The Transition – Pt 1: The bodies.

This is the first part of what will hopefully be a whole series discussing my transition from a full-flung dSLR user to shooting solely Micro Four Thirds.

I’m going to start by making a couple of declarations/disclaimers.

First, I’m not a pro. I love photography and it’s one of my passions, but I’m entirely self-taught, I’ve never had any formal training, and I’ve never sold any work.

Second, this isn’t a technical review. I don’t have either the skill or patience to undertake ‘tests’. If you’re after that kinda thing then check out the great in-depth reviews at DP Review and Camera Labs.  All of my comments here are based on real world use and largely subjective interpretation.

Finally, I’m not affiliated with anyone. It’d be great if Panasonic sent me free stuff so I’d write nice things about them but, unfortunately, they don’t…

Ok, so to start things off, the context. As mentioned, until this point I’ve been a dSLR user. Originally I shot Pentax (K20D, K-7, DA* 16-50/f2.8, DA* 50-135/f2.8 and DA Ltd 25/f2.8), and then switched to Olympus (E-3, 8mm FE, 12-60/f2.8-4 SWD, 50-200/f2.8-3.5 SWD). There are things to love and hate about both these systems, but generally speaking I have fond memories and some great images from both platforms.

My interest in Micro Four Thirds developed as my photographic and life interests and habits changed. First, I live in Tasmania and I’ve always spent a lot of time bushwalking in the mountains, but I’ve recently started travelling a lot more overseas – India, UK, Scandinavia, Southern Europe and North America in the last 18 months year. Second, my style has shifted more and more to a journalistic, ‘documentary’ style, and as such I’ve become more interested in shooting with prime lenses. So basically, my need for big, fast lenses began to diminish as my need for portable quality increased, so naturally m43 sparked my interest. 

Up until now though, I haven’t been particularly impressed by the m43 bodies. A few family members have Pens and I simply don’t like the ergonomics… Likewise, the Panasonic image quality seemed somewhat average, although I was a big fan of the G/GH body design.

That all changed when Panasonic released the GH2. It’s not perfect, but reviews showed that big steps have been made in terms of IQ, and after much umming and ahhing I decided to give it ago, and all my Oly gear was put up for sale…

Self-portrait. GH2 and Voigtlander Nokton 25mm.

So I’m going to start off this series with a chat about the bodies, specifically the E-3 and GH2. I’ll talk about lenses later.

Size and Ergonomics:

The first thing one notices about the Panasonic is that it’s very little. As critics seem to love mentioning, it’s not ‘pocketable’, but it is indeed very, very small, and becomes comparatively smaller when you start adding lenses. Whether or not this is of benefit to you is obviously personal preference. For me, the GH2 will fit in a Domke F-10 bag with the Pany 7-14, m.ZD 40-150 and Voigtlander 25mm Nokton. In contrast, the E-3 just fit with the 12-60 if the hood was reversed. The F-10 is the biggest bag that I’d use as a ‘street-bag’ when travelling, and it’s the bag I use on a day-to-day basis, so for me this is the true test of portability…

In terms of ergonomics, once again, it depends on needs and priorities. The E-3 is the most comfortable camera I’ve used – it fits my whole hand perfectly. Naturally, the reduced size of the GH2 is a compromise in this sense – my right hand is a little cramped and my little finger falls off the grip. That said, when held up to the eye in shooting position, with the left hand cradling the lens, it still manages to be a comfortable and secure camera to hold. I feel that the GH2 is probably at the minimum size limit before usability becomes over-compromised, so I’d be interested to try out the smaller-still G3.

Canon 5dII + 24-105/f4 L - Olympus E-3 + 12-60/f2.8-4 SWD - Panasonic GH2 + 7-14/f4 ASPH

Build Quality:

This is obviously going to be a hard one for the little Panasonic. Put simply, the E-3 is amazing, as any Oly user will tell you. Its magnesium-alloy body feels like it should be a WMD, rather than a camera, and it’s honestly in the same league of the 1D/D3 pro bodies from CaNikon.

The GH2 is ‘good’… It’s made out of nicely fitted and finished plastic on a steel chassis, with a thick bit of rubber covering the hand-grip, and it generally avoids flexing and squeaking. That said it has flaws. The thumb-pad on the back might look like rubber but its not; it’s hard plastic. The rear dial (the only dial actually) is rather cheap and shitty plastic and seems to have been added as an afterthought. Likewise, the various port-flaps feel cheap and horrid, and the control levers feel a bit under-built – they flex noticeably if you change settings in a hurry.

The fact is that while the GH2 is ok, Panasonic are marketing it as their ‘enthusiast’ body, but building it very much like an entry-level body. People are going to expect more for $1000… Pentax showed with the K10D and K20D how good a plastic body can be, so perhaps Panasonic should take some cues from them.

User Interface:

And the little GH2 begins to shine… I always struggled with the E-3’s interface. It’s very ‘capable’ and allows you to access a huge variety of settings and so on, but it’s not intuitive. After 18 months and 30,000 photos I still had to ‘think’ about which button to press and which dial to turn. This was mainly because of Oly’s insistence that they didn’t need mechanical controls, and could design the whole interface around multi-function buttons…

The GH2, on the other hand, has levers for focus mode and type and the drive mode, direct buttons for ISO and WB, three assignable Fn buttons (I have them set to #1 Aspect Ratio, #2 Metering, #3 Focus Point), and three ‘Custom’ mode settings.

The beauty of this is that one look at the camera, even if turned off, will show if your Focus and Drive settings are where they should be. Likewise, set-up the ‘C’ modes properly and the camera will start up exactly how you want it, every time. So no unpleasant “Oh shit I’ve been shooting Small Jpeg at 6400iso for the last hour of a wedding…” moments. Generally speaking, this is one of the intuitive body I’ve used.

Interestingly, I don't find myself missing dual control dials either. Panasonic's system of 'press to scroll' between Aperture and Shutter (or alternately EV Comp) works surprisingly well.

Viewing:

The contentious one… For those that don’t know, the E-3 has an optical viewfinder (a quite good one) and the GH2 has an electronic viewfinder (a quite good one). It’s difficult to say which is better… The E-3’s OVF is ‘instant’ and very clear, and it also displays the true colours and dynamic range of a scene. On the other hand, the GH2’s EVF is very big, very good in decent light, and decent in poor light, displays colour and dynamic range ‘as captured’ and also gives real-time preview of depth of field.

I wasn’t overly impressed by the EVF to begin with but it soon came to feel quite natural, and I really like being able to ‘see’ depth of field, white balance and so on.

A big plus for the GH2 is the articulated LCD. The E-3 also has one, but live-view is ‘clunky’ at best, and makes it a pain to use. The GH2 on the other hand is seam-less, making it amazingly useful for tripod and odd-angle work.

GH2 and 7-14/f4 ASPH mounted at waist level on a tripod and me knee-deep in mud - who said live-view was a gimmick?

Focussing:

First of all, bear in mind that I pretty much never use C-AF, so I’m not going to talk about it…

Like I said, I’ve used several Pen models before, and their focus was… average. The GH2 is certainly not average. In good light, it’s very fast and very accurate. In poor light it’s very fast, and very accurate. In no light the AF-assist beam comes on and focus is, well, very fast and very accurate… The only time it genuinely struggles is in very low-contrast scenes, like fog (although to be honest it struggles no more than the E-3 did).

In outright speed I don’t think it’s quite as fast as the E-3, but in every other sense it’s more ‘useable’. Bear in mind also that there is a lot of difference between lenses – the 20/f1.7 for instance is notoriously slow, while the 14/f2.5 is almost instant.

The Panasonic also does lots of fancy focussing tricks, but to be honest I haven’t used any of them, so, um, yeah. Ask someone else ;)

Video:

Dunno, have shot maybe 5mins.


Battery:


In my view this is the biggest weakness of Micro Four Thirds - the battery life is shit. The GH2 gets probably 60-70% of the battery life of the E-3, on a good day... This problem is compounded by the fact that Panasonic can't seem to keep spare batteries in stock, and word has it they're writing firmware that locks out third party batteries...


In addition to the standard Panasonic battery I use 3 'Power2000' spares from B&H. They work fine but they're not chipped so there's no display of remaining power...

Image Quality:

Just to clarify, I shoot RAW exclusively and process in Aperture 3. I tried the jpegs once and was shocked at how bad they were – very noticeable smearing of detail that the camera seemed to think was noise, but wasn’t, like trees. Trees may look a bit like noise, but they aren’t. I don’t like my trees to look like butter.

But anyway, to the gory details… There seems to be a common theme to many forum discussions where trolls will claim that Panasonic focussed on making the GH2 a video camera and compromised its stills ability. I’m assuming that these comments come from people who haven’t used one, because in my experience the RAW output is excellent.

I have used it for an assortment of subjects, from high-dynamic range landscapes, to sailing races, low-light events, close-ups ect… It really is very good. Detail is outstanding, noise is quite manageable (I let Aperture apply default reduction on RAW import and have never felt the need to add more), colours are fantastic, especially if you work them a little in post, shadows have far less noise than other Four Thirds files I've used. 


Metering is very good, although its noticeably different to all the dSLR's I've used and takes some getting used to. First, Panasonic seems to be aware of the limited headroom of their sensor and therefore the GH2 almost always exposes to avoid blowing highlights. This results in occasionally underexposed images but its a technique I prefer. 


Second, when set to matrix metering, the GH2 seems to be very good an predicting the interesting area of a composition, and exposing for that. This is great for my style of photography, as I really enjoy capturing the interplay of light and shadow, and usually don't have time to use spot-metering and AE-L. For instance, the following image was as exposed by the GH2. In the same situation the E-3 was very unpredictable and would almost certainly have blown the corridor, in an attempt to expose for the dark room.

GH2 and 7-14/f4 @ f4, 1/6" and 1600iso

Probably the only complaint would be the slightly clumsy transition from blown-highlights to blues – for instance in an overexposed sky.

An interesting observation. In the second Luminous Landscape article on the GH2 the commented on how the lack of mirror-slap in Micro Four Thirds cameras (and any other mirrorless system) helped with slow-shutter speed shots. Well, I concur :) The following shot was taken leaning up against a wall in a gallery - they wouldn't let me take a tripod...

GH2 and 7-14/f4 ASPH @ 10", f11 and 160iso

An interesting point in regard to noise - the GH2 is quite usable at 1600-3200iso, which means that with a fastish lens (for instance, the 20/f1.7) if you can actually see a shot, you'll probably be able to capture it. So while larger sensors give better high-iso performance, it's getting to the point where in real-life shooting, it makes bugger all difference.

GH2 and 20/f1.7 ASPH @ f1.7 and 1600iso

GH2 and 7-14/f4 ASPH @ f4 and 1600iso

Compared to the E-3, well, there’s no comparison. In every way the GH2 is better – detail, noise, colours, dynamic range, ‘file malleability’. Just, wow. Much, much better.

Compared to the EP1 and EPL2, also noticeably better RAW output. It’s hard to show examples at internet resolution, plus I haven’t done a direct side-by-side controlled test, but the GH2 really is very, very good.

One thing to note though, I find myself spending more time working GH2 files in Aperture, although I think this is a by-product of the well-publicised problem with Aperture’s GH2 RAW processing algorithms… That said, the GH2 files offer a much greater degree of adjustment in post compared to other digitals I've used.

Conclusion:

The GH2 is a great camera and I’m liking it more and more the longer I have it. There are some areas where the E-3 comes out well on top – especially build quality and ergonomics – but I’m finding that the GH2 better in most aspects, including some where I thought it would struggle.

Pros:

- The user interface is great, and combined with the EVF and articulated LCD it is a very ‘useable’ camera that has allowed me to put myself in positions that the E-3 simply wasn’t able to.

- Focussing is great – fast, accurate and reliable.

- Image quality is excellent. I’m sure the new Sony APS sensors are probably better, but the GH2 is very capable of amazing output and can be pushed to limits previously unthought of in Four Thirds.


Cons:
- Battery life is fairly poor.
- Some areas of build quality need to be improved, notably the control dial and thumb pad.

But really, the big one – it just gives so much performance in such a portable package. I have had the GH2 with me every day since I bought it, sitting in a little Domke F-10 with my usual bits for uni. This would not have been possible with the E-3, and I’ve gotten photos because of it that I just wouldn’t have considered before.

Emma - GH2 and 20/f1.7 ASPH @ f1.7 and 400iso

Bee - GH2 and 14/f2.5 ASPH @ f2.5 and 500iso