Panasonic Lumix DMC GH1 : Tests and Reviews

With a traditional looking design, the latest addition to Panasonic’s Lumix CSC range the GM1 is, arguably, the firm’s slickest camera yet. It has the same 16-Mpix-resolution sensor as the larger, rangefinder-style GX7, and although housed in a tiny aluminum shell it features a 3-inch touchscreen LCD, plenty of manual control and an electronic shutter capable of 1/16000^th max shutter speed and 40fps burst.  Read on to find out how this super-compact model performs.

Hybrid is a word used both positively and negatively, quite appropriate for the photographic industry. The Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH3 wears this badge: "Hybrid", a mix of system and compact. It has a range of lenses spanning 7mm to 300mm (equivalent to 14mm up to 600mm in full frame 35mm) and a body that is not much bigger than a compact camera. Should it wear it with pride? Yes, it should…

Panasonic is adding its ninth model to its growing Lumix G-series lineup. In July, the Japanese electronics giant announced the Lumix DMC G5 would replace the Lumix DMC G3. Like its predecessor, the G5 taps the increasingly popular mirrorless Micro Four Thirds technology that Panasonic co-developed back in 2008 with its cross-town Tokyo rival Olympus.

Designed with compactness in mind, micro 4/3 lenses go for the smallest size possible most of the time. But to achieve these dimensions, they sometimes have to compromise on image quality. In this review, we cover a wide range of standard lenses, both prime and zoom, and show that not all lenses are equal in terms of the trade-off between compactness and image quality.

The Panasonic DMC GH1 replaces its predecessor, the Panasonic DMC G1. Both are 12 megapixel four-thirds sensors with micro-four-thirds mounts, although the GH1’s is more video-oriented.

At first glance, we would expect both cameras to have similar (if not identical) sensors. Actually, looking at the GH1 manufacturer’s specifications, this is definitely not the case, since the GH1 contains a slightly wider sensor capable of keeping the same diagonal size for different aspect ratios such as 4/3, 3/2, and 16/9. The sensor is natively 14 megapixels, but at most only 12 megapixels can be output in 4/3 aspect ratio (fewer with other aspect ratios), so we chose to evaluate its performance in 4/3 aspect ratio.

Data for the Panasonic DMC-GH1 available.

Read the DxOMark review for this model comparing its performance within the four-thirds category.