Panasonic Lumix DMC-G7
A light body yet heavy on features
The G7 is aimed at enthusiast photographers who want something smaller and lighter than a traditional DSLR, but with picture quality that’s nearly as good. Its 16-megapixel (MP) sensor resolution is backed by a new sensor. This is coupled with the Venus Engine 9 processing engine, enabling a native sensitivity range of ISO 200-25,600, with a low expansion setting of ISO 100. There’s also a quad-core CPU, enabling full-resolution continuous shooting at an impressive 8fps (frames per second) in Single-AF (autofocus) mode, or 6fps in Continuous AF mode.
Shooting at a faster rate means dropping the image size to 8MP and using the 4K Photo modes to shoot at 30fps; you can extract the still images from the footage in-camera. The G7 can also record 4K MP4 movies at 100Mbps at up to 30fps in NTSC, or 25fps in PAL. 1080p footage can be shot in MP4 or AVCHD formats, at various frame rates.
While the G7 is fairly lightweight and feels like an entry-level camera, its plethora of buttons and dials make it more suited to use by experienced photographers – and it has an OLED viewfinder.
The metering and white balance systems are impressive, and on the whole the Multi Metering system copes very well. Thanks to the Depth from Defocus system, autofocusing is also pleasingly fast in nearly all conditions. Angela Nicholson