Panasonic Lumix GX85 Review, Part I

Words and photos by Gordon Lewis

Panasonic Lumix DMC-GX85 with Olympus 17mm ƒ/1.8 m.Zuiko

Preliminaries
A few weeks ago I mentioned to Mike that I was shopping for a new camera to use for street and travel photography. My Nikon V1 now feels too small, unrefined and limiting, my Canon EOS 60D too bulky and too often unreliable. Mike asked what I had in mind. No sooner had I mentioned the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GX85 (GX80 outside North America) than he asked if I’d be interested in trying one out and documenting the experience. I now recall that he slyly avoided using the word "review" lest he imply that serious time, effort, and analysis would be involved. So I took the bait. He connected me with his contact at B&H Photo in New York (TOP is an affliliate advertiser), and two weeks later I had a Panasonic GX85, Olympus 17mm ƒ/1.8 m.Zuiko, and Panasonic 42.5mm ƒ/1.7 Lumix G Power OIS on a 30-day loan.

Street vs. travel
Let's start with what makes a good "street and travel" camera. Photographers who are into either genre will generally agree that a street or travel camera should be:

• Lightweight enough to carry for several hours without causing pain or weariness
• Small, quiet, and visually understated enough to avoid attracting undue attention, either to the photographer, the camera, or the bag it’s being carried in
• Ready and able to focus and shoot, swiftly and accurately, within a second or two

It also doesn’t hurt if the camera is sturdy enough to handle the occasional bump or jolt without slipping into a coma, or a few raindrops without drowning. If it can shoot all day on a single fully-charged battery, so much the better.

As for the difference between street and travel photography, I find it’s more a matter of attitude than equipment. Both benefit from the three essentials above, but travel photography is more focused on making your subjects look attractive and inviting, while it’s perfectly acceptable for street photos to look dark and menacing. So, now that we’ve got all of the preliminaries out of the way, let’s see how well the GX85 does with the three essentials.

Street or travel photo? Why can’t it be both?

First Impressions
The Panasonic GX85 weighs about 426 grams (0.94 lbs.) with battery and SD card, and measures 122 x 70.6 x 43.9 mm (4.80 x 2.78 x 1.73 inches). Its dimensions feel just right to my average-sized hands, and the weight has just enough heft to feel reassuring without crossing the line into being burdensome. I could fit the GX85 with three fast lenses (the two I mentioned above plus a 25mm ƒ/1.7 Lumix G I own) into a Domke F-5XB shoulder bag, and the entire kit weighs only 3.5 lbs. (1.6 kg.). That’s what I call traveling light.

As for being unobtrusive, a black GX85 is about as nondescript as a camera can be. All it took was a single piece of black gaffer’s tape to cover up the white "LUMIX" on the front to make the body look featureless. Mind you, it’s by no means ugly, but neither is it something you’re likely to ooh and aah over.

It won’t attract the attention of anyone’s ears either. The standard mechanical shutter and in-body image stabilization are just barely audible, and then only in a quiet room with your eye to the viewfinder. Switch over to the electronic shutter and the odds of anyone hearing you shoot, even from a foot or two away, will be next to none.

It take a truly unobtrusive camera to be within an arm’s reach of your subject (and vice-versa) without being noticed

Flip the power switch, located on the back of the camera where the tip of your right thumb naturally falls, and the GX85 is ready to shoot within a second. It wakes up equally rapidly from sleep mode, so if you prefer, you can keep the camera switched on and simply tap the shutter button to be ready for action. Focus is swift and sure—provided, of course, that you aim the focusing area at the right spot.

The main controls are all clustered on the far-right side of the body and have everything you need most: front dial, rear dial, PASM mode dial, on-off switch, shutter button, and video record button. By default, both control dials control the same function. For example, if you’re in aperture value mode, you can use either control dial to adjust the aperture. Pressing in on the rear dial changes the mode to exposure compensation. These functions are all programmable of course, so you can change things around to suit your preference. The trick is in knowing how you want everything set up and how to do so.

Handling impressions
When it comes to actual handling and shooting, I found that my fingers naturally settled away from the control dials but still close enough to allow swift and sure adjustments. The dial detents were stiff enough to minimize moving anything by accident. (That said, it's still a good idea to get into the habit of shutting off the camera before putting it into your camera bag.) There are nine buttons, including the 4-way controller, within the area that falls below the right thumb. Unlike some cameras I’ve used (cough, Fuji XT-10, cough) these buttons are not easy to push by accident. Unfortunately, their small size and gray lettering made them difficult to see in low light. It's also hard to tell what which button is which simply by touch. Speaking of which, the GX85 has a very well-implemented touchscreen interface on the rear display. Menu text is large and legible. The menus themselves are arranged with reasonable logic once you get used to them. You can navigate through the menus or playback images by using control dials, the 4-way controller, a fingertip, or all three. You can also set it up for touch-focus-and-shoot. I went "old school" and shot with the touchscreen feature off so I'd have one less thing to be concerned about.

All in all, the GX85 was an easy camera to get familiar with. After an hour or so of sorting through the menus, playing with the controls, and setting it up, I felt ready to hit the streets.

Your intrepid reviewer descends into the bowels of San Francisco
in search of truth

Coming up in Part Two…
In the next and final installment, Gordon offers a frank assessment of how well the GX85 performed on the unforgiving streets of Philadelphia and San Francisco. Was the GX85 up to the task, or was it undone by shameful limitations? In the meantime, what qualities do you think make for a great street camera?

Gordon

Old friend Gordon Lewis, originally a colleague of Mike's from Camera & Darkroom magazine, is the author of Street Photography: The Art of Capturing the Candid Moment, published by Rocky Nook. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and three kids.

©2017 by Gordon Lewis, all rights reserved

Original contents copyright 2017 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Kenneth Tanaka: "Delighted to see Gordon do a review of the GX85. I know I've been vocal here about how impressed I've been with mine. Heck, it's so good it prompted me to re-buy a few Micro 4/3 lenses that I'd sold in 2015! I'm particularly delighted to see that it's Gordon taking the GX85 for a walk. He's both very skilled and very thoughtful. Bring on Part II!"

Jonathan: "Great street camera: Immediately turns on, immediately wakes from sleep. Fast autofocus or easy scale focusing. Precise, sensitive, shutter button. Fast shot to shot time. Quiet shutter. Ergonomics. Bright, clear viewfinder or back LCD. Not too big."

Comments

[Ade]

Wow, a camera I actually own featured in a TOP review! (Not that your reviewed cameras are all like rare golden unicorns or anything - just that I've rarely bought a recent model.) Looking forward to reading Part II.

Gordon's right about the difficulty in locating the buttons, particularly by feel alone. And you will want to disable the touchscreen focus, unless you want to constantly move the focal point with your nose when using the viewfinder in portrait mode. With that nit addressed, it's a very compact, capable and pleasing shooter.

[emptyspaces]

I lack the right mentality or personality to be a great street photographer, but I LOVE good street photographs. I may have gotten a few in my life, but there are so many more people that do it way better than me.

My favorite street camera is my Olympus XA2. I haven't used it in a while because film is a pain, but the ergonomics, design and size of that camera are brilliant. It has:

1. Clamshell design, which is also the on/off switch. Slide it open, itis on and ready to fire instantly. SLide it closed, it's off & protected.
2. Pocketable, as it front-pocket pocketable.
3. Accurate meter
4. Zone focus, with a 3-way slider. Upon opening, it is set to the all-purpose mode you use for most subjects. No autofocus.
5. 35mm lens is a great compromise between wide and tight.

After a little while you get to be like an Old West gunslinger: quick draw, slide open, steady, shoot, slide closed, back in pocket. Maybe 2-3 seconds? Less if you don't bother with the viewfinder.

I'd take a digital version of that camera any day, though I know that day will never come.

Here's my favorite XA2 shot: https://emptyspaces.aminus3.com/image/2012-10-12.html

All that said, I'll be looking at the GX85 pretty hard when it's time to upgrade my E-M10. Thanks for a useful review, Gordon, looking forward to part 2.

[Peter Wright]

A major requirement that Gordon does not mention is that the camera should be intuitive in use. That is, you can focus and expose without making conscious decisions – and without the camera being in total automatic modes. The more complex the camera is, the more practice it takes to get to that point. I would need daily systematic workouts with any modern DSLR (although the DSLR would fail the first two criteria as well) to get to that point. How does the GX85 do on that count?

If Nikon wanted my advice (which of course they don't), I would suggest that they make a digital version of their old rangefinder S3. Now that would be a great street/travel camera.

[D. Hufford]

I have always enjoyed Gordon's camera reviews---err, documentation of the experience. I look forward to the second part.

For a "street photography" camera, for me, it's gotta be fast. Fast to turn on, fast to wake up, and fast to focus. Weakness in one aspect seriously impacts its usefulness.

Controls ought to be simple giving immediate access to at least the basics, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, and highlight blinkies.

The viewfinder MUST be sharp and clear, preferably tiltable, and free of graphs (no histograms---blinkies please!), free of useless/repetitive info (such as dof/zone focusing scales that cannot be turned off in certain modes) dual axis electronic levels that are easily accidentally turned on thus blocking the VF and taking 3 plus buttons presses to turn off, and any other distracting special effects. Viewfinders are for seeing the subject. They are not fighter pilot displays. (Barring a tiltable viewfinder, the LCD should be articulating.)

It shouldn't need mentioning, but if I wanna review a photo on the LCD, I expect to be able to do so without having to push an extra button to switch from the EVF to the LCD.

Beauty ain't a necessity, but a nice looking camera isn't a bad thing unless it draws folks who wanna chat about your "cool camera." So I suppose if one looks like a bar of soap with an fat arse on one end, it doesn't disqualify it. I mean, the old 70s auto, the AMC Gremlin, looked like that and some thought it was a cool looking car.

Also interesting to see that Gordon has put black tape over the Lumix on the GX85. I did the same thing on my GX7, but for a different reason. The name "LUMIX." It bothers me as instead of American Motors (AMC), a Maytag badge had been placed on the aforementioned Gremlin. Yes, I am that vain.

[Stephen Scharf]

The most important qualities I find for a perfect street camera are an eye-level viewfinder, a compact 35mm FOV lens, intuitive fluid controls, and an overall non-descript appearance. I thought my Fuji X100T fit this bill perfectly, but I find the new Fuji X100F to be even better.

Hmm....maybe I should write up "documenting the experience" article for Mike.... [Yes. --Mike]

Looking forward to part 2, Gordon. ;-)

[Dan Gorman]

I'd nominate two desirable attributes for a travel camera. My longtime go-to for travel, Canon G10, isn't perfect when it comes to either of these, but it works for me.

1. Good feel for shutter half-press. I like to grab focus and recompose. In my experience, some cameras make shutter half-press extremely easy while others can be maddening.

2. The look of the files out of camera. If you don't like the look of the files and what you can do with them, then who cares if the camera ticks all the other boxes?

Thanks, Gordon. Well done - looking forward to Part II.

Cheers!
Dan

[Kenneth Tanaka]

Not to get ahead of Gordon, but one of the real strengths of the GX85 is the ability to not use its evf at all in street-like situations. Just tap the screen to set your focus point and take the picture. It's very fast and very accurate. I rarely raise this camera to my face in candid moments.

Winogrand would have been orgasmic.