Panasonic Lumix GX8

Panasonic Lumix GX8 – Features

The Panasonic Lumix GX8 is a feature-heavy camera. It offers both Wi-Fi and NFC, letting you transfer images to a phone easily, connect quickly and control the shutter remotely.

You also get in-camera multi-shot HDR, auto-stitch panoramas and a stop-motion animation mode. From a hardware standpoint, this is only the second Panasonic CSC to feature in-body optical image stabilisation.

It’s a four-axis system that teams up with the OIS present in some Panasonic lenses – and, of course, stabilises lenses that don't offer such capability. This significantly improves flexibility when you’re shooting handheld – worth 2-3 stops – allowing you to significantly lower the shutter speed and/or ISO. However, we did find the Olympus OM-D EM-5 II’s system to be more effective in comparison, even when the GX8 is used with a stabilised lens.

The one feature that the Panasonic Lumix GX8 wilfully chops out is a flash, which might be of surprise given the size of the camera. There’s no unit bundled in the box either, although there’s certainly room to attach one to the top plate. The hotshoe also has contacts to power non-battery-operated units.

Panasonic Lumix GX8 – Performance and AF

The Panasonic Lumix GX8 is a very fast performer, as you’d hope for in a CSC featuring a Micro Four Thirds sensor and costing £1,000 for the body alone.

Burst performance is superb, and offers several options. You can zoom along at 8.1fps, for up to 30 JPEG and RAW exposures, or a whopping 150 JPEGs. Alternatively, switch down to 5.5fps and you can capture 300 JPEGs. The RAW figure doesn’t change, though: 30 exposures before the buffer's full.

Use the electronic shutter and you can go all the way up to 10fps, although then you’re at risk of rolling shutter image distortion.

The electronic shutter means you can use incredibly fast shutter speeds, up to 1/16000 second, which is perfect for wide apertures on bright, sunny days. The Panasonic Lumix GX8’s mechanical shutter is no slouch either. It will go up to 1/8000 second with many of the lenses, which should cater for most situations.

The speed shooting doesn’t stop there. Three kinds of 4K Photo mode let you shoot 8-megapixel photos at 30fps, effectively extracting frames from 4K-resolution video. There’s one mode that you can treat as a standard video mode: one press to start capture, another to stop. The second mode shoots as long as you keep the shutter button depressed, and the last one captures 30 frames up to the point you press the shutter.

The latter consumes significant battery life, however, as it's effectively shooting all the time.

AF performance is great too. While there’s no flashy-sounding phase-detection hybrid system in the Lumix GX8, it does use Panasonic’s depth from defocus technology. This assesses how the focus area defocuses as it shifts, telling the GX8 where in the focal plane the subject sits. It’s clever technology that provides fast and accurate autofocus, cutting out parts of the usual contrast detection process.

If you’re planning to shoot using manual focus instead, the Panasonic Lumix GX8 offers focus peaking, which highlights in-focus areas on the preview image. Having a great EVF to work with ]makes shooting with manual focus significantly easier. Combined with the excellent manual control, this gives the GX8 a shooting style that should definitely appeal to more serious photographers.

Panasonic Lumix GX8 – Image Quality

The Panasonic Lumix GX8 has a 20.3-megapixel sensor, which – like every other Panasonic compact system camera – is Micro Four Thirds in size. This offers up a more sizeable photosensitive area than advanced compacts such as the Sony RX100 IV, but not quite as large a sensor as the APS-C competition, such as the FujiFilm X-T1. These days, it's possible to pick up a full-frame camera for this price or cheaper – the original Sony A7, for example.

At low ISO, however, the Panasonic Lumix GX8 provides as much detail as you could hope for from a 20.3-megapixel sensor. In our tests it produced 3,600l/ph, which is simply an excellent result for a compact system camera, matching and beating many entry-level DSLRs.

Low ISO detail isn’t usually an issue for a smaller sensor, though; it's performance at higher ISO that might make you want a larger-sensor camera.

The Panasonic Lumix GX8’s native ISO range is 200-25600, which can be extended down to ISO 100. At base ISO, dynamic range almost matches some DSLRs. However, with an 11.4EV maximum some APS-C rivals offer slightly better dynamic range performance.

Both detail and low ISO dynamic range have been improved over the Panasonic Lumix GX7. The Panasonic Lumix GX8 produces the best RAW image quality we’ve seen from a Micro Four Thirds camera.

However, the MFT size means that the Panasonic Lumix GX8 has limits. Noise becomes obvious from ISO 800 upwards, with ISO 3200 shots having had most of their fine detail washed away by noise reduction. Shots at this sensitivity are still usable, but this is probably as high as you’d want to go up the ISO scale. The top 25600 setting is very scrappy, for example.

In general, though, the Panasonic Lumix GX8 produces pleasant-looking shots. However, shots from the Olympus OM-D E-M5 II look more attractive. Using the default colour mode, the GX8 feels tied to offering "natural" colour, with white balance more on the cool side. Here are some samples we took using the camera:

Panasonic Lumix GX8 – Video

For pure stills performance, the Panasonic Lumix GX8 has plenty of rivals. However, not all of them have caught up on the video side – particularly the FujiFilm X-T1.

Like the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH4, the GX8 can shoot video at up to 4K resolution at 24 or 25 frames per second. That’s at a 100Mbps bit-rate, which is a very respectable level of quality.

As with stills, focus peaking is available to aid manual focusing, alongside some cinema-style colour modes. Luminance control lets you choose the level of output footage. Unfortunately, it doesn’t offer everything seen in the videographer's favourite, the Panasonic GH4.

The microphone input is a 2.5mm jack rather than the standard 3.5mm kind, meaning you’ll need an adapter, and there’s no headphones jack to let you monitor audio while shooting.

Should I buy the Panasonic Lumix GX8?

The Panasonic Lumix GX8 is a little awkward. It’s a Micro Four Thirds camera that doesn't offer the small-size benefits that are often associated with this style of sensor.

However, as a whole package it’s excellent. Superb image quality is partnered with great manual control plus Panasonic’s famed 4K video capabilities. The company has been careful to ensure that enough room remains for its existing models to live on, but the EVF style, body and high-resolution sensor make this model very worthwhile.

Those who are more concerned with stills than video should definitely consider the FujiFilm X-T1, and an APS-C camera gets you more flexibility when shooting at higher ISOs. But the GX8's in-body OIS helps to bridge the gap a little there too.

Verdict

A big, feature-packed compact system camera that offers the type of control akin to more professional models.