Caffeine Priority: Panasonic GX8 initial thoughts

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posted Sunday, October 25, 2015 at 4:59 AM EST

 
 

Wake up with IR - Here's your Sunday dose of Caffeine Priority!

The new Panasonic GX8 and a few choice lenses arrived on Tuesday,
and I'm in the early stages of field testing. My first impressions of the Panasonic GX8 are very positive. The GX8 features a new 20.3-megapixel Digital LIV MOS imaging sensor and is the highest-resolution micro four-thirds imaging sensor on the market right now. The body feels excellent to use as the GX8 has numerous physical controls, a deep front grip, an excellent tilting EVF, and a fully-articulating touchscreen.

 
Panasonic GX8

The camera's performance has impressed me thus far. The GX8 captures sharp images with rich colors and tones. The GX8’s contrast-detect autofocus system, which Panasonic reports is 0.04s faster than the GX7’s contrast-detect autofocus system, has worked well during my testing, providing quick and accurate autofocus in a variety of situations. The metering performance has also impressed, handling some difficult lighting situations very well.

 
85mm equivalent (Panasonic 42.5mm f/1.2 Nocticron), f/1.2, 1/250s, ISO 200

There is of course more to test with the GX8, including its high-speed performance, its high ISO performance, its video features, and much more, but the GX8 has made a great first impression and looks to be an excellent follow-up to the popular GX7. Look for my full GX8 Field Test in the coming weeks.

 
132mm equivalent (Panasonic Lumix G Vario 35-100mm f/2.8), f/2.8, 1/160s, ISO 500

Stay tuned for more on the Panasonic GX8!

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Caffeine Priority is a new series of short photo-tidbits to ease you into your day, and give us a chance to share a bit more of what life’s like here at IR. We're more like a group of friends testing and talking about cameras and lenses than the buttoned-down, big-corporation world that some of our photo-friends at other companies work in; hopefully these little snippets will share some of that. So... grab another coffee and join in the conversation with us down below!