Hoo boy are we stoked on this one. Panasonic has really shown what micro four thirds is all about, with the retro good looks and strong performance of the new Lumix DMC-GF1. The camera is certainly a bit larger and heavier than it looks from a distance, but housed within the slightly oversized shell are some pretty good optics and some snappy performance. You can't replicate the satisfying "kerklunk" of a real DSLR shutter, but the GF1 is responsive and clicky enough to give off a much better vibe than the standard camera in this size range. The few shots we took on auto looked quite vibrant in a variety of lighting conditions, though the close-ups showed a disturbingly shallow depth of field -- though that could obviously be tweaked. Being the filthy non-purists that we are, we're most excited by the camera's 720p video mode, which offers decently fast autofocus with a half press of the shutter button, and zero jelly vision to worry about. The downsides of no line-in and a higher pricetag than the comparable E-P1 aren't insignificant, but the GF1 will certainly put up a fight. Stick around for some in-camera test footage later on, test stills are below and there's a hands-on video after the break.
Update: Sample footage is now posted after the break! It was ripped from an AVCHD file to H.264, so there's been some generational quality loss, but you'll get an idea of the colors and the motion. We also just got word that the camera is up for pre-order at Amazon. [Thanks, Ron]
not so beautiful, but - I SUPPOSE - this is the exact same camera that Leica will present next week as the "X1".. and THAT is a beautiful piece of a camera! Too bad that the old school german design will be priced as much as the hardware itself, as Leica likes to do...
In hindsight, the X1 turned out not to be GF1 rebrand like many "Leicas" before it, but a different APS-C sensor design. Go Leica for trying something different!
That said, this is still a heir of Leicas for the rest of us - small, interchangable lens but with a EVF and autofocus. And you can even put tele lens on it. What's not to like?
A four thirds camera is a camera that has a sensor with a width to height ratio of 4:3, instead of the film ratio of 3:2. The sensor is also a specific size, 17.3mm x 13mm, which is a lot bigger than point and shoot cameras, but still only 2/3 of an APC-S sized sensor (Nikon or Canon SLRs). One really neat feature of the four thirds system is that all four thirds cameras have the same lens mounts regardless of manufacturer.
In 35mm terms, the sensor of a FourThirds camera (normal or Micro) is 1/2 the size of a 35mm frame. Since all lenses come with their focal lengths measured in 35mm terms you need to multiply all the measurements by 2 in order to determine its performance. For example, the 20mm pancake lens that Panasonic announced has an equivalent focal length of 2 x 20mm = 40mm. What this mumbo-jumbo effectively means is that you need a very small focal length in order to achieve a good wide-angle effect (in 35mm terms, you want something that has a focal length somewhere around 15-20mm, so that would need a lens of about 8mm on a FourThirds camera) but you'll get a bigger telephoto effect than any other type of DSLR (for example, a 200mm lens would be the equivalent of 400mm on a FourThirds camera so you'll be able to zoom in a long way). The telephoto effect is great for zooming in but does have the downside that you won't be able to generate as narrow depths of field (i.e. nicely blurry backgrounds for portraits) as full-frame cameras or even smaller DSLRs with an APS-C because you won't need to zoom as much in order to make the subject the size that you want in the frame as other cameras (to narrow the depth of field in a picture you open the aperture further and/or use a longer focal length).
Anyway, I hope that was more useful for you than Gad Get's comment but this may all sound like a load of waffle. I suspect the most important differentiating point of the Micro FourThirds format is that the cameras are physically quite small so they are nice and portable.
All four-thirds cameras have the same mount?? Sweet! this is a sign of things to come!........ until one manufacturer introduces "Image Vibration-less Optimization"
The Four Thirds system is a standard created by Olympus and Kodak for digital single-lens reflex camera (DSLR) design and development.[1]
The system provides a standard that, with digital cameras and lenses available from multiple manufacturers, allows for the interchange of lenses and bodies from different manufacturers. U.S. Patent 6,910,814 seems to cover the standard. This is claimed to be an open standard; it is however only accessible to companies and under a non-disclosure agreement.[2]
Unlike older SLR systems, Four Thirds has been designed from the ground up to be entirely digital. Many lenses are extensively computerized, to the point that Olympus offers firmware updates for many of them. Lens design has been tailored to the requirements of digital sensors, most notably through telecentric designs. The size of the sensor is slightly smaller than for most DSLRs and this implies that lenses, especially telephoto lenses, can be smaller. For example, a Four Thirds lens with a 300 mm focal length would cover about the same angle of view as a 600 mm focal length lens for the 35 mm film standard, and is correspondingly more compact. That is, the Four Thirds System is said to have a crop factor (focal length multiplier) of about 2.
The Micro Four Thirds system is a standard created by Olympus and Panasonic for compact digital camera design and development, announced August 5, 2008.[1] The system provides a standard for design of compatible interchangeable lenses and compact cameras by different manufacturers adhering to the system. Micro Four Thirds shares the image sensor size and specification with the established Four Thirds system, designed for digital single-lens reflex cameras. Unlike Four Thirds, Micro Four Thirds does not provide space for a mirror and a pentaprism, allowing smaller bodies to be designed (including a smaller lens mount, incompatible with Four Third lens mount). The standard supports use of Four Thirds lenses on Micro Four Thirds camera bodies using an adapter, but Micro Four Thirds lenses cannot be used on Four Thirds bodies.
In late 2008, Panasonic announced a Micro Four Thirds camera and lenses, the Lumix G1[2]. Olympus also announced the development of a camera based on the Micro Four Thirds systems known as the Olympus PEN E-P1 Camera on June 16, 2009. Unlike its predecessor, the Micro Four Thirds system is not promoted as an open standard.[3]
Ex, While I can appreciate your Googling it for Maeztro, sometimes folks who have literally, no idea, what something such as this topic is, a nice and fully detailed Wiki article is just a bit too much, in terms of, TMI, or "I just wanted to know WHAT it is". So an answer such as "A four thirds camera is a camera that has a sensor with a width to height ratio of 4:3, instead of the film ratio of 3:2." is the absolute perfect answer. Clear, concise, to the point, and most of all, no overload.
White one looks like a prop from 2001 A Space Odyssey. Very much how we thought things would look in the future back in the 1960s, and therefore, we were right! Great camera, except the lack of stereo audio recording and a built in optical view finder for those sneaky shots where you don't want people seeing what you're seeing. That's true street photography!
Perhaps once that spaceplane is working out someone can buy up the pan-am name again too and we can have space vehicles with the name pan-am and we'll get even more 2001'ish :)
Thats the whole thing with 4/3: they removed the prism and mirror and replaced it with an electronic viewfinder. Doubt they will do a paralax optical either, too expensive and not part of the formfactor.
Whoa, rangefinder looks and electronic viewfinder FTW! If it would be possible to fit my Nikon lenses on this thing while retaining the autofocus capabilities, I'd be sold.
I was just thinking how much this looks like a poor man's Leica. I want to love it, but something about the images is a little weird. The edges are nice and sharp, but they look like they've been sharpened. And its bokeh looks a little too smooth. and something about the area between out-of-focus and in-focus looks a little off. Like chromatic aberration without the rainbow effect.
from article: "The downsides of no line-in and a higher pricetag than the comparable E-P1 aren't insignificant, but the GF1 will certainly put up a fight."
The E-P1 doesn't have a line-in mic, either (I have it), but it does pick up audio in stereo.
shallow depth of field is a combintation of aperture and telecompression. As you are closer to the subject, the effects of a wide aperture with be magnified. This is not a bad facet of the camera. It isn't as pretty as the E-P1, the lens isn's the classic 35mm but the 1.7 aperture and the pop up flash are nice.
Lenses are the problem. You can't really have a fast, quality lens in a small form factor, suitable for full size sensors. Why would you want to do that actually? Would you want an F1 engine in your VW Golf? Great quality pictures are influenced by lots of factors, one of them being sensor size. Right now APS-C size sensors are already very very very good, so are the 4/3's.
Yes...I would like to have an F1 engine in my VW Golf....it will be glorious until the car shakes itself apart in a spectacular fashion...All while I can yell to my passengers "Captain! I dunnah how much more she cahn tahke"
But back to the point.
I think the Micro 4/3rds line is a good compromise. You get very good sensors with pretty good lenses in a smaller than SLR frame. You take a hit to quality but it's still better than most P&S camera's.
I think, however, the standard will end up as a niche market because you have some pretty high end P&S cams like the Canon G10/G11 for roughly half the price. The current price point might just encourage some step up to an SLR if you have to buy lenses and stuff anyways. (It may take longer but might as well go big or go home type mentality)
Yeah, especially since the combination of slow lenses and small sensors on most small, non-DSLR cameras makes any degree of shallow DOF difficult/impossible.
True gearheads will rave about the DOF/bokeh possibilities here.
Yeah, depth of field is inversely proportional to aperature size. Larger aperature = shallower depth of field. Larger aperature also means more light getting through to the sensor, so you can take pictures with quicker shutter speed or in lower light conditions.
Regardless, it's nothing to do with the camera. It's the awesome fast f1.7 (max) lens. Either stop it down, or throw a different (cheaper) lens on if you just want really deep depth of field like a point and shoot. Either way, it's photography 101. You should know this if you are posting camera reviews.
Mono audio and AVCHD tells me that video is very much an afterthought here which is a shame. The whole transoding process to get your media out of AVCHD is a pain so there is a quality hit as well as a huge hassle hit.
Samsung takes a much better approach with their 720 HD point and shoot camera's.
AVCHD is H.264 already. AVCHD is just a .m2ts (mpeg transport stream) file with H.264 video and AAC audio. Most good video playback programs will play this including VLC and Window 7's version of media player. You can remux it (not recompress it, just change the container) to a .mp4 file pretty easily (tsremux will do it I'm pretty sure) and then you can play it in other programs too.
In addition, AVCHD is a pretty widely accepted standard for HD video. Copy the file structure to a DVD or a USB key and plug it into a PS3 or many Blu-ray players and it'll play with a single click.
the "kerklunk" of a DSLR is not the shutter, it's the mirror. physical shutters are pretty quiet.
regarding the shallow depth of field (DOF), this is a product of a larger sensor and generally considered a good thing by photographers. this is one of the reasons the Canon 5DII is so appealing, the full-frame sensor gives a very shallow DOF. you can always deepen the DOF by stopping down the aperture.
Well, maybe not super obvious, but there. And once you've been "sensitized" to all the different ways CMOS sensors muck up the image (lots of examples at TechThoughts.org) you'll be able to see it (and wince) very easily. It's the main reason my main HD camcorder is still a 3 CCD model. I just can't lay money down on a CMOS-based camcorder.
For a better example of it, follow the link on Tech Thoughts to The Foundry to see their software that corrects for rolling shutter- and not just for when the camera pans.
"Disturbingly shallow depth of field"?!? What kind of camera user are you? That is a HUGE advantage, and is something unattainable with current P&S offerings due to tiny sensor size and slow lenses.
Please learn something about photography before posting "first looks" at camera equipment.
Actually, that's not a good thing for Engadget photographers because they usually abuse the bokeh. Look at the photographs they take of gear that they see at a press event. you can never really tell what you are looking at because about 1mm of the item is in focus, and the rest is washed away in blur.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
posted September 3rd 2009 8:17AM
What a beautiful camera - I wonder how much better image quality is in comparison to the LX3.
not so beautiful, but - I SUPPOSE - this is the exact same camera that Leica will present next week as the "X1".. and THAT is a beautiful piece of a camera! Too bad that the old school german design will be priced as much as the hardware itself, as Leica likes to do...
I totally agree, and OMG listen to that shutter. You can hardly hear it! Schweet stuff!
In hindsight, the X1 turned out not to be GF1 rebrand like many "Leicas" before it, but a different APS-C sensor design. Go Leica for trying something different!
That said, this is still a heir of Leicas for the rest of us - small, interchangable lens but with a EVF and autofocus. And you can even put tele lens on it. What's not to like?
What is a four-thirds camera anyways?
What is an ignoramus, anyways?
A four thirds camera is a camera that has a sensor with a width to height ratio of 4:3, instead of the film ratio of 3:2. The sensor is also a specific size, 17.3mm x 13mm, which is a lot bigger than point and shoot cameras, but still only 2/3 of an APC-S sized sensor (Nikon or Canon SLRs). One really neat feature of the four thirds system is that all four thirds cameras have the same lens mounts regardless of manufacturer.
Gad Get: this is why cool kids at school picked on you.
In 35mm terms, the sensor of a FourThirds camera (normal or Micro) is 1/2 the size of a 35mm frame. Since all lenses come with their focal lengths measured in 35mm terms you need to multiply all the measurements by 2 in order to determine its performance. For example, the 20mm pancake lens that Panasonic announced has an equivalent focal length of 2 x 20mm = 40mm. What this mumbo-jumbo effectively means is that you need a very small focal length in order to achieve a good wide-angle effect (in 35mm terms, you want something that has a focal length somewhere around 15-20mm, so that would need a lens of about 8mm on a FourThirds camera) but you'll get a bigger telephoto effect than any other type of DSLR (for example, a 200mm lens would be the equivalent of 400mm on a FourThirds camera so you'll be able to zoom in a long way). The telephoto effect is great for zooming in but does have the downside that you won't be able to generate as narrow depths of field (i.e. nicely blurry backgrounds for portraits) as full-frame cameras or even smaller DSLRs with an APS-C because you won't need to zoom as much in order to make the subject the size that you want in the frame as other cameras (to narrow the depth of field in a picture you open the aperture further and/or use a longer focal length).
Anyway, I hope that was more useful for you than Gad Get's comment but this may all sound like a load of waffle. I suspect the most important differentiating point of the Micro FourThirds format is that the cameras are physically quite small so they are nice and portable.
All four-thirds cameras have the same mount?? Sweet! this is a sign of things to come!........ until one manufacturer introduces "Image Vibration-less Optimization"
I just made that up, but you know its true.
Jeez..
Let-me-google-that-for-you:
The Four Thirds system is a standard created by Olympus and Kodak for digital single-lens reflex camera (DSLR) design and development.[1]
The system provides a standard that, with digital cameras and lenses available from multiple manufacturers, allows for the interchange of lenses and bodies from different manufacturers. U.S. Patent 6,910,814 seems to cover the standard. This is claimed to be an open standard; it is however only accessible to companies and under a non-disclosure agreement.[2]
Unlike older SLR systems, Four Thirds has been designed from the ground up to be entirely digital. Many lenses are extensively computerized, to the point that Olympus offers firmware updates for many of them. Lens design has been tailored to the requirements of digital sensors, most notably through telecentric designs. The size of the sensor is slightly smaller than for most DSLRs and this implies that lenses, especially telephoto lenses, can be smaller. For example, a Four Thirds lens with a 300 mm focal length would cover about the same angle of view as a 600 mm focal length lens for the 35 mm film standard, and is correspondingly more compact. That is, the Four Thirds System is said to have a crop factor (focal length multiplier) of about 2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Thirds_system
- - -
The Micro Four Thirds system is a standard created by Olympus and Panasonic for compact digital camera design and development, announced August 5, 2008.[1] The system provides a standard for design of compatible interchangeable lenses and compact cameras by different manufacturers adhering to the system. Micro Four Thirds shares the image sensor size and specification with the established Four Thirds system, designed for digital single-lens reflex cameras. Unlike Four Thirds, Micro Four Thirds does not provide space for a mirror and a pentaprism, allowing smaller bodies to be designed (including a smaller lens mount, incompatible with Four Third lens mount). The standard supports use of Four Thirds lenses on Micro Four Thirds camera bodies using an adapter, but Micro Four Thirds lenses cannot be used on Four Thirds bodies.
In late 2008, Panasonic announced a Micro Four Thirds camera and lenses, the Lumix G1[2]. Olympus also announced the development of a camera based on the Micro Four Thirds systems known as the Olympus PEN E-P1 Camera on June 16, 2009. Unlike its predecessor, the Micro Four Thirds system is not promoted as an open standard.[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Four_Thirds_system
Ex, While I can appreciate your Googling it for Maeztro, sometimes folks who have literally, no idea, what something such as this topic is, a nice and fully detailed Wiki article is just a bit too much, in terms of, TMI, or "I just wanted to know WHAT it is". So an answer such as "A four thirds camera is a camera that has a sensor with a width to height ratio of 4:3, instead of the film ratio of 3:2." is the absolute perfect answer. Clear, concise, to the point, and most of all, no overload.
White one looks like a prop from 2001 A Space Odyssey. Very much how we thought things would look in the future back in the 1960s, and therefore, we were right! Great camera, except the lack of stereo audio recording and a built in optical view finder for those sneaky shots where you don't want people seeing what you're seeing. That's true street photography!
Perhaps once that spaceplane is working out someone can buy up the pan-am name again too and we can have space vehicles with the name pan-am and we'll get even more 2001'ish :)
Thats the whole thing with 4/3: they removed the prism and mirror and replaced it with an electronic viewfinder. Doubt they will do a paralax optical either, too expensive and not part of the formfactor.
Paul Miller, you win for trying to fit your camera lens into the detachable EVF.
I like it a lot. Better than the EP-1 thanks to improved autofocus, rear screen and built-in-flash.
...and it has an ELECTRONIC viewfinder.
Whoa, rangefinder looks and electronic viewfinder FTW! If it would be possible to fit my Nikon lenses on this thing while retaining the autofocus capabilities, I'd be sold.
I was just thinking how much this looks like a poor man's Leica. I want to love it, but something about the images is a little weird. The edges are nice and sharp, but they look like they've been sharpened. And its bokeh looks a little too smooth. and something about the area between out-of-focus and in-focus looks a little off. Like chromatic aberration without the rainbow effect.
from article:
"The downsides of no line-in and a higher pricetag than the comparable E-P1 aren't insignificant, but the GF1 will certainly put up a fight."
The E-P1 doesn't have a line-in mic, either (I have it), but it does pick up audio in stereo.
Fuuuckkk.... 900 dollars?
My wallet says no, but my head says YES YES YES.
Guess I'll be putting my credit card back to work after a mild hibernation...
i have this same problem when it comes to hookers
How do you get hookers to hibernate?
A slightly oversized shell, if only I had a dollar for every time I heard that from your imaginary girlfriend I'd be rich.
shallow depth of field is a combintation of aperture and telecompression. As you are closer to the subject, the effects of a wide aperture with be magnified. This is not a bad facet of the camera. It isn't as pretty as the E-P1, the lens isn's the classic 35mm but the 1.7 aperture and the pop up flash are nice.
I think the shallow DoF from those pictures are quite nice.
why don't they put a full frame sensor in a compact body?
i'd hit that in an instant....
Because you'd need lenses to cover that sensor. It wouldn't end up being a compact system at all.
Same with 4/3, actually. Once you have a decent zoom lens on the thing, it's not exactly a compact camera anymore.
Lenses are the problem. You can't really have a fast, quality lens in a small form factor, suitable for full size sensors.
Why would you want to do that actually? Would you want an F1 engine in your VW Golf?
Great quality pictures are influenced by lots of factors, one of them being sensor size.
Right now APS-C size sensors are already very very very good, so are the 4/3's.
Yes...I would like to have an F1 engine in my VW Golf....it will be glorious until the car shakes itself apart in a spectacular fashion...All while I can yell to my passengers "Captain! I dunnah how much more she cahn tahke"
But back to the point.
I think the Micro 4/3rds line is a good compromise. You get very good sensors with pretty good lenses in a smaller than SLR frame. You take a hit to quality but it's still better than most P&S camera's.
I think, however, the standard will end up as a niche market because you have some pretty high end P&S cams like the Canon G10/G11 for roughly half the price. The current price point might just encourage some step up to an SLR if you have to buy lenses and stuff anyways. (It may take longer but might as well go big or go home type mentality)
It's called the Leica M9.
Full frame sensor, compact lenses, and about the same size.
Tiny drawback: 10x the price.
Aren't gf's always expensive?
Has anyone tried comparing the GF1's two main 720p output formats: AVCHD at 60fps vs MJPEG at 30fps?...
"...the close-ups showed a disturbingly shallow depth of field..."
Huh? Last time I checked, aperture can easily be adjusted. Having a maximum at 1.7 seems like a good thing to me, not a disturbing thing.
Yeah, especially since the combination of slow lenses and small sensors on most small, non-DSLR cameras makes any degree of shallow DOF difficult/impossible.
True gearheads will rave about the DOF/bokeh possibilities here.
I agree with Tony. The ability to take photos with "disturbingly shallow depth of field" is precisely why I'm interested in this camera.
Yeah, depth of field is inversely proportional to aperature size. Larger aperature = shallower depth of field. Larger aperature also means more light getting through to the sensor, so you can take pictures with quicker shutter speed or in lower light conditions.
Regardless, it's nothing to do with the camera. It's the awesome fast f1.7 (max) lens. Either stop it down, or throw a different (cheaper) lens on if you just want really deep depth of field like a point and shoot. Either way, it's photography 101. You should know this if you are posting camera reviews.
Mono audio and AVCHD tells me that video is very much an afterthought here which is a shame. The whole transoding process to get your media out of AVCHD is a pain so there is a quality hit as well as a huge hassle hit.
Samsung takes a much better approach with their 720 HD point and shoot camera's.
Why is so much of the video sample out of focus?
I think I'll wait to see what Samsung does.
AVCHD is H.264 already. AVCHD is just a .m2ts (mpeg transport stream) file with H.264 video and AAC audio. Most good video playback programs will play this including VLC and Window 7's version of media player. You can remux it (not recompress it, just change the container) to a .mp4 file pretty easily (tsremux will do it I'm pretty sure) and then you can play it in other programs too.
In addition, AVCHD is a pretty widely accepted standard for HD video. Copy the file structure to a DVD or a USB key and plug it into a PS3 or many Blu-ray players and it'll play with a single click.
the "kerklunk" of a DSLR is not the shutter, it's the mirror. physical shutters are pretty quiet.
regarding the shallow depth of field (DOF), this is a product of a larger sensor and generally considered a good thing by photographers. this is one of the reasons the Canon 5DII is so appealing, the full-frame sensor gives a very shallow DOF. you can always deepen the DOF by stopping down the aperture.
And, interestingly, the whole point if the 4/3 system is no mirror / prism system to make it smaller.
no offense, but engadget really needs to hire a camera editor
Couldn't agree more.
"zero jelly vision"
You are not serious are you?
Bad bad rolling shutter, obvious as hell!
Look at the 0:25 mark of second video, as the camera sweeps all the straight vertical lines skew badly.
Sorry, not seeing any 'obvious as hell' rolling shutter. Not in this video, or the samples I've seen on DP review or on youtube.
Well, maybe not super obvious, but there. And once you've been "sensitized" to all the different ways CMOS sensors muck up the image (lots of examples at TechThoughts.org) you'll be able to see it (and wince) very easily. It's the main reason my main HD camcorder is still a 3 CCD model. I just can't lay money down on a CMOS-based camcorder.
For a better example of it, follow the link on Tech Thoughts to The Foundry to see their software that corrects for rolling shutter- and not just for when the camera pans.
"Disturbingly shallow depth of field"?!? What kind of camera user are you? That is a HUGE advantage, and is something unattainable with current P&S offerings due to tiny sensor size and slow lenses.
Please learn something about photography before posting "first looks" at camera equipment.
Yeah author, seriously...the shallow depth of field is likely the result of the large 1.7 aperture and focusing relatively close.
The More You Know.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperture
Actually, that's not a good thing for Engadget photographers because they usually abuse the bokeh. Look at the photographs they take of gear that they see at a press event. you can never really tell what you are looking at because about 1mm of the item is in focus, and the rest is washed away in blur.
Don't abuse the bokeh.