Learning to Love the Panasonic GX9

[This is the third and last of our three articles about the Panasonic GX9/12–60mm ƒ/3.5–5.6 kit. The first one is "Panasonic GX9 and 12-60mm f/3.5-5.6 Review, Part I," and the second is "Panasonic GX9 Review." Plus, I've posted pictures from the camera in several other posts, for instance this one and this one. Bear in mind the blogging platform I use softens (and darkens, which drives me crazy) the pictures somewhat. The kit I used came to me new as a loaner courtesy of my friend Izzy at B&H Photo. If you buy one because of these articles, please consider buying yours from Izzy. —Ed.]

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I wrote previously about my knee-jerk negative reaction when I received this camera. It wasn't what I wanted it to be.

As soon as I set aside my prejudices, though, it was only about three days before I took to the GX9 like a duck to water. For about the next ten or twelve days I would grab the thing every day, sling it on, and head on out to the back roads to snap happily away at this 'n' that and the other thing. Just poking around the countryside.

Whither Micro 4/3?
Does Micro 4/3 have a future? Probably, but times are a little stormy for the format at the moment. It's next in line for the juggernaut that is the smartphone camera (shudder!) to steamroll over and obliterate. Olympus has quit the field, leaving its camera division to who knows what fate (I'm in the pessimist camp on that), and Panasonic has a new girlfriend in FF mirrorless, and is lately all starry-eyed and distracted over that. Sometimes I wonder just how much longer Panasonic (which is actually a great company) will find cameras an appealing market in which to be.

The camera market seems to be splitting into camera phones on the one hand and FF-sensor engineering marvels on the other, plus a jumble of niche products. It's a bit ironic that, concurrently, 4/3 has arguably fully matured and come into its own as an excellent compromise. The sensors are better than they ever were, and have gotten good enough that you can use them for dang near anything (Jose Luis Gonzalez's camera portraits that I featured the other day were shot on Micro 4/3). Yet the size and weight of the cameras and lenses really do make for a big plus over most bulky FF camera and lenses-on-steroids combos.

The 4/3 sensor size is less of a compromise now than it has ever been, if you're just into taking pictures rather than making microscopic comparisons between cameras in order to declare a gold-medal winner.

Here's an example of a slight limitation of the small sensor. Shooting with camera-determined autoexposure, the sunlit bit at the top of the tree trunk in the background is too overexposed to recover completely. So you do have to be a little more careful with exposures than you would have to be with a high-DR FF sensor.

And, as with phone cameras, there are DR limitations. In this shot a very bright evening sun is either in the frame or just out of it (I don't recall exactly), and with a lot of HDR I could just get the slight striations in the sky in the upper right, which is enough sky for this small JPEG. No telling if it would be enough in a print or a larger JPEG. Exposing for the sky here, on the other hand, resulted in the dark areas being too dark to bring up in post.

But this is all just par for the course in getting to know your sensor.

Getting to know your sensor and getting to know your lens are the two basics when familiarizing yourself with a new camera. And zooms are tougher to get to know than primes by a long shot. Where do you get field curvature, where do you get distortion, where do you get vignetting...it just takes a while to sort it all out, but once you do, you're aware of when issues are going to pop up, so you can either compensate for them while shooting or else you know you're covered and you won't have any problems. The picture above was wide and wide open, so I could start to get a read on worst-case vignetting. I ended up darkening the light upper-left-hand corner, because I needed more vignetting! I almost never mind vignetting. Darkening the edges of a print was a standard protocol when I printed in silver. It almost always helps and almost never hurts. And of course you can almost perfectly correct it in Photoshop if you want to, these days.

Mo's field (you remember Moses!)

Overall I liked this little camera and lens. It punches above its weight, you might say, its weight being one of the great things about it. Just not painful to carry. You can take it with you.

Grip it
Speaking of carrying, a little more about the aftermarket handgrip I used with the camera (I took pictures of it on the camera but I'll be darned if I can find them. Oh well, there are some on the eBay page linked below). It was 3-D printed by a 36-year-old electrical engineer from Czech Republic named Viacheslav Pronin. He bought source files from a guy named Alex from Switzerland for a GX85, and modified the files for the GX9. His customers suggested the Arca Swiss mount. The grip is made of PETG, a glycol-modified version of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), usually used to make water bottles. The handle is hollow, which accounts for its lightness. On my gram scale which I use to measure my white tea, it weighs in at 54.4g (1.92 oz.). It takes just over six hours to print. You can buy one from Viacheslav Pronin on eBay for $22 (shipping is free). A nice touch is that although it attaches to the camera by the tripod mount, it provides a new tripod mount in the grip so you're not deprived of it. Full disclosure, Viacheslav sent me one for free, although that doesn't do me any good because I didn't keep the camera.

With the Pronin grip, the GX9 is just handy. Even the zoom is petite. And speaking of the zoom, let me eat just a little crow: Panasonic isn't being stupid trying to encourage people to try this lens. It's a really nice little zoom, quite sharp and with a very useful range.

Sorted
Once I'd gotten past my initial funk I noticed that several things about the camera had been changed since the GX7. The on-off switch is in a new spot, and I found it an improvement—it falls naturally under the right thumb and it quickly grew very comfortable to use. Plus, the camera has sprouted an exposure compensation ring, good for me because that's the way I shoot, using the exposure comp frequently. That goes way, way back for me, to the Contax 139Q I went through art school with. The Contax had a prominent exposure compensation ring quirkily marked "1/4, 1/2, X1, 2, 4." (A "stop" means either half as much light or twice as much light as the next stop up or down.) There's nothing good or bad about it, it's just how I get the job done. And in just a few days, that control on the GX9, too, became easy and natural to adjust.

Although the GX7 and GX9 are more or less identical in size and shape and weight, my subjective impression is that there have been a number of incremental technical improvements that together take the whole experience up another notch, mirroring the aggregate of all the small improvements in ergonomics. Not just the 20-MP vs. the earlier 16-MP sensor. I attached a strap, but just as often carried the camera swinging from one hand or the other, and it never felt burdensome or weighty carrying it that way. [CORRECTION: Augh! I knew there was something I forgot. I meant to add a few sentences about the GX8's much-discussed shutter-shock problem and the fact that it is said to have been entirely fixed in the GX9. Please see Helmut the Austrian's Featured Comment below. —Mike the distractable Ed.]

It's been a long time since I used the GX7, so this is only an impression from memory, and you should read as much subjectivism into it as you want to. However, I felt during my time with this camera that all the small changes have made for a big improvement. As similar as it is, almost everything seems better. The controls, the viewfinder, the IS, the speed, the viewing screen, the battery life—I would guess all these things are at least a little better on the GX9.

Are there downsides? Yes, absolutely, but they're just imperfections rather than outright negatives or deal-breakers. Namely: the viewfinder is nice, but it's not a patch on the superior viewfinder of the GX8. The Pronin grip is an all-but-essential improvement, but it can't entirely hide the fact that the camera isn't an ergonomically excellent design out of the box. It's small and a bit finicky. But I got used to it. And the shutter sound is laggy, which made me uncomfortable at first—it mimics the sound of a slow shutter speed, which made me feel insecure at times, like I wasn't shooting at a high enough shutter speed to stop action or hand-shake. But that goes away too. Biggest downside: I personally would get a proper travel charger and an extra battery for it (I charged direct to camera while I had this one), and that adds significantly to the cost. But hey, it only stings once.

It's not perfect, in other words. But you'll forgive that. It's a camera, and you just have to get used to it.

The overriding impression I took away from the experience is that this kit is both useful and fun. I got quite attached to it while it was here. I just don't grab my more businesslike X-H1 with nearly the same let's-go-have-fun-with-photography feeling. I really enjoyed the time I spent with the Panasonic GX9. No, it's not a GX8 II, and yes, I still want a GX8 II. But I'm glad I came to my senses and gave it a chance.

Recommended? You bet. Override your prejudices and your analytical misgivings, if you have any, and just take the little thing out for a walk. You'll make friends before you know it.

Have a nice weekend! See you on Sunday.

Mike
(Thanks to Izzy and B&H Photo)

UPDATE Saturday morning: I have a mea culpa to make...

I really should make a serious effort to finish camera reviews while the camera is still here. With this camera, hugh crawford had questions about the shutter sound and jseliger had questions about the autofocus, and I don't have the camera here any more to examine or compare. Also, waiting until the camera departs before finishing the review makes it more difficult to finish writing the reviews somehow. Which tends to make me procrastinate, and for me procrastination is deadly.

In the future I'll make a sincere effort to change my policy and work to finish the review while the camera is still on the desk.

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

jseliger: "The missing word in the post is 'autofocus,' which has been Panasonic's weak point for a while. If you're shooting things where autofocus isn't very important, then obviously it doesn't matter, but Panasonic's autofocus has fallen far behind Fuji, Sony, or Canon."

Olybacker: "The way the world is at present, and the way the camera manufacturing world is at present, I cannot help but wonder whether the next 'shocking development' from the mainstream and mass-market camera makers will be a new film camera. Who will be first?"

Helmut the Austrian (partial comment): "Regarding the shutter: maybe, the mechanical sound is not so awesome, but this system seems to be an answer to various discussions and complaints about shutter shock not only in the GX8. Imaging-Resource says: 'The GX9 sports a brand-new shutter drive mechanism which is in most respects a significant upgrade, but which does have a couple of potential drawbacks. Based around an electromagnetic drive, it's said to have only one-tenth the shutter shock of the previous system, helping photographers to maximize per-pixel sharpness. It's also noticeably quieter than the old mechanism. But one downside is that it now tops out at a fastest shutter speed of 1/4,000 second, where the GX8 could shoot at 1/8,000 second.' Greetings from Austria / EU, with many thanks for your interesting blog."

Comments

[John Krumm]

As usual, you make the camera sound very appealing. You must have done this before. I like the sink photo and the photo of Mo's field. And I wish I had a grip like that for my XT-30 (I bought the useful but heavier Meike grip. The who way you had to tell yourself to "get over it" and put a little effort into learning the camera (and adapting to it) was instructive. I find that when I rent cameras I can be pretty ruthless. Don't like the way it feels? Take a couple shots and send it back... I don't usually do that when I buy a camera, even though I always have to adjust. My XT-30 was way smaller and more awkward to use than my stolen XH-1, but I bought a grip and now like it a lot, and only wish for IBIS once in a while. I'll still likely get the XT-4 for the big battery and IBIS eventually. Waiting for a sale that might not come...

[hugh crawford]

“And the shutter sound is laggy, which made me uncomfortable at first—it mimics the sound of a slow shutter speed , ...“

Do you mean it has a fake shutter sound, or that it does some noisy housekeeping immediately after the exposure, like cocking itself for the next exposure.

I’m trying to remember a motor driven camera in the late 70s that you could set up to wind the film after you let go of the shutter release so that you could delay all the racket if you wanted.

The totally silent shutter on some recent Sony cameras would have me upgrading if I were still taking pictures around people. Maybe someday I’ll be close enough to other people for them to hear my camera. Well one can wish.

[Dan Khong]

I was looking for a new mother for my orphaned Contax G lenses (of excellent Carl Zeiss breeding) after original mummy G2 camera was no longer repairable due to worldwide dearth of parts.

I was considering a few options and the GX9 came out as serious first choice. After receiving an adapter for G lens to micro 4/3 system, I found that my 21 and 28 mm lenses cannot mount due to the protruding rear elements.

I finally settled on the Fuji X-E3. Now all my Contax G lens babies got a new mummy.

[Chris]

I guess for your sensor discussion, this is your Miata, a light straight 4. Do you really need the big V8 of full frame to enjoy your photography?

[Juan Buhler]

I’ve been tempted to pick up a GX9, if only to use that magical 20mm 1.7 again. I haven’t used that lens since the GF1 ten years ago, but every time I run into photos made with it in my Lightroom archive I smile a little.

But I just went to camerasize.com, and compared the GX9 with the Fuji X-E3, my everyday camera these days. The Fuji is smaller and lighter! You lose the tilting screen, but other than that, you get a bigger sensor, 24MP, and the Fujichrons to use with it. If you already have a Fuji but also want a small camera for walks or whatever, a used X-E3 seems like a no-brainer to me, they are under $500 right now.

[Henk]

Mike, the system is micro4/3 not 4/3 which is long dead and buried. The sensor is still 4/3.

[Dave Pawson]

I aligned with your part II Mike. Bought the GX9 when it first came out, primarily for the IS. I never took to it. Bought to replace a Fuji X100T, which I still find an ideal camera, except for the lack of IS.
I use the GX9 but still find it awkward and non-intuitive.

[Dave Millier]

Glad you warmed to the new camera.

I have a GX7 as a complement to my main camera, the G7. I use the GX7 as a premium compact substitute and carry anywhere camera. As such, it is an occasionally used camera; I'm not so bothered by small flaws as you were. I might feel differently if it were my main camera but I have to say, I haven't found much to complain about.

If the GX9 is improved, it must be in fairly subtle ways because the GX7 seems good to me. Looking at the pictures, the grip on the GX9 looks like a downgrade on the GX7 grip - which looks like a silly rubber wedge but is effective for my hands.

One thing about Panasonic that is never mentioned in reviews, is that while they make good cameras, they are reasonably cheap second hand. Clearly, not that sought after. It is not difficult to pick mint previous generation bodies for a couple of hundred pounds or less if you shop wisely.

I am using the GX7 with the two collapsing lenses for the GM series, the 35-100mm and the 12-32mm. With these lenses, the rubbery bump of a grip works surprisingly well and the twin control dials are great. Front dial for aperture, rear for exposure compensation. I don't seem to miss a dedicated Exp comp dial.

The camera has a lot more metal than any other Lumix I've used and feels more luxurious as a result, which is a self indulgent bonus, especially in a camera that cost me £149 from MPB UK and arrived looking brand new with a 6 month warranty. Did I mention that Panasonics hold their value poorly!

The viewfinder is smaller than the other Panasonics I have but decent and the tilt feature is occasionally useful. The flip up type screen is well constructed but worries me because I'm used to the fully articulated type which I normally keep reversed - safe and out the way.

Image quality is the same as any other 16MP camera and better than a lot of older full frame cameras. It's popular to criticise m4/3 sensors but for the majority of use cases, this is pure snobbery. You could probably print up to 24" wide before you would see any advantage to full frame. I wouldn't expect to see any visible advantage to the newer 20MP sensor in the GX9, outside of pixel peeping for the sake of.

If the GX9 is the same size as the GX7, I'd be hesitant to use bigger, heavier lenses on it. I'd stick to the miniature lenses. Even my lightweight 90-150mm feels unbalanced on the GX7. A small body has its limitations. That's why I have the G7, with its chunky grip.

I have quite a collection of 16MP models in use now: GX7, G7, X-T1, K5, as well as a bunch of retired cameras. People sneer at lowly 16MP sensors, but they are still very good and now very cheap and perfect for any print you can get from a desktop printer. I've done careful comparisons of prints from my GX7 and my DP2 Merrill (roughly 28-30MP Bayer equivalent) and in 19"*13" prints, there is no visible difference in detail.

People tend to overbuy in my opinion. A GX7 or GX9 type camera is really good enough for almost all general photography where you don't have specialised needs (like giant tele lenses).

[Kenneth Tanaka]

That’s a lovely set of rural images, Mike. Reminds me a bit of what an old Life Magazine spread on the Finger Lakes might present. You should print them. It’s a good example of the best of what Micro Four-Thirds does well.

I’d love to help with your follow-ups but I can’t easily do so. I have a GX9 (kit) but it’s packed with the last of my mft gear waiting shipment to a buyer next week.

[Hans Berkhout]

“I almost never mind vignetting” you write.
Vignetting bothers me to no end, if I can see that it was done. And it’s being done a lot, way too often and way too obvious. Like a pre set without subtlety

[Neven Falica]

I've been using GX7 as my main camera for full five years now, I really love the camera - the biggest lens I have is Leica 25/1.4, the grip is just about right. I've been using adapted "big" Olympuses FourThirds 50-200/2.8-3.5 and 7-14/4 just fine. Yeah, both were unbalanced, but not that much, actually!

[Helmut the Austrian]

Regarding the shutter: maybe, the mechanical sound is not so awesome, but this system seems to be an answer to various discussions and complaints about shutter shock not only in the GX8.
https://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/panasonic-gx9/panasonic-gx9A.HTM says:
„The GX9 sports a brand-new shutter drive mechanism which is in most respects a significant upgrade, but which does have a couple of potential drawbacks. Based around an electromagnetic drive, it's said to have only one-tenth the shutter shock of the previous system, helping photographers to maximize per-pixel sharpness. It's also noticeably quieter than the old mechanism. But one downside is that it now tops out at a fastest shutter speed of 1/4,000 second, where the GX8 could shoot at 1/8,000 second.“ See also: https://photopoint.com/cameras/panasonic-gx9/
Greetings from Austria / EU, with many thanks for your interesting blog, Helmut.

[Ger Lawlor]

MIKE! The power line shot is a masterpiece. the alignment of the jet trail ..... WOW!

[Patrick Dodds]

@ Hugh Crawford: Maybe a Nikon? Their "silent shutter" always used to be just as noisy as the normal shutter, but delayed, until their Z offerings came along - then they really did become silent.

[Jeff]

I can’t find the source/quote, but as best I remember, a Leica executive mentioned a couple of years ago (at Photokina?) that Leica produced about 1000 film M cameras annually, and that demand was increasing (particularly in the Asian market).

[robert mckeen]

Thanks for the review and pictures, you do live in a wonderful place. I have owned the Gx7 and found it a discreet and capable camera, my only issue with it, was my ability to accidentally turn it off on a regular basis down to butter fingers!
I have a GX8 love its viewfinder, especially with the larger panasonic eye cup, just sucks you in, also it looks like a serious piece of equipment, just my tuppence worth.

[Kye Wood]

In response to the featured comments inquiring about AF speed and shutter sound/vibration.

AF speed is close enough to instant as to be untouched by any competitor. Including during video recording.

Shutter sound/vibration is what you'd hear/feel if Rolex designed and produced a new design for a camera. Absolute muted precision. Vibration is non existent. You could measure it, I suppose, but it approaches zero.

I know the above because both systems are identical to those in the G85. Of which I have two that are heavily used.

[Anthony]

That is a very good summary, Mike, and it mostly agrees with my own experience.

I've had a GX9 for just over 2 years, and it is my street photography/lightweight travel camera. I got to the point where I was fed up carrying a full frame DSLR for this, and the GX9 suited my purpose (and budget) fine. It simply looks like a small, anonymous black box - just how I like it. It is my first Panasonic camera: overall, it has been an excellent choice.

The biggest criticism is one I share with you: as you put it "the camera isn't an ergonomically excellent design out of the box. It's small and a bit finicky." Small - well, that is the point, so that's fine. But the interface and handling is finicky. The worst thing is that if I'm walking around with it turned on, holding it in my right hand makes it extremely easy to accidentally change settings: my natural grip overlaps several control buttons on the back. I'm getting used to having to use just my thumb to grip on the back, so as not to press any buttons, but it is still a nuisance.

That aside, it is a pleasure to walk around with all day. The 15mm f/1.7 with the GX9 makes a lovely combination. I also have the 12-60mm Panasonic-Leica: a terrific lens, with a zoom range that suits me down to the ground. The dual IBIS with this zoom works extremely well.

Shutter sound. I'm not sure what you mean by "laggy"? It doesn't sound that way to me, especially. I just made a few shots to see what it sounded like. It doesn't worry me at all, and is pretty quiet compared to my DSLRs. In any case, you can set a silent shutter.

Autofocus. jseliger makes the point that Panasonic's AF has fallen behind Sony and Canon. But is it plenty good enough for my style of street shooting (essentially f/5.6 and be there). I often use the touch-autofocus-shoot method: frame on the rear screen, and then touch it to autofocus on the point touched and shoot. It is essentially instantaneous and works a treat. That method also seems to work better in very low light than the regular autofocus: on nightshoots, I'll use that method when normal autofocus won't register the subject.

Batteries. Yes, they have limited life. I generally carry two fully charged spares, and usually preemptively change the battery early in the afternoon if I've started shooting in the morning. They are so small though, it isn't much of an issue to carry them.

The raw files make very nice prints. For the most part,I don't print much bigger than 33cm on the long side, and the raw files give very good prints at "normal" ISO levels. But I don't generally like shooting higher than about ISO1600 with the GX9. By comparison with my full frame D810, the high-ISO files feel "brittle" in post-processing.

For my purposes, it is a camera that, as you put it, I've really made friends with.

[Moose]

"Here's an example of a slight limitation of the small sensor. Shooting with camera-determined autoexposure"

The term AE means little, unless one knows the EV setting.

", the sunlit bit at the top of the tree trunk in the background is too overexposed [for Mike] to recover completely."

Gross canard! Easily "recovered" even in the small JPEG. Not really "recovered", as the data is all there in the JPEG, just compressed at the top of the histogram.

"In this shot a very bright evening sun is either in the frame or just out of it (I don't recall exactly), "

This is a critical difference. IF the sun was in the frame, even the best of MF sensors would have a blown out area, and the usefulness as example is not there. If outside the frame, then lower exposure should have captured the top.

"and with a lot of HDR I could just get the slight striations in the sky in the upper right, which is enough sky for this small JPEG. "

I imagine that you don't mean real HDR, which involves combining different exposures, but some sort of processing of a single exposure. The GX9 easily does auto bracketed exposures for real HDR. That said, it seems whenever I do that, I find a single exposure that can do it all.

"No telling if it would be enough in a print or a larger JPEG. Exposing for the sky here, on the other hand, resulted in the dark areas being too dark [for Mike] to bring up in post."

There's that fat duck again. Many contemporary sensor systems are what DPReview calls ISO Invariant. What they mean is that there is no difference between a greater in-camera exposure and post exposure amplification of brightness.

There are caveats, seldom more than about three stops, and works best at low ISOs.

This means that one may, in fact, do what you claim can't be done. Here's an example, where I intentionally greatly underexposed a very high contrast subject, to hold highlights, then pulled up the shadows.

If one wants sunset sky colors and less dark foreground, they are there even in the small JPEG.

If that may be done to a small JPEG, imagine that may be done with the Raw file!

The GX9 is an excellent camera, but not the only one with high ISO invariance. DPR is regularly including that in their tests.

Not suggesting, Mike, that you should have the tools, experience and ability to so this DR stuff, only that absolute statements such as ". . . resulted in the dark areas being too dark to bring up in post." should perhaps be qualified.

[I wish I had your skills. What you say is fair enough, but I think you should look at the appropriateness of your suggestions to the product. It's true that I can't evaluate files using expertise I don't possess. But I thought my comments would be appropriate to most people's experience. 99.5% of potential buyers for a small, handy Micro 4/3 camera are going to have neither the software, nor the technical chops, nor the time and willingness to work on their files like you might. I could be wrong. It always bothered me when, for example, an audio reviewer would test a pair of small, vinyl-clad, budget 2-way speakers using a source that cost $16,000 and amplification that cost $35,000; if you review a phone you should use the processing built in to the phone, right? So I applied quick, basic processing only, mostly in ACR. (I did selectively work on the farmer on the tractor in the shot with the horses.)

In any event, I'm very clear in all my reviews about the fact that I'm just reporting on my own experience, nothing more. --Mike]

[Longviewer]

It clearly makes a large difference whether a user has sampled (much less kept) the GX8. It spoils one on the more typical GX body, now a GX7 mark III in Japan. Like Pentax making a K-1 primarily to thank Pentax owners*, or automakers spawning a premium label, a few devotees within Panasonic are needed to maintain the GX8 (mark I) line. We'll see if anyone moves on that. If that model or the E∙M1.ii had a tilt screen I'd own it already.

* I still have days when I wish Ricoh had 'gone there' with micro43, whether in its own name or via Pentax..

[jp41]

Has anyone else had this thought: How cool it would be for the GX9 to have the bulkier grip of the GX1.

[Moose]

". . . I thought my comments would be appropriate to most people's experience. 99.5% of potential buyers for a small, handy Micro 4/3 camera "

Perhaps so. As it is for you, I can't speak for the experience of others.

I carefully chose GX9 bodies for what I consider serious photography, not because they are frivolous, as small, handy might imply, but because they pack the same IQ into easier to carry and use bodies as Panny and Oly's larger cameras.

I use them mostly with Leica 12-60 and 100-400 and Panny 7-14 and the 8 mm fisheye and occasionally with various Panny and Oly primes. They have delivered the kind of images I expect from those lenses; what I wanted from them.

In addition, my comments on ISO invariance and DR apply equally to many recent cameras. I know from experience that they apply to the Sony A7 series, and to their 1" sensor RX10 IV, and from reviews that they apply to many other cameras.

[John McMillin]

Regarding the work Moose did on Mike's files: Nice job! And it didn't necessarily need to be a lot of work, either. When dealing with high-contrast lighting, I just do a batch correction in Lightroom on every photo, boosting Shadows and dropping the Highlights. Then I go back through and adjust each photo, to taste.

That might be considered as advanced technique to most Panny buyers, but probably not to most readers of a serious photo blog like Mike's. When I read this GX9 review, I heard him saying that highlight and shadows were not recoverable at all, even in that tree/garden image which has pretty soft lighting.