Official Social Media Accounts Global. This month, Panasonic announced the company's latest compact mirrorless camera with a built-in flash. Featuring a newly-designed user interface, which allows for the focus to be set or shutter released simply by touching the large ,dot 3-inch touch screen LCD, taking great photos has become more intuitive and easy.
In addition, the touch-screen operation excels not only for shooting but also for playing back images simply by touching them in the thumbnails on the screen. The Micro Four Thirds System products are joining today's Four Thirds System products to provide customers with even higher levels of performance in a digital interchangeable lens camera.
This gives the user access to the unlimited number of lens properties. Panasonic will continue to offer a wide variety of options to choose from to match every shooting situation and shooting style. Official Social Media Accounts. Face Detection automatically detects a face in the frame and adjusts the focus, exposure, contrast, and skin complexion.
Intelligent D-range continually checks the ambient light level and adjusts the exposure setting as conditions change to prevent blown highlights and blocked shadows. The Optical Image Stabilizer helps prevent blurring from hand-shake when using a compatible lens. One cool benefit of the touch-screen control system is that Touch Auto Focusing is available in movie recording, enabling pro-level rack-like focusing simply by pointing at the subject on the LCD screen.
You can obviously use any zoom lens during recording with focusing set as for still images. On the negative side, you'll find that if you choose continuous auto-focus, areas of the video will be blurred before becoming sharp again as the camera tries to refocus. On a more positive note, the the GF2 is quite fast at re-focusing, and having this system is much better than not being able to auto-focus at all, as with most current DSLR cameras that offer video recording.
Hand-holding the GF2 during movie recording inevitably leads to obvious shake, despite the optical image stabilizer on compatible lenses, so for best results you'll need a dedicated video tripod. As with the Live View Finder, experienced photographers will now be tutting loudly at the thought of having to use a traditionally slower system.
I'm happy to be able to report that this decision hasn't resulted in a slow and unpredictable AF - quite the contrary in fact. There were very few occasions when the GF2 failed to lock onto the subject, especially when using the centre AF point. On the front of the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF2 is a small focus-assist and self-timer indicator lamp, lens release button, lens mount, and the hand-grip.
Unfortunately, Panasonic have decided to cut costs and not include a HDMI cable as standard in the box, which means that you'll have to purchase one separately to take advantage of this camera's HD connectivity. Also the remote control socket from the GF1 has been removed on the GF2, which means that yoiu'll need to use the self-timer for long exposures, a much less convenient solution.
As mentioned previously, the addition of the Q. Menu button on the rear of the camera or via the touch-screen speeds up access to some of the more commonly used options. If you have never used a digital camera before, or you're upgrading from a more basic model, reading the easy-to-follow manual before you start is a good idea. Thankfully Panasonic have chosen to supply it in printed format, rather than as a PDF on a CD, so you can also carry it with you for easy reference.
The supersonic wave filter in front of the Live MOS sensor vibrates 50, times per second to remove the dust from the sensor. The Contrast Auto-Focusing system is quick in good light and the camera achieves focus most of the time indoors or in low-light situations, helped by the AF assist lamp - the GF2 doesn't have any notable problems locking onto the subject in low-light situations.
The visibility and refresh rate of the 3 inch LCD screen are very good, and the pixel count of , is excellent, with virtually no visible grain. It takes about 1 second to store a JPEG image, allowing you to keep shooting as they are being recorded onto the memory card - there is a barely perceptible LCD blackout between each image.
Storing a single RAW image takes around 3 seconds, but thankfully it doesn't lock up the camera in any way - you can use the menu system or shoot another image while the first file is being written to memory. Once you have captured a photo, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF2 has an average range of options when it comes to playing, reviewing and managing your images.
You can instantly scroll through the images that you have taken, view thumbnails up to 30 onscreen at the same time and in a Calendar view , zoom in and out up to 16x magnification, view slideshows, delete, protect, trim, resize, copy and rotate an image. You can also select favourite images, change an image's aspect ratio, add a sound clip to an image, delete Face Recognition data, and set the print order.
ISO exhibits quite visible noise and loss of fine detail, and ISO is even noisier but still usable. The new fastest setting of ISO is just too noisyfor anything but as a last resort. The images were a little soft straight out of the camera at the default sharpening level and ideally require further sharpening in an application like Adobe Photoshop, or you can change the in-camera setting if you don't like the default results.
The pop-up flash worked well indoors, with no red-eye and good overall exposure. The night photograph was excellent, with the maximum shutter speed of 60 seconds allowing you to capture plenty of light. The right-hand image has had some sharpening applied in Photoshop. The out-of-the camera images are a little soft at the default sharpening setting, and benefit from further sharpening in a program like Adobe Photoshop.
You can also change the in-camera sharpening level by tweaking the Film Mode, with five different settings available. These shots of a white coloured wall were taken at a distance of 1. And here are some portrait shots. As you can see, neither the Flash On setting or the Red-Eye Reduction option caused any amount of red-eye. The Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF2 maximum shutter speed is 60 seconds and there's also a Bulb option for exposures up to 4 minutes long, which is excellent news if you're seriously interested in night photography.
The camera takes the same amount of time again to apply noise reduction, so for example at the 15 second setting the actual exposure takes 30 seconds. Panasonic's My Colors provide preset combinations of different sharpness, contrast, saturation and noise reduction settings. The eight available My Color options are shown below in the following series, which demonstrates the differences. There is also a Custom option so that you can create your own look. The thumbnails below link to the full-sized versions, which have not been altered in any way.
This is a sample movie at the highest quality setting. Please note that this 14 second movie is The appeal of the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF2 is definitely in the eye of the beholder, more so than most cameras that we've reviewed recently. While current GF1 owners will most likely bemoan the simplification of the control system in favour of a touchscreen system, compact camera owners looking to upgrade to the new breed of DSLR-like models will no doubt be attracted by the smaller design, cutting-edge interface and pared-down design.
The GF2 is definitely not a natural successor to the GF1 that it replaces, but that doesn't mean that it isn't a great camera in its own right that's well-suited to its new target audience. The drive towards smaller and smaller bodies and lenses in the fledgling Compact System Camera market is similar to the megapixel wars that have dominated compact digicams until very recently. While the Panasonic GF2 isn't as small as the Sony NEX system if you compare the bodies side-by side, when you factor in the fact that the GF2 has a built-in flash and in particular the tiny Micro Four Thirds lenses, both are very similar in size and weight.
Indeed, the GF2 with the 14mm lens fitted is smaller than the likes of the Canon Powershot G12 and Nikon Coolpix P, which only have much smaller image sensors but admittedly bigger zooms and it's almost as small as Panasonic's own LX5 premium compact. This diminutive design has been achieved by the implementation of that potentially controversial touch-screen system and the accompanying removal of many of the GF1's buttons, dials and switches.
While you can still access most of the camera's main features via its remaining external controls, it is undoubtedly trickier than on the GF1. Importantly, though, you'll be missing out on some advanced functionality that GF1 owners can only dream about if you ignore the touchscreen, chief among them the ability to focus on your subject simply by tapping them onscreen, even when shooting movies.
While the polished and intuitive touchscreen interface still won't be to everyone's tastes, it should help the GF2 appeal to a wider audience, helping to expand the appeal of Compact System Cameras further. The other major change, an upgrade to i Full HD movies, will likewise also braden the GF2's appeal, especially given that the move to high definition video has swept across the entire photographic industry in the last year.
Both models maintain their slim profiles by incorporating an ultra-thin 4x optical zoom lens with folded optics. The Finally, the company's entry-level digital camera models, the LUMIX S-Series, are extremely easy to use, making them ideal for consumers wanting an extremely intuitive experience.
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