Tuesday February 3
 
17:25
 
G1 Review: EVF, LCD, and Focus

When I first heard about the G1, there were two things that I was dubious about: EVF quality and focus speed.

The good news is that both EVF and focus speed are excellent. The EVF clearly beats my old Sony 707 electronic viewfinder into a corked hat, and focus speed is on par with my Nikon D60. For manual focus, the image is automatically magnified to make focus accurate – it works well. For autofocus, the adjustable spot focus (to anywhere except the edges of the frame) really makes tripod work easy, and I like that the size is adjustable.

There are a few caveats, however.

When it’s dark, the EVF (and LCD) gains up and refresh rate and colour accuracy drops. That’s fine, because without the gain up, you wouldn’t be able to use the EVF or LCD to frame at all. However, switch to manual focus and the gain up stops – the magnified image is so dark it’s unusable.

Which is a shame, because one of the times when I most want to use manual focus is when the spot focus fails, so that I can confirm the default “wide focus” has picked the right thing. That’s usually in lower light. Focus in low light is also a tad slower, but the camera still responds fairly quickly with success or failure.

Another gotcha in low light is the AF assist light – the 14-45 kit lens, even with hood off, blocks it when the object is close (eg 30-50cm). I’m used to not being able to use the assist light with my 18-200VR, but I didn’t expect the tiny kit lens to have problems. That surely contributed to some of the times when spot focus failed.

The majority of the time, though, the G1 is able to get focus relatively well. It’s not quite as good at locking focus as my Nikon D60 with 18-200 VR, but I’d say it’s better than when I tried a Tamron 28-300 on a Nikon D700 with center focus.

There’s only one last caveat with the EVF, and that’s the eye sensor. Wave your hand, or anything, vaguely in front of the eye sensor and the camera switches from LCD to EVF. That can be annoying when on a tripod and changing controls, when the image will disappear for a few seconds – always takes me a few seconds to realise why. It’s also means that auto power off doesn’t work very well. Leave the G1 swinging around your neck (and it does swing, because it’s very light) and every 30 seconds or so the camera will “wake up” as the eye sensor detects movement. The G1 really needs to be switched off.

The eye sensor also doesn’t handle spectacles very well. A number of times I’ll be using the EVF and suddenly the image will disappear, flicking back to the LCD. I rarely have an eye sensor with the D60 and can only surmise that having the eye sensor under the viewfinder rather than to the side works better for spectacles. That said, viewfinders are never very spectacle friendly anyway, so the LCD is better to use when wearing glasses.

Overall though, little niggles aside – the EVF, LCD, and focus work well. I like that the EVF highlights focus points more clearly than a DSLR viewfinder. I like that menus appear superimposed in the EVF so I don’t need to take my eye away. And I like that at times when it’s not convenient to use the viewfinder, such as taking a photo over a crowd, I can flip out the LCD and frame. That’s nice.

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Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 Review
1. Introduction
2. EVF, LCD, and Focus
3. RAW Magnification
4. RAW vs JPEG
5. High ISO
6. Kit lens – Barrel Distortion
7. Kit lens – Purple Fringing
8. Miscellaneous Observations
9. Conclusion

Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 – Main Page