Lumix GX1
I’ve had a Lumix GX1 for a few weeks now. The body was on sale for $200 with free shipping and no taxes, down from around $800. Since the new version was about to come out (the GX7) they reduced the price on this one and I ordered it right away. I already had many lenses for my GH2 and I was looking on getting a cheap body, maybe a GF1, for doing time lapses without worrying about wearing out the shutter on my GH2. Besides, I wanted something smaller as well, something I could carry with me where I would’t take the GH2 because of it’s size (and the GH2 is already way smaller than a regular DSLR, but still).
I already had the Lumix pancake 14mm f2.5. It is pretty tiny and is perfect for the GX1. The autofocus on it is one of the fastest and is pretty sharp even wide open, so it is the one I regularly use on it. It’s great taking the camera out of my pocket, turning it on and taking a perfectly focused picture all in a matter of seconds. It’s a perfect street-photography combo.
Compared to the GH2, the GX1 has almost the same picture quality. I’ve read it has a slightly better dynamic range and colour depth but to be honest I can’t even notice it. They are both 16 megapixels but still the GH2 has higher resolution due to the bigger multi-aspect sensor. The GX1 has effectively a 2x crop unlike the GH2. Other than that they are pretty much the same so I prefer taking pictures with the GX1. Video of course is a whole different story.
Might be tiny but being an interchangeable lens camera it can transform from a tiny pocket camera to a huge telescopic camera, and by being mirrorless it can use almost any lens by using cheap adapters.
I ordered an intervalometer right away on eBay, it was less than 20 bucks. I’ve done a lot of timelapses already and I want to put a video together but I still want to take a few more. It’s awesome taking 16 megapixel raw images and making video out of it.
Here are a few pictures I took with the GX1 when I had just got it. By mistake I shot them as JPEG only and didn’t take raws, so I thought it was a good idea to upload these untouched JPEGs out of the camera to show the quality. To be honest, I don’t really like the way JPEGs look on Lumix cameras, it’s on raws where they really shine, but anyways here they are.
