Panasonic G9. Close? Yes. Cigar? No.

User Report and First Impressions by Andrew Johnston

Background
My Panasonic GX8 arrived pretty much on the day of official availability and has been my primary camera for almost three years, including two major photographic trips, and innumerable other opportunities in between. It improved on the already good GX7 with "just right" sizing, a better sensor, and higher speeds. Like many other owners and fans I was looking forward to a fairly straight replacement—all Panasonic had to do was fix the awkward exposure compensation control and improve the action autofocus and it would be pretty much perfect.

Fat chance. Instead, and not for the first time, Panasonic have shaken up the Lumix G range, with the GX9 effectively moving down the range, and all the new goodness going into a new "stills flagship," the G9, which sits at the top of the company's line alongside the video-centric GH5 and its variants.

After a bit of hesitation, I decided that I was due an upgrade, and plumped for the G9. My new camera arrived a few days ago. This report is based on the first few days' moderately heavy use. It's not meant to be a comprehensive, or a dispassionate blow-by-blow review, but a set of personal impressions from a long-standing Panasonic user and fan.  

GX8 vs. G9, courtesy CameraSize.com.

Body style
At first the G9 looks like quite a different camera, larger and more expensive, with more of a "DSLR ethos" than the rangefinder-style GX8. I'll come back to cost, but the size issue is deceptive: put the two cameras side by side and it's clear that the only real difference is the G9's DSLR "hump" and a slightly deeper grip, which is academic unless you use a very small pancake lens. Given that similarity, it's surprising that the G9 is a significant 171g (about 6 oz.) heavier. The camera offers better weatherproofing and a bigger battery, and does feel a bit more rugged, so that's acceptable. Unlike its predecessor, but like my old Canon 7D, it feels like it might take the odd knock without problems. In practice, you get used to the weight quite quickly.

Like every new flagship camera the G9 is initially priced high, but this gives Panasonic and their dealers some room for maneuver with discounts, trade-ins, and freebies. Depending on how you look at it, my G9 cost me only about 2/3 of the advertised price; or, the five-year lifetime cost of my old GX7 net after trade-in was about £250. I can live with that.  

Back in early 2016 I wrote an open letter to Panasonic regarding the GX8, acknowledging its good points, but identifying opportunities to improve the ergonomics and usefully extend its stills capability. They clearly ignored the letter for the GX9, but either great minds think alike or it did influence the G9.  

Controls
Ergonomically, I am a fan of "electronic" control, by which I mean the ability to set camera functions fluidly between on-camera buttons and wheels including your choice of programmable controls, the menu system, and stored custom values. By contrast, "fixed switches" break this free control model and cannot be included in stored settings for custom shooting modes. In addition, I am nearsighted, and when I'm wearing my "distance" glasses the tiny markings on such controls are effectively invisible.

The GX8's exposure compensation control is a good (or should that be bad?) example of the latter. Apart from breaking my preferred control model it is also badly placed—I found that to operate it I either have to take my right hand off the camera and reach in from above, or somehow slide my thumb behind the camera, which usually results in both adjusted exposure and smeared glasses! No such problem with the G9—you can quickly set up the camera so that the rear wheel, under the right thumb, controls the primary exposure value (aperture or shutter speed as appropriate), while the front wheel, easily in reach of the shutter finger, controls compensation. Vice-versa if you prefer. Perfect.

Unfortunately, however, Panasonic have perpetuated, and even aggravated one of the GX8's other ergonomic failings, and arguably introduced a new one! The perpetual horror is focus mode. The G9, like most of the G series, has four main modes: manual focus ('nuff said), autofocus "single" (half press the shutter button to focus, then full press to expose with that focus), "follow" (another single shot mode, but if the primary subject moves while the shutter button is half pressed, the camera refocuses), and "continuous" (aligned to the high-speed shooting modes, refocuses for each exposure). The ideal solution would be a button which toggles between the modes. That's good enough for a lot of very good cameras. However, the G9 has a switch.  

If you must have a switch, then surely it should have all four modes? Nope. You select manual, continuous or single/follow on a three position switch, then have to dive into the menus to choose between single and follow, or the several variants of continuous. To add insult to injury, at least in the GX8 you could set the button in the middle of the focus switch to toggle between single and follow. Not on the G9, at least not with its initial firmware—this is set to AE/AF lock (which I personally never, ever use) and is not programmable. The obvious fix is to make that button programmable so that when in the single/follow position it toggles between the two, when in the continuous position it toggles between the various variants of that mode, and when in the manual position it does something equivalently useful like turning focus peaking (highlighting) on and off. This could be fixed in a firmware update—I will just have to write to Panasonic and cross my fingers.

The other fixed switch on the G9 is for the drive mode (single, high speed, timer etc.) On the GX8 this is on a button, which is much better as you can include infrequent or situation-specific settings (like high speed mode) in appropriate custom shooting modes, and just leave the main aperture-priority settings or equivalent on single-shot, with a much reduced risk of going to take a shot and being in the wrong mode. The G9's arrangement seems like a retrograde step, but it's liveable.

Beware, bears! Russian strongman and former commando Mikhail Shivlyakov “psychs up”  friend and fellow competitor Konstantina Janashia from Georgia, ready for a successful 480kg deadlift. Panasonic G9 with Lumix G Vario 100–300mm ƒ/4–5.6 @ 300mm, 1/250s, ƒ/5.6, ISO 640.

Strengths
That brings us from some arguable weaknesses of the G9 onto its real strengths. It's fast—so fast it has three high-speed modes: High (about 5 FPS), Super-high 1 (about 15 FPS) and Super-high 2 (about 20FPS). The two Super-high modes also have a very useful feature for sports and wildlife photography: hold the shutter half pressed and they will continuously store a few frames (about 0.4s worth) in the buffer, and write these to the card when you press the shutter, so if you are fractionally late clicking, you don't lose the event. The downside is that you need to use the super-high settings with caution: if you are saving RAW + large JPEG files, Super-high 2 will chew up your memory cards at a rate of roughly 1 GB every 1.5 seconds. Another reason why I'd prefer to lock this to a custom mode!

Autofocus is much improved over the GX8, although I have to admit that my first sporting event with the new camera didn't give it that much of a workout: in absolute terms, strongmen don't move fast. it's impressive to see a 150kg (330 lbs.) man jogging with the same weight in each hand, but it's not the harshest test of autofocus! However I can report that the G9 seems to adjust focus very quickly in continuous mode and seems to have missed few shots. I'll have to try and find something involving horses or fast cars for a better check.

Sensor readout also appears to have been improved, with a bit less banding on pictures of LED displays, and no obvious rolling shutter effects so far, although a higher-speed subject will really be required to confirm that.  

The other area where Panasonic seem to have listened to my prior pleas is in support for bracketed and multi-shot images. In addition to the established support for exposure bracketing (for HDR), the new camera now does focus bracketing/scanning, as well as bracketing for aperture and white balance. Intelligently, even in single-shot drive mode you can choose to have the bracket shot at high speed to minimize the effect of subject or camera movement. The focus bracketing capability is something I have been seeking for a long time, and records full RAW files, a completely separate capability from the camera's other ability to do in-camera focus stacking or post-shot focus selection from within a 6K movie file. Bracketed photos are clearly marked in their metadata, which makes it quite easy to build a script to sort them out from the rest of a day's shooting.  

Battery life is excellent—at the aforementioned strongman competition the camera was on for most of the five hours of competition and took about 600 shots. It used one battery and was about 30% into the second, much better than the GX8 would manage. I can also confirm that the two card slot arrangement works fine, effectively doubling the memory capacity, so I wasn't fiddling with cards.

Two other ergonomic points are worth making. The rear display can be manually set to a nice bright setting for outdoors, but it's automatic setting is far too dim. The EVF is large, detailed and bright, but as adjusted for my glasses has an odd pincushion distortion, with noticeably curved edges. This is nothing to do with the lens, which the camera corrects as required, but the way the EVF display is presented to the eyepiece. It's not a major problem, but annoying to an inveterate picture-straightener like myself, especially as I haven’t had that problem with any of the predecessors.  

Otherwise it's pretty much business as usual. Image quality appears to be just the same as the GX8, much as expected given the common sensor, and the camera has a nicely familiar feel even if some of the controls are different and it's definitely a bit heavier. Stabilization is at least as good as the predecessor, with no noticeable penalty from the increased weight, but it's clear that the full multi-second goodness of "Dual I.S. 2" will have to wait until I can afford to start replacing my lenses with the new Mark II versions.

Conclusion
Would I recommend it? If you're a committed Panasonic user, or have no existing mirrorless camera affiliation, and you want a very high capability, stills-centric camera, then absolutely. However if video is your thing, the GH5 may be better, and if you really don't need the high speed or new advanced stills features, then a GX-series camera will save you weight and money. This is a very good camera, but not perfect. Panasonic still has room for improvement....

Andrew

Andrew (no relation to Mike) is a full-time IT consultant and keen writer and photographer from Leatherhead, Surrey, in the UK. He spends much of his spare time finding images to fill his memory cards, and most of the rest writing about it, or developing yet more software to help process the photos! For more on Andrew’s interests, thoughts, work, and photography please visit www.andrewj.com.

©2018 by Andrew K. Johnston, all rights reserved

Original contents copyright 2018 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:

raizans: "You know, I'm not that disappointed with the GX9. The EVF might be smaller than the GX8's, but at least it's very sharp, clear (bright with good contrast), and smooth (fast refresh rate, not much color tearing). Definitely a nicer image than the EVF in the Fujifilm X-E3 (needs a bit more resolution, tends to have dark shadows, looks a bit jittery), despite being smaller. And the complaints online about the rear dials are particular to some but not all people. The exposure compensation dial is much stiffer than the rear control dial, and you have to use the tip of your thumb to move it. It's recessed enough that I don't touch it while turning the rear control dial, which I can move with the heel of my thumb. It isn't an issue for me. So try before you buy! I'm 5'8'' with small hands for comparison's sake. The grip feels better than the X-E3's to me, and it isn't disappointing even with the Olympus 75mm mounted. All that said, I'll probably go with Fuji for the lenses."

Comments

[Michael Perini]

Re the Pincushion distortion in the EVF, Could it be an uncorrected representation of what the lens actually draws which is later corrected in the file?

[Omer]

According to the DPReview image quality comparison tool, the sensor/processing in the G9 does yield better image quality than that of the GX8.

The GX8 having been sullied irreversibly by social media, Panasonic was correct in ditching that camera. The G9 was the right design given the “contemporary” pro offerings from Sony and Olympus.

[mike]

One person's fails are another's wins. AFF is one of those things that I've never used in 6 years of Lumix shooting. One less indent on the lever is fine with me. I think the controls and placement of the Fn buttons is great on this camera.

The pincushion distortion of the finder is an optical issue. I think this is the one flaw of the camera. However after repeated viewing, or if one is in the zone and concentrating on making images, the distortion in the viewfinder, and in general the entire UI of the camera becomes completely invisible.

When using any tool that disappears in your hands, well you know you have a great tool to do the job at hand. The G9 feels that way to me.

I have used cameras that were an impediment to making photos. Between the impossible menus and the fact that you had to dive into them to execute simple tasks, like moving a focus point, they were impossible to ignore, and remarkably frustrating to use in the moment.

From an image making standpoint, it will not get in your way.

[jseliger]

This looks like a great but absurdly priced camera, even with the discounts and finagling, though I'm glad you like it.

>The G9 was the right design given the “contemporary” pro offerings from Sony and Olympus.

It looks like the right camera but the wrong price.

[Stephen Scharf]

As I mentioned in a post here a week or so ago, I shot with the G9 on May 5 at the Sacramento Zoon for about an hour and a half as part of a camera demo day.

Andrew's article today reminded me that I also noticed the pincushion distortion in the G9's EVF, though admittedly the EVF is large enough that its not too problematical.

The other niggle I had with the camera is I thought the focus point selection joystick is positioned a bit too far away for me to be ergonomically comfortable; it's literally a bit a of a stretch for my thumb.

Other than that, I liked the G9 quite a bit, Andrew is correct that this camera's responsiveness is very fast, and I think it's fairly priced for the features and functionality it offers. I'd much rather shoot with the G9 than a Sony E-mount A7-series camera any day of the week. The G9 feels and operates like a real camera, the Sony feels like shooting with a brick festooned with buttons and controls in cumbersome, confusing and uncomfortable positions.

[Mark L]

To me the viewfinder is everything, I had high hopes for this one, but one look through it and I gave it back. The pincushion distortion was really offensive.
I suppose I'll just have to stick to my rangefinders.....

[raizans]

You know, I'm not that disappointed with the GX9. The EVF might be smaller than the GX8's, but at least it's very sharp, clear (bright with good contrast), and smooth (fast refresh rate, not much color tearing). Definitely a nicer image than the EVF in the Fujifilm X-E3 (needs a bit more resolution, tends to have dark shadows, looks a bit jittery), despite being smaller.

And the complaints online about the rear dials are particular to some but not all people. The exposure compensation dial is much stiffer than the rear control dial, and you have to use the tip of your thumb to move it. It's recessed enough that I don't touch it while turning the rear control dial, which I can move with the heel of my thumb. It isn't an issue for me.

So try before you buy! I'm 5'8'' with small hands for comparison's sake. The grip feels better than the X-E3's to me, and it isn't disappointing even with the Olympus 75mm mounted. All that said, I'll probably go with Fuji for the lenses.

[Richard Barbour]

raizans said:
"The exposure compensation dial is much stiffer than the rear control dial, and you have to use the tip of your thumb to move it. It's recessed enough that I don't touch it while turning the rear control dial, which I can move with the heel of my thumb."

Hate the exposure comp dial myself. I want an easily operated wheel close to my forefinger for that. Fortunately, you can disable the EC dial completely in the menu system and assign it to the front wheel, with aperture/shutter assigned to the rear wheel for the thumb to turn. Perfect!

[Andrew Johnston]

I'm feeling a bit encouraged that the viewfinder distortion is not just down to my eyes. It's livable, but a bit sad that Panasonic have released a new "flagship" camera with a relatively obvious optical error.

Regarding price, I have to say "shop around" and "feel free to haggle". Since I wrote the article I have extracted another £200 rebate from my dealer, because I'd just missed out on another offer. The cash price of my G9 has ended up well under £1000/$1400, plus a 5 year old GX7.