Panasonic Lumix GX80 review.
A few months ago i bought a Panasonic Lumix GX80, along with the 20mm lens and a Lumix 14-42mm zoom lens (a cheap one). I wanted something small that would fit in a large pocket and be a little more discrete to use for street photography, and just to have a “daily carry” to take with me everywhere.
First things first. The battery life is awful. Mine came with one third party battery, and i bought another two new ones (also third party). At best i get around 4 hours out of each, maybe about 100 pictures. Several times i got less than that, at worst two hours from one fully charged battery. I have been through the settings and did as much as i could to preserve battery life but no luck so far. My Canon cameras tend to give me about 6 hours or more on a single battery, so i am not pleased with the GX80. To be fair, these third party batteries are likely trash, though reading various forums people seem to rate them and suggest they are about 80-90% as good as the original battery. I will attempt to buy a genuine battery and try more testing.
Next issue, the ISO range. For street photography i want my shutter speed pretty high, 500,640 or so (up to 1000ms), as i need to capture moving people as well as me sometimes having to move as well. This has meant my ISO was up way above 400 most of the time, even at a 1.7-2.8 f-stop (it’s often very overcast here). I am going to say that 400 is the limit for the ISO, above that it does start to get too noisy. Yes, i can de-noise in Lightroom, but i can see a definite reduction in image quality above 400, where the noise starts to wipe our fine detail (especially in faces).
I have taken shots at 1600 ISO, and after de-noise they are usable, but i would say for people pictures it’s just not an acceptable quality for any sort of close to medium range portrait. My Canon R6 Mk ii has an insanely good ISO range that can deliver excellent results even well above 1600, so maybe i am just a bit spoiled here.
Third issue is a lack of minimum shutter speed. My preferred setup is to have Aperture priority set to about f4 or f5.6. I pair this with auto ISO (set to a max of 400 sadly). What i really also want, is to set a minimum shutter speed of say 500ms, unfortunately there is no way to do that on the GX80. It means i sit in manual with auto ISO more often that not, which means a lot of shutter speed fiddling on the go.
Finally, auto focus. I know the 20mm lens is not well regarded for fast auto focus, but the 14-42 is supposed to have a decent auto focus speed. On both, i miss focus quite often (maybe a 60% success rate). Again, this is for street photography where i have barely two seconds to take a shot, so it is a bit of a tall order. My Canon though gets the auto focus spot on about 80% of the time. I am aware this is partly user issue :) and for anything that isnt a moving subject, the auto focus is just fine, but as i use this as my “on the go” street photography camera, it’s a bit of a challenge.
Having said all that, i do like it. It is small and quite easy to use. The image quality is good (in daylight at a low ISO), handling is nice and It makes me want to take more pictures, which is one of the main reasons why i bought it. I am going to say that this camera is hugely overrated on youtube, where some people hail it as the best thing ever and also a Fuji X100 competitor. I used to own the X100, and they are not far apart in focus speed (though i haven’t tried the latest X100 which i know has improved a lot), image quality is also comparable, but the X100 has a better ISO range and better manual controls on the camera body. Overall though, it isn’t miles away but the X100 (4 or 5) wins.
Would i buy another one if this one feel into the sea? No, i would try something else, maybe a more modern Lumix or Olympus. This camera is 10 years old or so, and it is showing it’s age. Don’t get me wrong, it still a nice, fun camera, but it feels quite a step down when i use it alongside my Canon cameras (R6 Mk ii and 5D Mk IV). For the £300 i paid for it, i can’t complain, it is worth that, and i will enjoy using it for the next couple of years. This review sounds quite negative, but the truth is it’s a good camera, and it’s always with me now, i think i just was hoping for a little bit more, possibly that’s my problem though :)
Overall: 7/10 seems a fair score for the price. Had it cost more than that (say £500 or more) then i would rate it 6/10.