By Leonard Goh
03/11/2008
URL: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/digitalcameras/0,39005881,44016353p,00.htm

Ever since the Micro Four Thirds Standard was announced in August, we've been extremely anxious to find out if this new system delivers as promised--smaller camera body and lenses and more intuitive operations. The first shooter to utilize this standard, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 was showcased at Photokina in September and now we finally got our mitts on a review unit.

After all the talk about the Micro Four Thirds Standard shrinking down the size of shooters, we didn't really find the G1 much smaller than the Olympus E-420, which is currently the world's smallest dSLR. However, the Panasonic's profile is slimmer. What we really like about the G1 would be its displays. The 3-inch swiveling LCD gave good representation of the scene and the high-resolution electronic viewfinder redefined what EVFs are capable of. Although the screens were slightly laggy under dim lighting, they performed exceptionally well in daylight situations.

Utilizing the Four Thirds sensor means the chip is slightly larger than what is found in most point-and-shoots, but still smaller than the conventional APS-C-sized sensor found in a majority of dSLRs. For the G1, the image quality exceeded our expectations and that was what impressed us most.

Design

The Lumix DMC-G1 is almost indistinguishable from other dSLRs despite Panasonic's attempts to differentiate it from that class. Its rationale for this design is that the company's survey found that consumers still preferred traditional designs. Hence the G1 was styled like a dSLR, right down to the handgrip and the faux prism hump which now houses the Live View Finder.

As the Micro Four Thirds Standard does not require any mirror mechanisms, the optics to sensor distance is reduced by 50 percent. This sounds like it could probably slim down the camera a lot, but in reality it is just a tad more petite than the Olympus E-420, which is currently the world smallest and lightest dSLR.

The handgrip measures approximately 6cm in height, and while it is grooved to provide a nice catch for our middle finger to latch onto, we found our pinkie dangling off the shooter most of the time. Built into the handgrip also is the front dial, used for changing exposure settings or zooming in/out in playback mode.

The top deck is furnished with switches and dials typical of what you may find on a dSLR. A dedicated knob on the left end lets you toggle between different autofocus or manual modes, while the larger dial on the right allows for changing shooting modes. When turned, they provided satisfying physical feedback. The power and drive mode levers are situated below the mode dial, and this anables the user to change settings on the fly.

The rear is taken up mostly by the 3-inch LCD, leaving little space for the four-way navigation pad. The buttons are smaller to space them out evenly and not look too congested, but we found them to be situated a little too low for easy access.

For the first time in a dSLR-like shooter, more color options are available. The G1 is offered in black, blue and red. Personally, we liked the crimson version better as it deviates from a boring and serious look.

What really surprised us most was how small the kit lens is. As the lens diameter is now 6mm tinier than other Four Thirds optics, the 14-45mm F3.5-5.6 VARIO G lens is much smaller than conventional dSLR kit lenses.

Features

Without mirrors and/or prisms in the innards, the G1 relies heavily on electronics to show users what the camera is capturing. Panasonic has made several advances in this aspect, but these are not without their downsides.

A 3-inch LCD may be a common sight on dSLRs and point-and-shoots these days, but a 3-inch swiveling LCD is noteworthy. The display can tilt and swivel to facilitate taking high- or low-angle shots, and the high-resolution screen's quick refresh rate makes framing pictures with it a different experience.

But what defined the G1 for us would be the Live View Finder (LVF), Panasonic's equivalent to the typical electronic viewfinder (EVF). The 1,440k dot resolution screen inside the shooter is probably the highest-resolution we've seen so far. To match that, the 60 frames-per-second (fps) refresh rate of the LVF makes peering through it almost akin to what you may see with an optical viewfinder.

We found the default settings for both displays to be a tad inaccurate to what the scene is showing, but fortunately there are options to change the brightness, saturation and contrast. Also, in dim lighting conditions, the displays tended to lag a little, which was when we thought an optical viewfinder would come in handy.

There are sensors around the eye piece, which activates the Live View Finder when you hold the camera up to your eye. But by slinging the camera on our shoulder and letting the eye piece stay in close contact, the sides of your body (or in this case, anything) will also trigger it to turn on.

For the average consumer, they may find the Live View Finder to be one of the best on the market, and we agree. However, there are slight "rainbow effect" which is most evident if you look through the LVF and shift the view around. There may be short flashes of blue, green and red shadows which can disorientate some people. However, those who are not too particular or observant probably won't notice it.

As with Panasonic's higher-end point-and-shoots, there is a film mode which allows you to decide the look of the picture by adjusting the contrast, sharpness, saturation and amount of noise reduction. One new implementation would be the Color mode, which is almost similar to what the film mode provides, except that the adjustments made are slightly different.

Operations-wise, you'll probably feel at home using the G1 if you've used a Panasonic point-and-shoot before because the interface and labeling of hardware are almost the same.

To make shooting more intuitive for users who are used to compact shooters, commonly used scene modes are on the mode dial so you won't have to sift through the menu to locate them. To simplify it even further, Panasonic has incorporated its intelligent Auto (iA) mode into the G1 as well, so amateurs can operate it, too.

What is similar about the new Micro Four Thirds shooter and dSLRs would be the amount of control over exposure it offers shutterbugs. You get manual, aperture priority, shutter priority and program mode. To adjust settings, rotate the front dial and press it to toggle between shutter, aperture or exposure compensation. There is also one custom option to save your frequently used settings. RAW format image capture is also possible, and the bundled SilkyPix program handles the post-processing work.

Performance

The startup time for the G1 was almost instant in our Lab tests, and this was similar to what we got on most dSLRs. Shutter lag, however, clocked about 0.15 to 0.2 second, which was typical with what we got on conventional point-and-shoots.

Panasonic promised a burst rate of 3fps, which the G1 certainly met. It rattled off at this speed for about 10 shots before it slowed down slightly, but this would certainly be enough for most users.

Focusing is achieved via contrast-based autofocus, similar to what point-and-shoots are using. This system worked well in our tests, and under sufficient lighting the lens shifted into position quickly. However, we wished the focusing could be as fast when we shot at night. The AF illuminator provided some luminance for the camera to focus, but it still took a short while before locking onto our subjects.

The specifications sheet rated the 1,250mAh, rechargeable lithium-ion battery to capture 330 shots with the LCD and 350 shots when using only the Live View Finder. We ran a test using a mix of both and managed to get 300 shots, which wasn't too shabby.

We took shots using a standard 2GB SD card and found the writing time to the memory media faster than what we expected. It was almost instant and we didn't have to wait for the camera to copy the images to the card before taking more pictures.

Image Quality

As the G1 is using a Four Thirds-sized sensor, the area which light falls on is significantly larger than the sensors used in conventional point-and-shoots. This also means the pixel density is lower and this gives better detail reproduction with lesser noise.

At ISO sensitivity of 100, there were virtually no traces of digital artifacts and we could make out very minor details. As we bumped the ISO setting higher, so did the noise level, but these were barely visible as the noise reduction algorithm did a good job of cleaning up the picture without sacrificing too much details. The biggest difference we could tell was when we increased the ISO sensitivity from 800 to 1,600. On the lower end, the picture showed light spots dotting the image, but they probably wouldn't affect the picture quality on a 4R print. However, at 1,600, these dots were significantly more visible. At the highest ISO sensitivity of 3,200, the image was riddled with digital artifacts. Surprisingly we could still see some details that would otherwise be lost if we were to take the shot with a point-and-shoot.

White balance was accurate in all of our pictures, even those we took under mixed lighting conditions.

Dynamic range-wise, we were quite satisfied with what the G1 produced. The highlight areas held on to plenty of information and the shadow regions showed a good amount of details, too.

Conclusion

The G1's target audience are primarily shutterbugs who want to buy a dSLR but dislike the weight and bulk of it. We think the shooter matches this profile almost perfectly, although it is inevitable that the optics will add on a bit of bulk to the shooter.

The simplistic operations went down well with us and we think users who are intimidated by the complex interface of dSLRs should find the G1 easy to use.

While the image quality may not be able to compete with dSLRs yet, we have to say it fares much better than most point-and-shoots we've tested. This will also be the benchmark that Olympus should meet, or exceed, when it announces its Micro Four Thirds shooter next year.

The G1 is available in stores now for S$1,199 inclusive of the kit lens. If you can wait, Panasonic has mentioned that an HD movie recording-enabled version of this shooter will be showcased in 2009.