I am not a professional photographer. I was in the market to upgrading/buying a camera that would be smaller than a conventional DSLR and would allow me to grow and learn about the technical parts of photography. After much research, the Panasonic GX1 met these requirements. I'll start with the picture quality; After a few weeks of taking pictures in various conditions (low light, indoor / outdoor, evening, etc.) the pictures that comes out of the GX1 are crisp and lively.... just fantastic! I have not played with the RAW function, yet. All pictures that I had taken are the standard format .JPG and they look great! The build of the camera is solid; mostly metal housing with a very nice LCD touch-screen. I don't have an issue with touch-screen interfaces as already I am a big fan (iPad user, here) and am familiar with the overall experience. Some people may dislike it...for me, no issues here. The interface is pretty easy to follow and not complicated.... I didn't even bother... Read more

Interesting camera, with a very mixed set of features.

This is essentially a G3, in a smaller case, without any viewfinder. As such, it has the following strengths and, well, issues:

The Bad:

1. This camera does not have viewfinder...which I happen to like, as I am using it for underwater photography. But, in bright sun, the display is somewhat difficult to see (which is true with every camera I have used). You can get an electronic viewfinder, but the cost will end up being more than the G3.

2. This is a very small body, and if you use it with any larger lens (like the 14-140), the lens will be larger than the camera.

3. It does not do HD video at the same level as the GH-2 (1080i versus 1080p).

4. The folding zoom lens has corner softness issues, and the less expensive lens is rather large. Would have been nice if the more expensive zoom was equal or better quality.

5. Flash sync is "only" at a... Read more

I purchased this camera looking for near DSLR equipment. I wanted to go light. I own or have owned, Nikons, Canons and Olympus cameras. I am not a "fanboy" of any particular brand but look for equipment that fulfills a purpose. That said, here are my impressions after a week of use and about 500 pictures. I shot under different environments: at home, pictures of the cats and people with and without flash; early morning shooting at the botanical gardens shooting landscapes and flowers and the dawn; shooting at a local beach capturing bay views, downtown skyline, parasailing and boating. I also shot some of the same scenes using my Olympus XZ1 for comparison, a high end point and shoot that shoots RAW. The Olympus has a 10 megapixels sensor that is about 1/4 of the size of the GX1 sensor (16 megapixels).

The Good:
-very good to excellent RAW images
-good to very good JPEG output from the camera
-Autofocus was fast and reliable in full daylight
-Relatively... Read more