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Panasonic GM1
aka "Why the most beautiful piece of engineering in photography is a dud."
aka "How it gets obvious, whether a camera- or an electonics-company builds a camera."
Introduction
I have first seen a Panasonic GM1 with it's 12-32mm KIT - lens during my stay in Australia when visiting my sister last year. I had fallen in love at once. This camera is so beautiful and small and has every feature it has to have to be THE camera. It is a mFT - camera with the actual 16MP sensor delivering real DSLR - quality up to ISO 12.800, taking all existing mFT - lenses, including my great 9-18mm, has a built in flash, lacking in my Olympus E-PM2, for filling the shadows and always having it when needed, and is so small, that it really is only the size of a point-and-shoot, worlds smaller than my PEN. For the first time ever, it REALLY is! And adding to that, it is built just beautifully: Is has an all-metal body with leathering, engraved fonts, a retractable lens... it really has everything... at least on paper.
I own an Olympus E-PM2 at the moment. The reason for owning it, for me, is simply it's size combined with the fact, that it delivers true DSLR - quality with it's latest generation 16MP - sensor and with an ultrawide, tele and a big flashgun can completely replace my DSLR when I need or want to save size and weight - like on vacation. It simply does everything I need my DSLR to do, it even fires up to 8 full-res shots per second, if I need to!
The compromise
After having fallen in love completely I really really really wanted to have one. Now. But it was expensive, so I decided to wait for the initial price to drop, as it always does after only a few months. During that time, I startet reading about the camera. Soon after feeling confirmed by the positive feedback on image quality and some pictures showing it with different lenses, including the Oly 9-18 and Pana 40-150 I already own, which it really looks and handles great with, I also startet realizing, that in fact there were compromises that had to be made to built it this small.
First of all, it has no hotshoe. *Gnmpf* I like the hotshoe of my E-PM2. I have an old Braun flashgun with GN 40 @ 35mm for it, with which I can even light shadows in bright daylight up to several meters away, especially with it's 1/320sec sync-speed. OK, well, it has it's built-in flash at least.
Well, the built-in flash. These mini-flashes are never really strong. But of course, in the tiny GM1 surely isn't lots of space left for a big flash and it's capacitor, so it's GN is ... wait ... 6 (six)... at ISO 200 ... meaning 4 at ISO 100.
Sync-speed of 1/50sec at max. Puhhh.
Half-electronic shutter. This leads to extremely fast maximum shutter speeds of 1/16.000 at max, when the electronic shutter is used alone, but limits to 1/500, when the half-mechanical one is used.
To make the KIT - lens as short as possible, it has a rather short focal length-range of 24-64mm equivalent.
The battery is designed quite small so save size.
That's it. Doesn't sound too bad, hmm?
The consequences
Built-in flashes are never really strong. The built-in flash of my EOS 40D has a guide-no. of just 14 and the flash of my E-PM2 has a GN of only 10 at ISO 200, meaning around 7 at ISO 100. Not great, but for filling shadows at short distances, it at least works. But 6 resp. 4 at ISO 100? Wait, what does "guide no." mean again? Ah yes, right: GN is distance x f-number. So GN 4 = 4m x f/1. But wait again: The maximum f-stop of the KIT - lens is 3.5, so the reach of the flash is 4m / 3.5 = 1.15m! The consequence is simple: You can light an object up to 1m away with this flash. If you shoot people with a 24mm-lens from a meter distance, you get really nasty wideangle-distortions with a huge nose and tiny ears. So just zoom in you say? Hmm, the lens gets slower with zooming in, having a maximum of f/5.6 at 64mm. 64mm from a meter may still make a head-shot fit into the frame, but at /5.6, you have only GN 4 / 5.6 = 0.71m distance left. OK, no problem, just raise ISO then. So, yes, that's a solution, but you have to realize, that in order to get to a GN of 14, meaning a shooting distance of 2.5m or about 8 ft at 64mm, you have to already shoot at ISO 800.
What shouldn't be a huge problem, because the newest mFT - sensor looks great, even at ISO 1.600! Yes, thats true in the dark, but remember: You are limited to a shutter-speed of 1/50 sec. at max. In a dark environment, this isn't a problem: ISO 800 at 1/50sec makes OK pictures in the dark. But you don't primarily use flash in the dark, especially not directly to people's faces! You normally try to use ambient light and just lighten the foreground in the dark, but the main occasion where to use flash is in bright situations in order to lighten the shadows ("fill-flash"). And that's, where this flash is limited to lighting close-ups and is useless for anything else: If you are limited to 1/50 of a second shutter-speed and want to shoot in bright daylight, you need very small f-stops even at ISO 100 to reduce the brightness of the image far enough to not have completely white surroundings. That's a genereal problem with every camera, but e.g. the Olympus PEN at least has a maximum of 1/320sec. That's 2.7 stops more, so where you can still use f/9 on the PEN, you would have to use f/22 on the GM1. But besides the image-degradation due to diffraction at very small f-stops, this further limits the flash-reach to distances completely useless: For example you get at f/22: GN 4 (ISO 100) / f/22 = 0.18m or 0.07 inches. You simply can't shoot at 0.18m distance, that's even below the minimum focus distance of the lens. This flash simply can't be used in daylight.
No problem, then just be glad to always have the internal flash for close-ups or people in the dark and use an external flash for ... wait ... no, you can't, there's no hotshoe.
Someone in some forum stated, that people should stop complaining, because back in the days of film, we would have often been limited to 1/50 or 1/60 X-sync and would have produced great shots nonetheless. Yes, he's generally right, but at that time, we already and primarily had big flashes with guide-no.'s of at least 20 or 25 in amateur-versions and 40 and more in professional ones. Then, the shutter-speed isn't a problem, but you don't have a hotshoe here and are limited to the internal flash with a GN of 4!
The electronic shutter is able to produce very short shutter-speeds, but is a lot slower than the mechanical one when scanning the picture. This leads to very weird distortions with moving objects, regardless of the fast speed of up to 1/16.000: Circles become oval, because the lower end of a circle is recorded significantly later than the upper part. You can simulate this effect with a photocopier or scanner: While copying or scanning is in progress, pull the paper out: The result is a "smeared" copy - this is exactly what you get here, but only for the moving parts of the image, the still parts look normal. Even more strange this gets, when and because camera-shake is such a movement. If you use longer lenses and can hold it still enough, you don't just blurr the image a bit, but get these oval distortions. That gives really strange, nasty and ugly results, but for me, would alone not be a complete show-stopper, as 1/500 is enough for most. But it's still bad.
The KIT - lens is wider than normal, but not as long: 24-64mm equivalent. For me, that's bad news, as I am a wideangle - shooter. So I normally should be glad about a shorter lens, shouldn't I? No, sadly, this isn't true. Because I like wide-angles that much, I usually bring a special ultrawide-lens, my Oly 9-18mm, and on the other hand try to save the space for the tele: I often carry my mFT - camera in the hand with the ultrawide attached and put the small standard - lens (my 14-42 PZ in fact) in the pocket of my trousers. I really liked to have 24mm at the wide end if and when I only bring the KIT-zoom, but more often I wish to even have more reach than the 84mm of the PZ on the long end, because I have the 9-18mm with me. 64mm simply is too short, even for normal portrait - snaps. So, this is OK, if used as a point-and-shoot, but again not as a DSLR-replacement.
The battery is rated for only 230 shots, meaning, that you have a good chance to get even less. With digital today, this is too few. OK, you may not really need the years of shooting, a Canon DSLR - battery delivers, with which you don't have to recharge for a whole vacation, but if it's a very cool location, I happen to take more than 200 shots on one day, especially when fast-moving objects come to play, like children running around, where I take serial shots and pick the one with the coolest facial expression afterwards. So I simply would always carry a second battery for safety, what - again - reduces the use of the GM1's reduced size.
Verdict
The GM1 is beautiful, but useless for what I want it for. The technicians made everything to reach their aim of building the smallest possible mFT - camera, but simply overdrew it. I would have gladly taken a few millimeters more height in exchange for a hotshoe and a little bit stronger flash. And as it is, I'd gladly choose my E-PM2, even if they lay besides each other and I could simply pick the one I like more. Even if I really really want the small size and the built-in flash of the GM1, with the latter being my permanent point of critics with the E-PM2, it's useless for what I want it for.
It may be the best point-and-shoot available, but isn't able to replace a DSLR, like the E-PM2 does, with it's weak flash and no hotshoe.
But even besides this, if I always have to carry a second battery, the size-advantage vanishes. And I would as well have gladly taken another 2 mm in size to have a battery at least big enough to last a normal day of shooting. This similarily applies to the shutter and the lens, but with both alone being no show-stoppers. So, add the size that would have been necessary to achieve all this and you end up with a camera at the size of... right: An Olympus PEN.
What you can clearly see here is, where the GM1 comes from: Panasonic is an electronics-company. A good one, but an electronics-company. They build (consumer-)electronics. They built the GM1 with technics in mind: The goal to built the smallest possible camera. They simply didn't realize, that the compromise got too big and so is now limiting the usability to a non-acceptable degree. That's the difference to the second manufacturer of mFT - cameras, Olympus: Olympus is a camera-manufacturer with tenth of years of experience with real photography. They also try to build small and nice cameras, but don't overdraw it like Panasonic. They keep the demands of the user, the photographer in mind. So, the cheaper E-PM2, seeming to be so much behind on paper, is a so much better camera, that it is in a completely different class:
The GM1 is a point-and-shoot with good image-quality, while the E-PM2 is a fully-fledged DSLR-replacement.
That's why I have only owned Olympus mFT - cameras so far.
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