Review: Panasonic Lumix DMC-GX7

Operation and Menus

The rear of the GX7 features a wealth of physical controls
The rear of the GX7 features a wealth of physical controls

The Panasonic GX7 is, much like it’s G and GH series brethren, home to a wealth of direct controls.  There are four programmable function buttons on the rear of the camera body, plus another four ‘soft’ function buttons that can be accessed via a slide out panel on the touch screen.  Additionally, the dedicated movie record button on top of the camera can be commandeered for additional functions as well.  These can be set to a number of controls (36 to be exact) to allow for easy shooting based on your specific needs.

The rear of the camera also features a handy AF/MF switch for quickly toggling between these two focus modes, as well as a standard four-way controller with menu/set button for moving around the interface and accessing direct ISO, focus point selection, white balance and drive modes.

The option for bracketing is conveniently listed as one of the drive modes, which makes setting and changing the bracketing options quick and easy.

The GX7 has two control dials for changing the main exposure parameters: one around the shutter button and a second on the rear of the camera.  The rear dial features the long-standing ‘push to change’ feature that allows further options to be utilized.  The operation of the two dials can also be customized to your liking.  As a result, the camera can be set up to truly meet your own distinctive needs as a photographer.

The top of the camera features a solidly crafted mode dial with metal shutter button and front ring
The top of the camera features a solidly crafted mode dial with metal shutter button and front ring

One extremely odd design choice is having flash exposure compensation essentially ‘disabled’ by default, and only changeable via a menu option.  If you turn on ‘Auto Flash Exposure Compensation’ to ON in the menu system, you gain the ability to change the flash exposure compensation with the front dial by clicking the rear dial.  This is handy once set, but why it isn’t the default is simply baffling to me.  I spent the better part of six days with the camera before figuring out how to enable quick access to FEC.

The odd situation such as above, though, is thankfully not the norm.  The main menu structure is well laid out, though each page of the menu system is a little more sparse than on most cameras.  This is to make it easier to use as a touch interface, and it’s a good design decision.  I found myself quickly navigating the menus via touch to modify camera settings after a day or so.  The rear touch screen is useful for changing most any setting, whether using the camera’s “quick menu” for common functions, browsing images on the rear LCD, or most notably changing the location of the focus points.  The GX7 offers a tremendous amount of control in a small package that is very well laid out, if a little daunting at first blush.

Performance and Autofocus

The Panasonic GX7's rear LCD, showing the main shooting information and the current focus point, positioned in the center and set to the smallest setting.
The Panasonic GX7’s rear LCD, showing the main shooting information and the current focus point, positioned in the center and set to the smallest setting.

Panasonic has essentially perfected single shot autofocus on their cameras.  Each new model brings small improvements to the AF algorithm, but the speed and precision that has been present since the GH2 and G3 is so fast that the small increases are not particularly perceptible.  The fact is that Panasonic has the most robust single-shot autofocus of all mirrorless cameras.  AF is blisteringly fast and supremely accurate.  The ability to select a very small focus point and move it anywhere in the camera’s viewfinder with just a tap makes focusing on what you want fast, easy and precise.

Unfortunately, continuous autofocus is still hampered by the limitations of the contrast-detect algorithm, and as such the GX7 is not conducive to tracking motion that has any real forward or backward component.

The GX7 is a very fast camera to operate. Startup occurs in about a half a second and is ready to shoot immediately after that.  Shutter lag is extremely short and the camera stays responsive when writing to the buffer.  With the mechanical shutter, the GX7 is capable of shooting at shutter speeds up to 1/8000s and at burst modes up to 5 frames per second at full resolution in RAW format.  With tracking autofocus enabled, burst shooting drops to slightly faster than 4 frames per second.  The 5 frame per second burst mode is a little disappointing given the competition in the mirrorless market, as Olympus offers up to 10 frames per second with the E-M1 (and 9 frames per second for the older E-M5), and even Fuji’s X-E1 offers over 6 fps burst capability.  You can shoot with the electronic shutter at up to 10 frames per second, though shooting high speed moving objects with an electronic shutter can lead to very odd images due to the way the lines are read off the sensor (strange motion distortion). Additionally, the electronic shutter can shoot in a super high-speed burst mode that utilizes small 4MP JPEGs at 40 frame per second.

Flash Performance

The GX7’s built-in flash works quite well and is released by sliding the switch to the left of the flash.  The pop-up flash provides decent power for directly illuminated scenes, though with the less than stellar look of on-board flash.  Like the GX1 before it, the GX7 can be angled upwards to provide bounce flash.  I found that with a fast lens of f/2 or faster and ISO 400, I could use the GX7’s flash in bounce mode and get properly exposed images.

Using an external flashgun, the GX7 produced consistent exposure using the TTL flash system, though I found the camera was unable to produce accurate white balance using AWB and an external flash.  When set to auto white balance using the external flashgun, images had a noticeable magenta cast.  While it wasn’t an issue when shooting in RAW, this is something to be aware of if you are a JPEG shooter.

Continue: Key Features

Comments

32 responses to “Review: Panasonic Lumix DMC-GX7”

  1. […] The Panasonic GX7 has picked up another new review, check it out at Admiring Light. […]

  2. Owen R Auer Avatar
    Owen R Auer

    I believe the GX-7 has a high burst rate of 10 fps, and a super high (with decreased resolution) of 40 fps.

    1. Owen R Auer Avatar
      Owen R Auer

      I agree about the rear thumb wheel, they should have milled it like the front one, My G2 rear wheel is impossible to use in cold weather or with gloves.

      1. jeffharris Avatar

        Wear fingerless gloves. That’s what I do with my GH2. Works great.

        1. Owen R Auer Avatar
          Owen R Auer

          and what do you do when your fiingertips get cold?

          1. Nikker Simon Avatar
            Nikker Simon

            I find a nearby cafe and order some food and a nice big Belgium beer.

    2. Jordan Steele Avatar

      I had mentioned the super high 40 fps, but the 5 fps is the limit with the mechanical shutter. You can shoot in full resolution at 10fps with the electronic shutter, but there is real potential when shooting fast action with the electronic shutter to have very odd distortion artifacts from the sensor read out, which makes it less useful than full speed with a mechanical shutter. I have updated the review to better clarify this.

  3. cosinaphile Avatar
    cosinaphile

    a clear concise effort …. your reviews are always excellent and illuminating

  4. omega34 Avatar
    omega34

    very nice thought out review Jordan!
    The photos do appear to have nice warm colours to them. Do you use Lightroom to process the RAW files and use standard Adobe profiles?

    I read this somewhere and was curious to hear from you – does the noise appear to be bit more film like ( grain) than the EM5 /EP5?

    1. Jordan Steele Avatar

      All the posted images were processed in Lightroom 5.2 with the standard Adobe Profile. I could create a custom profile, though since that requires a separate product, I review new products with what’s available to the average user. (Well, Lightroom is a separate product as well, but most shooters who will shoot RAW will own one of the big RAW converters).

      You can look at the noise sample provided in the Noise section at full size (click on the image, then click the green arrow at the bottom of the screen to go to 100%), which shows 100% crops of the GX7 and the E-M5 side by side at all ISOs. I personally find them to have very similar noise profiles, just that the GX7 has very slightly more noise except at 25,600 where it’s a little better. In any case, the output from these cameras is extremely close.

      1. agachart Avatar
        agachart

        why you test GX7 nosier than EM-5 all around website show the GX7 control ISO better than
        EM5/EP5 ,i want to know about lens and camera settings ,

        1. Jordan Steele Avatar

          Um, because that’s how the cameras work? Don’t trust me, look at the crops for yourself. These were tripod mounted with the same lens (25/1.4) at the exact same settings (ISO, aperture, shutter speed), taken less than 3 minutes apart.

          1. agachart Avatar
            agachart

            Sorry,if my comment so hard,
            may i will buy 2 cam for real result ,but i never know why result was variant about camera test,
            it so hard to control,business or brand royalty, and sometime i think it not science

            and you can answer to me 🙂

          2. agachart Avatar
            agachart

            camera test that i mean all around(web,magazine & other)

  5. Christian G Avatar

    Thanks for he great review.

    I have one question: did you test IBIS with non-OIS lenses? The GX7-IBIS does not work with OIS-lenses. I’ve seen other reviews that find the IBIS to be very effective..

    1. Jordan Steele Avatar

      See my reply to Bob B. below…

  6. Bob B. Avatar
    Bob B.

    Good review…but I have a question…I am reading some other side-by-side reviews on the web and am seeing a different conclusion than what you have arrived at regarding the still-image is. You go out of your way to say how superior that the 5-axis IS is in the EM5 and you site that IBIS as the primary reason that you will maintain using the EM5 As your go to camera.. For still images surprisingly the IBIS in the EM5 would appear to have no advantage over the GX7, (Of course the EM5 has the IS advantage in video mode as the GX7 has no IS in video mode). I am an EM5 owner myself and surprised at these findings, too.
    Perhaps if you did a side-by-side test you may be surprised.

    1. Jordan Steele Avatar

      I had done comparisons side by side with my E-M5. For instance, I tested the 25/1.4 on both cameras indoors. The GX7 was consistent down to about 1/30s. Below that, it was all over the place. Sometimes I was sharp at 1/5 sec, sometimes I was blurry at 1/20s. The E-M5 was consistently sharp at 1/5 sec. The biggest issue I had with the GX7’s IS was that I couldn’t trust it to get the shot at a certain speed. It would do fine sometimes 3 stops slower…but not all the time, which made it much less useful for me. You may be different, but I need to have faith in my gear that it will perform how I expect, when I need it. On the GX7, that meant trusting the IS to no slower than 1 stop below normal handholding speeds. It can do better…just not all the time.

      If you read a bunch of reviews, you’ll see the results from the IS are all over the place. CameraLabs had a similar experience to mine, while there was a different recent review that had better results with the GX7 than with the E-M1. I think a lot of it may come down to how each individual photographer manifests their hand shake. If one photographer moves almost entirely along the 2 axes that the GX7 corrects, they may have superior results. I likely have a more 3 dimensional shake pattern, which the OM-D corrects beautifully, but the GX7 doesn’t (though I don’t have issues with OIS lenses – the 35-100/2.8 and the Fuji 55-200 are both very solid with their OIS in my hands – but I did have similar results to the GX7 with the 2-axis Olympus Pens).

      I tested the IS with the Olympus 9-18, the 25/1.4, the 75/1.8 and the Canon FD 85mm f/1.8. The 35-100, of course, used its OIS when mounted.

  7. CS Avatar
    CS

    Did you notice any shutter shock with the GX7?

    1. Jordan Steele Avatar

      Not that I could pinpoint directly as shutter shock.

  8. Anna Avatar
    Anna

    Hi,
    Can anybody advise me if GX7 is better for young lady than Canon Rebel SL1?

    1. Naveed Akhtar Avatar

      Hi Anna!
      GX7 is deffinately better for any lady and any gentleman, IMHO!
      If you have any specific requirement though, we may discuss here, otherwise, I can’t see a reason to chose any Canon cropped sensor camera over GX7!

  9. Anatoly Avatar
    Anatoly

    It’s so fine and stylish review… Let me ask a couple of questions.
    I enrolled into a preliminary record to buy this camera in few closest weeks as soon as it would be available in my country.
    Actually I have to pay in advance in absence the camera that I have never seen alive,
    but I don’t expect to discover something wrong because I do trust in Panasonic, I was the owner of Panny GF1, G2 and G5 and generally I can imagine what I should get .
    The only thing disturbs me – the visual quality of GX7 EVF. My eyes is rather sensitive for any unplesant things related with viewfinder,
    I hate to see a jerky, flickering or moire patterns in EVF, it’s rather critical for me.
    Could you kindly comment if you noticed something similar looking via GX7 EVF?
    And else, whether it’s a real handicap that the 4:3 viewfinder mode is small because it’s actually a crop of the native 16:9 picture?
    Did you feel any visual discomfort due to this not so conventional EVF design?

    Thank you in advance!
    Anatoly

  10. milesT Avatar
    milesT

    Bummer you didn’t include ISO info in your sample shots so we could draw our own conclusions. Hopefully you’ll add that.

  11. Matt Avatar
    Matt

    Thanks for the review and beautiful sample photos.

    Quick question: I notice my GX1 (and GF1 before that) underexpose heavily at higher ISOs. Usually, I have to use up to +2 ev compensation to get properly exposed photos at 3200 – 6400.

    Does the GX7 do this as well?

  12. […] for for years, a high-end rangefinder style body with a corner EVF and in-body IS.  The resulting GX7 received high marks and praise for doing so.  Panasonic also leveraged what is Micro 4/3 greatest […]

  13. sanremo Avatar
    sanremo

    Can anyone offer any thoughts on the GX7’s EVF? I am very tempted to buy one, I already have a GF1. However the 16/9 viewfinder format surprise me somewhat as most snapper would be using 4×3 or 3×2. Is using 4/3 or 3/2 practical in a 16/9 finder? Or is the image too small?
    TNX

  14. Dan Avatar
    Dan

    Excellent review, thanks! Just one query, at the top of page two you state the movie button can be “commandeered for additional functions as well”. I would love to be able to set this to quickly shift ISO while keeping my eye to the viewfinder, but i can’t see where to set this! Any ideas?

  15. Ian Avatar
    Ian

    Your information about the Flash auto exposure compensation has made my flash usable! Many grateful thanks.

    1. Jordan Steele Avatar

      So glad I could help.

      1. Kjell Avatar
        Kjell

        Helped me too – today Aug 22, 2016!

  16. Tim in Singapore Avatar
    Tim in Singapore

    You say that the facility to enter the focal length of lenses with no electrical contacts is the first of its kind. Every Pentax DSLR has had that option from the beginning, the ability to use legacy K-mount lenses being one of the attractions of their line. That said, your review of the GX7 is very fair. I’ve had one for over a year and it reflects my experience. Including the relative ineffectiveness of the in-body stabilisation.

    GX8 review?

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