned. I wonder how many of us do the same?

That definitely applied to me.  

I was coming from a stills background where resolution and sharpness is a religion, and not to be even questioned!

My first video experiences from ILC's were the ultra-soft 17Mbps GF3 video files and then the ultra-soft 1080p from my Canon 700D.  Not knowing that these were both tremendously bad examples of 1080p, I assumed that I needed 4K and went all in with that, buying a 4K camera, new computer to play the files, and 4K monitor to view the footage on.  

If only I knew.....

Steve Yedlin makes a comment in his resolution demo saying that when SD was the format having more resolution was absolutely the right goal.  The problem was that we kept going....

4 hours ago, John Matthews said:

I'm sticking with M43 as I just don't see any major benefit of the FF cameras. Also, I prefer a challenge in shooting with cheaper gear and getting similar to better results. There's no fun for me in having the best gear with the expectation of "best results". Lastly, I don't like the idea of walking around with a bank on me, hoping that no one's going to steel my gear. Everything I buy can be replaced easily and efficiently on the used market.

I hadn't really considered the idea of how valuable my equipment is, but rather how noticeable it is, which is likely to predict the risk of theft, amongst other things such as your own behaviour.

2 hours ago, John Matthews said:

Forgot to answer all your question.

The GX80 had the 14mm f/2.5, 25mm f/1.7, and 45-150mm f/4-5.6.

After having sold everything in 2019, I'm repurchasing the 45-150mm f/4-5.6 and planning to repurchase the 14mm f/2.5 (for the size on my GM1)

I currently have too many lenses:

Olympus: 17mm f/1.8, 14-42 ez, 12-40 pro, 75mm f/1.8.

Panasonic: 14-42 pz, 20mm f/1.7

SLR MAGIC: 8mm f/4

Of all these lenses, I prefer the Olympus 17, 75, and SLR MAGIC 8mm. I could do almost everything I do with these lenses.

Thanks, that's useful.

How is the 45-150mm lens?  I've got a Canon FD 70-210/4, but it's older and designed for FF so isn't so sharp, and I'd wondered about getting a longer MFT zoom.  Having OIS on top of IBIS would also be beneficial.   I'm not that fussed about how fast it is as I'm not filming things far away in low light, and with the long focal length even a "slow" lens has good background separation.

I have the SLR Magic 8mm but found it fiddly to use so upgraded to the 7.5mm F2 which is a really nice lens.  If you end up selling your surplus lenses then I'd suggest considering that as an upgrade.

I have the 12-35mm F2.8 so that might be a good match for the GX85 when it arrives.

[John Matthews]

59 minutes ago, kye said:

How is the 45-150mm lens?  I've got a Canon FD 70-210/4, but it's older and designed for FF so isn't so sharp, and I'd wondered about getting a longer MFT zoom.  Having OIS on top of IBIS would also be beneficial.   I'm not that fussed about how fast it is as I'm not filming things far away in low light, and with the long focal length even a "slow" lens has good background separation.

I'd like a kit that goes to 150mm on M43. I've tried the Olympus 40-150, but I've decided I'll no longer accept plastic mounts because I think it was deteriorating with every use. I had the Panasonic 45-150 before and sold, but I saw it for the same amount as what the Olympus cost me; so, I decided to back to it. I was always happy with the results before and it has a metal mount. Also, it has IS which is useful on my GM1 (albeit big on that body).

1 hour ago, kye said:

Steve Yedlin makes a comment in his resolution demo saying that when SD was the format having more resolution was absolutely the right goal.  The problem was that we kept going....

Those Yedlin comments also made an impact on me. There are simply more important things in video-making than resolution once you get to the point of people not noticing a lack of resolution.

1 hour ago, kye said:

I have the SLR Magic 8mm but found it fiddly to use so upgraded to the 7.5mm F2 which is a really nice lens.  If you end up selling your surplus lenses then I'd suggest considering that as an upgrade.

You're right about it being fiddly for change aperture, but I don't use that focal length enough to justify 3x the price... it would become my most expensive focal length (that I fear I wouldn't use that much). I love the way the SLR Magic renders though... it gives 3d pop (in video) that I don't get with other lenses I own when used in the right light.

At 150 Euros (new and what I paid for it), it's a great bargain. It works well on my Olympus bodies.

1 hour ago, kye said:

I have the 12-35mm F2.8 so that might be a good match for the GX85 when it arrives.

That should be a good combo.

 

[fuzzynormal]

21 hours ago, kye said:

On 10/25/2021 at 11:53 AM, fuzzynormal said:

I shot a doc series for our local PBS station with a couple of these guys.  Worked like a charm.  The exact reason M43 is a good format for me is embodied in this sort of gear: low-profile with impressive IQ.

I have a vague memory of someone shooting with a compact camera and Voigtlander MFT primes - was this you?

I'm keen to hear more about which lenses you were using and how you were using them?

I've done a few doc shoots with the Voigts, but the project listed above it was on the Only 12-40 f2.8, using a variable ND filter.  I also used (still use) a vintage Nikkor f1.4 50mm for other footage and interviews.

[ac6000cw]

On 11/3/2021 at 5:05 PM, John Matthews said:

I had a GX7 for about a month, then the GX80 came out and I sent it back and got the GX80. In that time, the GX7 outperformed the GX80 in 1080p by far. My current GM1 also does. The curious thing about the GX80 was that if you didn't turn down ALL noise reduction, the image wasn't great (in terms of detail), even in 4k. At 24 and 25p the GX7 image was really good, not so much at 60p with clear moiré. I never really compared the a GX7 image with a GX80 downresed though, but my felling is the GX80 would perform better.

Based on my experience with moving from a G3 -> G5 -> G6 -> G80 -> G9 (with GF5, GX80 and GX800 as extras), I think Panasonic's 1080p quality went a bit downhill with the G80 - it has more aliasing in 1080p than the G6, and in the GX80 it's on the soft side. The LX100 suffers badly from aliasing in 1080p as well.

Of the above list, the G6 is my favourite 1080p-max camera - but the G9 blows all of the above out of the water on 1080p quality (it's GH5 quality level).

If you want a really discreet, cheap, micro 4/3 cam with 4k and decent 1080p, try a GX800/850/GX880 with a stabilised pancake lens like the 12-32mm. 4k is limited to 5 minutes, 1080p to 20 minutes, no 'creative movie' mode (except by using 4k photo mode, which is 30p only), IBIS or viewfinder, but it's a really small, light, camera and doesn't suffer from the on-board audio IBIS noise problem which the GX80 and G80 have.

[John Matthews]

9 hours ago, ac6000cw said:

Based on my experience with moving from a G3 -> G5 -> G6 -> G80 -> G9 (with GF5, GX80 and GX800 as extras), I think Panasonic's 1080p quality went a bit downhill with the G80 - it has more aliasing in 1080p than the G6, and in the GX80 it's on the soft side. The LX100 suffers badly from aliasing in 1080p as well.

Of the above list, the G6 is my favourite 1080p-max camera - but the G9 blows all of the above out of the water on 1080p quality (it's GH5 quality level).

If you want a really discreet, cheap, micro 4/3 cam with 4k and decent 1080p, try a GX800/850/GX880 with a stabilised pancake lens like the 12-32mm. 4k is limited to 5 minutes, 1080p to 20 minutes, no 'creative movie' mode (except by using 4k photo mode, which is 30p only), IBIS or viewfinder, but it's a really small, light, camera and doesn't suffer from the on-board audio IBIS noise problem which the GX80 and G80 have.

Have you tried the GX800? Are they vastly superior to the GM1 (which I have and is much lighter and smaller)? My feeling is the GX800 isn't as good as the GM1 because it shares the same sensor and processor as the GX80 (agreed rather soft at 1080p and that's why I never shot with it at 1080p-4k only). The G9 and GH5 are also in another league in terms of bulk and weight.

[ac6000cw]

14 hours ago, John Matthews said:

Have you tried the GX800? Are they vastly superior to the GM1 (which I have and is much lighter and smaller)? My feeling is the GX800 isn't as good as the GM1 because it shares the same sensor and processor as the GX80 (agreed rather soft at 1080p and that's why I never shot with it at 1080p-4k only). 

I own a GX800 (originally acquired because I wanted the 12-32mm pancake lens, and it was almost as cheap to buy it with GX800 bundled in!).

I've never owned a G7, but based on dpreview's video test chart comparisons, the 1080p & 4k sharpness is about the same as the G7. In those comparisons the GX80 is softer at 1080p than the G7. Never tried a GM1, so I can't compare it to that. 

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The G9 and GH5 are also in another league in terms of bulk and weight.

I like small & light cameras (one reason I like micro 4/3), and that was why it took me a least a year after its launch to convince myself I wanted a G9. But for situations where I want the video quality, top-notch IBIS and/or the speed of operation/autofocus (like wildlife photography/video), for me it's well worth carrying around the extra weight and bulk. The GX800 makes a nice small & light companion for 'normal' shots if I've got a long lens on the G9 for wildlife photography.