Panasonic GX85 Beta Gallery Supplement

Panasonic GX85 Special Gallery Supplement

by Dave Pardue | Posted: 04/05/2016

Our initial GX85 sample was in beta form, but we were assured by Panasonic that it's OK to shoot and post real-world images for our readers. (Note: We've since got a production-level GX85 so gallery images without the Beta Sample Image warning are from the production version.) For a variety of different looks I grabbed the 12-32mm kit lens along with the Panasonic 35-100mm f/2.8, the Panasonic 100-400mm f/4-6.3 Leica G, the Sigma 60mm f/2.8 Art and the Olympus 7-14mm f/2.8 and headed out into the Atlanta springtime.

Having recently shot with the GX8 along with the new 100-400mm f/4-6.3 Leica, the slightly smaller size of the GX85 was a welcome change for most lenses. The GX8 is still better for larger lenses like to the 100-400mm though, as it's simply a better all-around balance. But for the majority of lenses, the GX85 is more than enough to strike a good balance.

[Notes: Images have been cropped, resized to fit this page and slightly adjusted in post, primarily to balance shadows and highlights when needed. Clicking any image will take you to a carrier page, where you'll have access to the full resolution image as delivered straight from our Beta sample GX85, in addition to EXIF data. RAW files are also available to download in our Panasonic GX85 Gallery page.]

My next initial thought regarding this camera is how nicely the new shutter mechanism sounds. This new electromagnetic shutter, as mentioned above, is intended to reduce dreaded "shutter shock". We'll be performing side-by-side tests to bring you more data and evaluation on this, but I can report now that it's quite a soothing sound compared to the louder clacks some of us are more accustomed to.

This feature is just one upgrade on the GX85 intended to improve overall image quality and sharpness. Yet another is the removal of the optical low-pass filter, which have traditionally been used to minimize distracting moiré, but which have tended to rob some sharpness from the resulting fine detail.

Moving now to a few longer zoom lenses, we have examples with both the Panasonic 35-100mm f/2.8, a lens that pairs magnificently well on the GX85 for balance. And we also pair it with the newer Panasonic 100-400mm f/4-6.3, which is currently the only MFT lens that can zoom to an equivalent 800mm focal length. Stay tuned, as we'll bring you more examples from this combination in our shutter shock testing.

See more images in our Panasonic GX85 Gallery!