Panasonic GM5 Review Part 1 Features

On the left, GM5 with Panasonic accessory handle fitted and the excellent PanaLeica 15mm f1.7 lens with hood in place. On the right Panasonic LX100.

The GM5  was announced in September 2014 as a follow up to the GM1 which was the first of the incredibly tiny GM line of Micro Four Thirds interchangeable lens cameras.

What happened to number 2 ?  As is often the case Panasonic’s naming sequence appears inscrutable here.

Anyway GM5 it is and according to rumor the next in line will be called GM7, due sometime early in 2016 perhaps.

It is currently the smallest interchangeable lens camera with a built in EVF. 

With the good quality kit 12-32mm lens attached it is only slightly larger than a Sony RX100 compact camera and smaller than a Panasonic LX100. You really have to hold one of these to appreciate just how small it is.

The GM5 appears to be one manifestation of a drive by camera makers to fit the biggest sensor into the smallestpossible body. Which begs the question …why ?

I really don’t know but I am guessing the reasons might be

1. To satisfy users calling for a ‘pocketable’ camera capable of better image quality than they can get from a smart phone.

2. There is a contest between manufacturers for the teensy, tiny prize, presumably to win sales in a  market niche.

3. Because they can and the engineers want to showcase the products of their enterprise.

The GM5 is just about the smallest camera which (apart from the missing built in flash ) qualifies for my 'proper camera' criteria. 

I bought a GM5 for three reasons.

1. Because Panasonic Australia was offering a free 25mm f1.7 lens as an inducement to purchase.

2. The GM5 has electronic first curtain shutter (EFCS) and is at the time of writing (November 2015) the only Panasonic Micro Four Thirds camera to do so.

3. I wanted to discover whether I could put together a compact, carry-everywhere-all-day kit based on the GM5 which would be more appealing to me than my LX100, which I have been using for the last year or so. There is nothing wrong with the LX100 by the way. It’s just that I am always looking for the next best thing.

From an ergonomic perspective my most favoured current model Panasonic M43 ILC is the G7 which I found to be very nice to use apart from the flat cursor button module which is hard to locate and operate by feel. However this camera, like most M43 models can produce image degradation due to shutter shock with the mechanical shutter with some lenses, focal lengths and shutter speeds. 

Panasonic’s solution for the G7 is E-Shutter which causes a different set of problems including image capture reduced to 10 bit with adverse effect on dark tones, rolling shutter, no flash and no shutter speeds longer than 1 second.  I found the need to switch back and forth from M-Shutter to E-Shutter, sometimes with [Shutter Delay] to be irritating and frustrating so I regretfully parted company with the G7.

But then I discovered the GM1 and GM5 have a shutter which is completely different from that found in other M43 cameras.

The mechanism is much smaller, using a stepping motor to drive the shutter blades and it does offer EFCS which allows the full 12 bit capture at all times.

The benefits of this are a complete absence of shutter shock issues and very quiet operation. In fact the GM5 has the quietest focal plane shutter I have ever heard. Switch off the electronic beeps to appreciate this.

Unfortunately the shutter blades travel quite slowly compared to those of a standard shutter.  This limits mechanical shutter speed to 1/500sec and the fastest flash synch speed is 1/50 sec. The shutter automatically switches to Electronic when a speed faster than 1/500 is indicated.

For my purposes the limitations of the GM5 shutter are less problematic than those of the G7.

One day all ILCs will have a global shutter and  this tedious nonsense about M-Shutter, E-Shutter, bit rate and EFCS will all go away.

Apart from the shutter, the GM5 has most of the functions,  features, image quality and performance  of other current model Panasonic 16 Mpx M43 cameras packed into a ridiculously small body.

These include peaking, which works well with manual focus on the GM5, high quality (but not 4K) video, Wi-Fi, Zebras, many touch screen functions and much more.

GM5 vs LX100 (or Sony RX100.3 or 100.4)

To summarise quite a bit of testing:

* Outdoors, in good light when you can use ISO 200 and f4-8 the GM5 with kit 12-32mm zoom delivers more information (detail) than the LX100 due to it having more pixels on the sensor (16 vs 12) and a slightly better lens within its focal length and aperture range.

* Indoors, in low light the f1.7-2.8 lens in the LX100 has a 2 stop advantage over the 12-32mm f3.5-5.6 M43 kit zoom. This allows the LX100 to use a 2 stops lower ISO setting leading to better image quality.

* The only way to get better picture quality from the GM5 than the LX100 (or RX100.3 or .4)  in both good and poor light is to mount a small fast prime lens.  You could run with just a single prime but I expect most photographers would want to carry 2 or 3 primes to cover their preferred focal length range. This means changing lenses from time to time, of course.

I will discuss options for

Panasonic prime lenses suitable for the GM5 in a later post. Fortunately the M43 system has a good selection of small fast primes on offer.

Initial impressions of the GM5

* Mine arrived with the 12-32mm kit lens already mounted on the body with no body cap and no spare lens rear cap. For an ILC ????!!!!

I had to buy in some body and lens rear caps from an eBay supplier. I was not amused.

* The body is extremely small. It feels like a Sony RX100 to hold. That is not a good thing. It constantly feels as though it is about to fall on the floor.

I had to invest in an aftermarket handle a.s.a.p.  I got a genuine Panasonic one from an eBay seller in Japan but it cost AU$137. I was not amused. Yes there are less expensive aftermarket handles but the Panasonic one puts the third finger of the right hand in a good place to hold this sized camera and also gives an extra 5mm height which assists the grip and provides extra clearance for those lenses (such as the 20mm f1.7 pancake) which otherwise overhang the baseplate.

The handle works decently well and allows me to feel that I can actually hold onto the camera without fear of its imminent submission to the forces of gravity.

But Panasonic should incorporate a handle into the body design. There is absolutely no excuse for imposing a no handle design on camera users particularly when an integrated handle would cost no more to build than the present flat front shape.

The accessory handle must be removed to change battery or memory card or mount the camera on a tripod.

This nonsense all comes under the heading what-on-earth-were-they-thinking ?

Stupid faults like this are so easy to avoid at the product concept stage. I sometimes, actually quite often come to think of it, feel that  camera designers are completely off with the pixies in some remote little world of their own, imposing poor decisions on their customers for reasons beyond my comprehension.

Bad Panasonic.

* Battery life is poor. In their zeal to make the body as thin as possible (23mm) the designers failed to provide enough space for a decent battery. So instead of the good enough 1025 mAh BLG10E found in the LX100, the GM5 has the smaller and not-good-enough 680 mAh BLH7E model. To make matters worse Panasonic genuine batteries are ridiculously expensive. So I got a couple of aftermarket ones. We shall see how that works out.  I have in the past found they run out of puff rather quickly.

There was no need to make the body that thin. The lens mount sits 6mm in front of the front face of the body which could to considerable advantage been that much thicker, allowing the camera to be held more easily and a larger battery to be fitted. The dimensions of the camera would not change at all.

I am not amused.  This is just bad design, presumably in the pursuit of some kind of ultra-thin ‘look’.

Bad Panasonic.

* Next up I see the monitor is fixed. Again I assume this is to keep the body thin. Unfortunately fixed monitors or indeed any monitor which always faces out tend to develop little scuff marks eventually even when used and carried with care.

So I had to get a screen protector from another eBay supplier in the USA. It has not yet arrived.

* And the 25mm f1.7 lens has not yet appeared. I had better be good.

* However, notwithstanding all this grumbling and grizzling the pictures are good and the performance is good.  And the holding and handling are acceptable now the accessory handle is in place. So maybe I won’t throw the GM5 off a cliff just yet.