the demanding traveler

2016 is a Photokina year. Photokina is the most important photo fair which takes place in Germany in September every other year. Traditionally, during photokina years, a lot of manufacturers wait until the summer to release their main new products. This year has been very different in this regard as each major manufacturer had released some major products over the last 6 months already. Even if one limit the search to the mirrorless camp and high-end compacts we got new products from almost each brand :

Olympus introduced the Pen-F , Fuji got the Xpro-2, Sony got out the third version of its RX10 and the Alpha a6300 to name a few… It is now Panasonic’s turn to bring out a new product the GX85 which is  kind of the child of the Gx7 and the GX8. GX85 is the name of the model for North America only as Panasonic  has decided to give it no less than THREE different names depending on the market (GX80 in Europe, GX7MII in Asia) ??
This new product seems to compete directly with the Olympus Em5 mark II  (as well as the  Olympus OMD-EM10 mark II) and being now the owner of both I think it is interesting to  dedicate a portion of this rolling review to compare both models.

ERGONOMICS & MENUS

Let’s get out the good news first. The GX 85 built seems pretty good especially when considering its asking price ($699 body only in the USA, €699 in Europe). The body seems  generally well put together with the notable exception of the battery door, which is, alas, not specific to Panasonic in the mirrorless world.
As a example of this, I was last week handling a new  Olympus pen-F in a store and the battery compartment door came off when handling the camera. Rather shocking especially on a camera priced at nearly $1,200 (body only) [Read more…]

As most regular readers on this blog know, my “every-day- carry everywhere” camera is the Ricoh GR (or GRII). The GR is exceptional in many ways :It is very compact despite featuring an APS sensor; it comes with an 28mm equivalent fixed focal length. In addition to providing great image quality, its main asset, in my view, is the very-well thought-out user interface combined with a great layout of the camera controls and dials. The first digital version of the camera dates back to 2005 (at the time with a much smaller 1/1.7″ sensor). Since this first GRD, Ricoh has introduced an updated version every other year. Ultimately, in 2013, the GRD was renamed the GR and  fitted with the much larger APS sensor. The camera has long been a favorite of street photographers and travelers  alike wanting a small carry-everywhere camera capable of delivering high quality files. You can see my reviews of both models here,here and here on this blog.

Despite this success, there have been several reported issues of dust settling on the sensor. I have  both GR models and did not notice any problems until recently when preparing my review of the GRII. I set up a test scene to compare the image quality between the GR and the GRII (by the way found a notable difference between the two-more on that in a future article). It is only then that I noticed some dust on my GR which, I had been using for about two & a half years without this issue.
As you will notice in the images, I got TWO dust particles on the sensor. One small round one, similar to dust spot I got on many of my other cameras (Panasonic LX 100 and Olympus Em1 for example) and a rather big “nail-shaped” dust spot. I suspect (without being 100% sure) that it had been recently stuck on my sensor. I thought this was almost a “study case” to show how a small or large dust spot on your sensor can affect your image file. [Read more…]