Coupla Years Ago...

Coupla years ago this month I was treated to a treat  - the Panasonic company took me for a week's visit to Japan. Tokyo, Mt Fuji, Yamagata...it was all fun and educational and quite liberating for me. The Panasonic people were even so generous as to give me a Panasonic Lumix GX7 camera with a 20mm f:1.7 lens. It was a superb tourist camera for that week, and I still treasure the shots I took with it .

The reason I remember this is the fact that Panasonic have a wonderful successor to the GX7...the GX8. It's not much of a change in the nomenclature, but quite a lot more has been done with the camera.

The GX7 sat superbly in the hand, and the GX8 has even improved on this a little. It feels a little heavier, but that might have been the lens combination I tested. Certainly the pancake 20 is the slickest tourist lens going for this micro 4/3 system. Just a bit wider than  normal focal length and very compact and sharp.

The unique feature for me of this Panasonic design is the tilting eye-level viewfinder. Of course a lot of cameras have tilting and swivelling screens these days, and these are great in the studio to give the effect of the older waist-level finders. For those of us who find it increasingly creaky getting down to the floor or tabletop to take pictures they are a godsend - particularly for the legs next day. the eye-level tilt finder lest us have that lower viewpoint out in the bright conditions of the field. For landscape and architecture shooters there will be straighter verticals and less computer work later.

I was also taken when using the GX 7 with the "Helper", "Special" and "Art" filter settings built into the camera. They actually did help, they were special, and I reckon there is art somewhere there. Certainly no outdoor or landscape shooter should ever be stumped by too broad a dynamic range - it deals with it very well.

In retrospect, it might have been more useful for some to have asked for the 12-42mm lens to get the benefit of a wider angle of view and a bit of zoom, but I found the extra two stops gained in the f:1.7 far greater a help when it came to recording the Tokyo nightlife.

All told, I can thoroughly recommend the brand, the model, and the focal length and record my admiration for the Panasonic firm for their hospitality and generosity.

Please go to our on-line store to see the range of Panasonic lenses and the GX8. Also right there in the panasonic cabinet in the store.