Panasonic GF2 - 14mm f/2.5 Review - Part 7 Video and Conclusion

VIDEO

A short video of me doing what I seem to spend much of life doing. Fiddling with cameras and sitting in front of the computer! I was pleasantly surprised by the GF2's video output. Its actually very good. This was done with the 14mm lens. As you can see, and hear, it autofocuses during shooting, and silently. The "hunting around" has more to do with the fact that its a m4/3 sensor. This continuous AF sounds like a good idea, but in reality I've always found it a nuisance. Because of the more limited depth of field of sensors such as m4/3, APS-C and full-frame, continuous AF is always going to be adjusting all the time. On micro sensor cameras, everything is in focus most of the time so you notice the changes in focus much less, if at all. However for what its worth the GF2 does it.


This video was shot in brightish indoor light and taking stills readings the camera would have been working between ISO 400 and 800. Its actually pretty clean footage. The lens was wide open at f/2.5 for all of it and it all looks very sharp. 


It looks an improvement on the GF1 to me. Its not in the GH2 class, and I'm not sure that all the compression artefacts are a result of my compressing it for YouTube, but with care I think it could produce very good results. 


UPDATE


2nd. Video shot with GF2.





CONCLUSION


GF2 CAMERA


The GF2 is a very nice camera. Contrary to mine and other peoples predictions of a "dumbed down" GF1 it more than holds its own. In many cases transferring functions to the touchscreen makes things easier and quicker, so its not the problem I envisaged it to be. Its nice to handle in practice, and in terms of stills produces images identical to the GF1, and in terms of video, better footage. It has slightly quicker AF than the GF1, and the screen is easier to use in bright sunlight. Its also extremely well made and feels very solid and sturdy.


I looked again at my initial reaction to its announcement - 
http://soundimageplus.blogspot.com/2010/11/panasonic-gf2.html 
I noticed that I did have the good sense to end the piece with the words "You know me. I could even end up buying one!!"


I like it much more than I thought I would and have had a few enjoyable days using it. One of the points I raised in my original piece however does need thinking about. The GF2 works very well with certain lenses. Some of the larger m4/3 lenses are however very unbalanced on it and handle very badly. I used my 45mm f/2.8 macro on it, which was OK but I really wouldn't want to use anything bigger. 


Do I prefer it to a GF1? Well in some situations I do. Its an unobtrusive camera, despite being very red!, and would work very well for street photography. 


14mm f/2.5 LENS


Excellent. I really like this lens. I got some great results with it. This will be a great addition to my m4/3 lens collection and its so light that its possible to take it out all the time in the bag. 


I don't know about the rest of the world, but at the moment in the UK, the GF2 / 14mm kit is at a very good price. If you were thinking about buying the lens then the camera is relatively cheap. Heres a couple of links for the best deals I've found. How long they will stay like this I can't say. Both are reputable dealers who've been around for years.


http://www.mathersoflancashire.co.uk/html/gf-2.html


http://www.srsmicrosystems.co.uk/c/470/Panasonic-GF2-Digital-Cameras.html

Panasonic GF2 - 14mm f/2.5 Review - Part 6 Zoom lenses

A day with the GF2 and two zoom lenses - First three are with the Olympus 14-150mm.








Second three with the Olympus 9-18mm.











Both lenses are small and light and work very well with the GF2. Though bigger than the pancakes their light weight makes them a nice match. I used the EVF with the 14-150mm and it was as bad as I remember it. Panasonic seem in no hurry to replace it. Its not a patch on the Olympus equivalent or the built in EVF of the G2, GH2 etc.


Most of these images were taken in the centre of Stratford-Upon-Avon. It was a freezing day with a biting wind and there were not the usual crowds but the 14-150mm zoom in particular was useful in picking out detail. It also let me avoid changing lenses, which was painful in the cold. 


Words - David
Images - David and Ann

Panasonic GF2 - 14mm f/2.5 Review - Part 5 GF1 GF2 ISO Performance

This will be fairly short! The GF1 and GF2 are virtually identical for ISO performance at all settings. 

I did do a test image but something happened to it on the upload to flickr - so I deleted it.

However see:-

http://www.43rumors.com/gf2-at-dxomark-dxo-analysys-by-van-den-hammer/

The GF1 and GF2 sensors seem to be essentially the same. There is certainly no improvement in high ISO noise on the GF2. It merely has ISO 6400 added, which is terrible!

Panasonic GF2 - 14mm f/2.5 Review - Part 4 GF2 as landscape camera

I sometimes wonder what great artists from the past would make of modern technology. Mozart with a synthesiser, Van Gogh showing his work on Facebook, Ansel Adams with a digital camera. Intriguing possibilities. Would great artists still be great outside their own time frame? We'll never know unless someone comes along with a real-life Tardis but I think its probably true that the tools available to us at any time affect what we produce. If I'm cynical I might imagine that Mozart would sound like Jean-Michel Jarre and Van Gogh spend all his time posting pictures of him and his mates "off their faces" on absinthe. However I'd like to think that great artists produce great art no matter what they use.


The Photographer and writer Tom Ang in his BBC television programme A Digital Picture of Britain convinced well-known photographers to work outside their comfort zones and use cameras they were unfamiliar with. I particularly enjoyed the landscape photographer Joe Cornish who at the time was shooting on large-format film, taking pictures on a camera phone, which he duly did using a tripod.

This is the well-known UK landscape photographer Charlie Waite using a compact camera. Well known for his Hassleblad film cameras, Tripods and f/22 this was somewhat of a surprise. However Charlie is not the only photographer who enjoys "Travelling light". 

GF2 AS LANDSCAPE CAMERA


One of the great things about the GF2 is there's now no need to compromise on picture quality if you want to use a camera thats compact camera size. 





Try as I might I can't get excited by micro sensor compact cameras. Even the best of them leave me disappointed with their results. I find the lack of detail particularly disappointing. The Olympus XZ-1 is the latest "hot compact" but many of the samples posted by Dpreview have far too many areas of featureless "mush" for my liking. 


However with the arrival of the GF2 there is now an alternative for those looking for light, small and good quality. Yesterday afternoon the sun came out providing some wonderful light. Having been struggling with a bad back all week I wanted to go out and take some pictures but couldn't face carrying anything even moderately heavy. The GF2 was at hand however and together with the 14mm f/2.5 pancake and 45mm f/2.8 macro lenses I hobbled out the door.














The trip was successful on two fronts. Firstly I got some pictures I was pleased with and secondly forcing myself to stride purposely had a beneficial effect on my back!


I like the GF2 more and more. I've already apologised to it for calling it a "dumbed-down" GF1 and it doesn't seem to hold a grudge. It does make an excellent landscape camera, as does the whole m4/3 range. It also neither breaks the bank or breaks my back.


Words - David
Images - David and Ann

Panasonic GF2 - 14mm f/2.5 Review - Part 3 Other lenses

While there's no denying that they look very sexy, this is not really a camera for me to use non-native, non-AF lenses on. Firstly I find the Panasonic LVF1 electronic viewfinder not really up to the job of manually focusing lenses and secondly I find focusing using the screen very fiddly and difficult. The GH2 is much better suited for using such lenses, both in terms of quality and use.





As I've written before, I'm not convinced that the GF1 sensor is good enough to get the benefit from such lenses. Whether there is any improvement on the GF2, I'll see when I do some testing.


The 20mm f/1.7 pancake and 45mm f/2.8 macro lenses both work very well indeed, and like the 14mm take advantage of the faster autofocus on the GF2.


Some camera porn with the 20mm:-









A couple of shots with the 45mm:-






For me the GF2 seems ideally suited for situations when I want to work quietly and unobtrusively. Also times when I don't want to carry a heavy outfit. Though lenses like the M-Mount Zeiss, Leicas and Voigtlanders are small, they aren't particularly light. I've had a painful back for the last week, and anything that takes the strain off it is very welcome.


For my particular uses I think these small prime AF lenses work very well with the GF2. They don't "overwhelm" the body and all work very quickly being native Panasonic lenses. The touchscreen shoot function, whereby you touch the point you want to focus on, and the camera focuses and shoots is very useful. It's something I've been doing on my GH2 and it works well. 


Words - David
Images - David and Ann

Panasonic GF2 - 14mm f/2.5 Review - Part 2 The Lens

This is a very light (55g) very small lens. It does however produce excellent results. 

The image above, which was processed in Rawker the dcraw based software which gives a version of the raw file minus the manufacturers "adjustments", shows that it's a sharp lens with little CA and fringing and not a lot of distortion. As you can see there is some vignetting, I imagine as a result of making it so small. I'm not quite sure why its as small as it is. The 20mm f1.7 certainly doesn't look out of place on the GF2, so if the 14mm was the same size as that I'm sure nobody would have complained.

A 14mm lens gives a lot of depth of field. This is not a lens for great bokeh effects, as you can see from the four images above and below, all shot wide open at f/2.5.

I was pleasantly surprised at how good it is for architectural photography. It needs minimal adjustment for distortion in Photoshop.

Above image has no adjustments for converging verticals.

Above image has been adjusted for converging verticals.

I like the lens very much. It works very well on the GF1 and GF2. I've had a brief try with it on my GH2 and it looks fine but I'll use it more on that camera at a later date. Being so small and light it can be taken everywhere with any other lens combination. I used it for these pictures paired with the 45mm f/2.8 macro and took out two bodies, the GF1 and GF2. This was a light, easy to carry, outfit which produced very good sharp files from both cameras. 

Just a note on prices here in the UK. There are some wildly conflicting prices for this lens and the GF2 camera here. Some dealers are selling the GF2/14mm kit for £469 and others are selling the body only for £499. These are all well-known reputable dealers who are normally very similar on price. I've seen the 14mm lens selling for £356 which considering you can get a kit with a GF2 for only £113 more is a bit strange. Usually when cameras first appear the price is pretty uniform but it seems our economic situation is producing some pretty severe cost cutting. If you are interested in either the lens, camera or kit it pays to shop around, and certainly the kit at £469 is great value, and if you don't want either of the items there's always ebay.

Words - David 

Images - David and Ann

Panasonic GF2 - 14mm f/2.5 Review - Part 1 First Impressions

Due to the pricing structure of cameras and kits it is cheaper for me to buy a camera lens kit and sell off the item I don't want to keep on ebay. I have been considering a 14mm f/2.5 lens for my m4/3 system for some time. The lowest price in the UK I could find from a reputable dealer was £274. The same dealer was selling the GF2 + 14mm lens for £469. So a GF2 would cost me £195. I could obviously sell a brand new GF2 body for more than that on ebay. If I liked the camera and wanted to keep it, after the tax and equipment concessions that I get as a full-time photographer this would bring the "real" cost down to about £130. It would also give me the opportunity to have a look at & use a camera that I was initially quite hostile to and disappointed at its announcement because of what what I perceived to be a "dumbing down" of the previously excellent GF1.


So my GF2 + 14mm f/2.5 kit arrived yesterday from the excellent Mathers of Lancashire, with an EVF.





FIRST IMPRESSIONS.


Due to my dislike of black cameras I ordered a red one. The first thing to say is this is VERY red! This isn't the matte finish of the previous G series cameras, this is full on glossy red, with a hint of pink. Its very striking.


The 14mm f/2.5 lens is very small and light. I can't ever remember using a lens this light before. In fact the whole outfit is small. Its smaller than it looks in pictures and the size difference between this and the GF1 is more significant than I thought it was going to be.





The first thing to say is that it handles really well. It looks like a compact camera but feels more substantial in the hand. I took to it really well and found getting around it quite easy. The moving of certain controls to the touch screen is not the big deal that I and others made it out to be. For me the important controls are still where I want them and the menu system is very similar. After using the touch screen on my GH2 I've revised a lot of my objections to the idea anyway. 


My thoughts after using it for a while were that this is what the m4/3 idea was in the first place. Compact camera size with a good sensor and interchangeable lenses. To a certain extent Sony and Samsung have missed the point with their NEX and NX systems. Small cameras yes, but with the exception of a couple of pancakes, the lenses for both systems are quite large. In Sony's case ridiculously so. If Panasonic could make a "pancake" short telephoto somewhere in the 50-75mm range that would make a stunning little 3 prime lens kit. 





Despite its very non-retro colour, the GF2 gave me the feeling of using a small rangefinder outfit. I went out yesterday with the GF2 / 14mm and GF1 / 45mm combinations and the whole lot was very light and small. Also very enjoyable to work with. 


IMAGE QUALITY


To slightly digress here to make a point. There's a review in a UK magazine of the GH2. In it they come up with the phrase:- "The image quality is clearly affected by the densely packed sensor, and luminance noise is often visible at low sensitivities." This clearly implies that the first creates the latter. Well how do they explain the quite unpleasant shadow noise on images from the Canon 5D Mk II? That has a far less "densely" packed sensor. Also the Leica M9 has quite "grainy" sky areas at its base ISO of 160. What the review fails to appreciate is that the sharper the image a sensor produces and the less strong (or absence of ) anti-aliasing filtering is, the more luminance noise will be produced. On all my m4/3 cameras and my Leica M9 I always run noise reduction software over clear sky areas, to "smooth them out" while keeping everything else untouched. Sky areas in particular show up this noise and I used this technique to get rid of the grain that showed up in film scans. Leica in fact only let the M9 go to ISO 2500. I believe that this is because they will not compromise on sharpness. Other manufacturers add in noise reduction at higher ISO's which reduce noise but also soften the image. If Leica did this I'm sure they could push the M9 up to ISO 6400 with no problem, but they choose not to and thats yet another reason why I use their cameras.


When images are printed its amazing just how much noise that we see clearly on our computer screens disappears. I've just got the last wedding digital story book I did back from the printers. There are full page images shot at ISO 3200 and 6400 that looked pretty terrible on my screen that have reproduced very well when printed. Much smoother than they looked on my screen and still lovely and crisp. 


Finally on this point, I like my Pentax K-5 very much, and its very good at high ISO's, however the images are not as sharp as my m4/3 cameras at lower ISO's. I'm perfectly happy to forego low noise at high ISO settings for improved sharpness at the lower settings, and its one of the reasons I like m4/3.


So going back to the GF2, on initial use it seems very close to the GF1 in terms of IQ. Good sharp low ISO performance and noisy high ISO results. If there is any difference I'll report back when I've done some tests. 





14mm f/2.5 PANCAKE LENS


Let me say straight off that I love this lens. After looking at just a few images on the screen I regretted not buying it sooner. The samples I've seen from it just don't do it justice. It is very sharp. With the GF2's improved AF it focuses very quickly and accurately. The next part of this review is of the lens itself and I won't spoil that, but for me this lens is up there with the 20mm f1.7 and 45mm f/2.8 macro as the best m4/3 can offer.











You may already get the impression that since getting the GF2 it has worked its charms on me and this is not going to be a negative review. You would be right about that and I'm already regretting my hasty comments on its "failings". 


Words - David
Images - David and Ann