{"id":1411,"date":"2014-07-09T06:22:13","date_gmt":"2014-07-09T05:22:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.andrewj.com\/blog\/?p=1411"},"modified":"2014-07-09T06:22:26","modified_gmt":"2014-07-09T05:22:26","slug":"all-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.andrewj.com\/blog\/2014\/all-change\/","title":{"rendered":"All Change&hellip;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Since I got the Panasonic GX7 I&#8217;ve been thinking about whether I could switch entirely from the big Canons to smaller cameras. Two things were stopping me: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.andrewj.com\/blog\/2014\/the-achilles-heel\/\" target=\"_blank\">the GX7&#8217;s poor performance with action<\/a>, and the fact that occasionally I need a more rugged camera, and neither of my existing Panasonics has any real sort of environmental protection. However with the announcement of the Panasonic GH4 there was a potential solution to both these challenges on the horizon, and I was gently thinking about getting one later in the year.<\/p>\n<p>That was before last Friday, when out of the blue a close friend asked me &#8220;are you selling your Canon 7D&#8221;? He&#8217;d managed to dunk his in the Winter floods, and fancied buying a second-hand replacement of known provenance to tide him over until either the 7DII has arrived or the new Nikon D8100 has come down in price a bit. Of course, my answer had to be &#8220;yes&#8221;, especially when I established that Wex Photographic now have the GH4 as a stock item.<\/p>\n<p>So on Sunday I started selling off my Canon kit, and on Monday the GH4 arrived. First impressions?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Same superb stills quality with static subjects as the GX7. Panasonic say that the two sensors are slightly different, and the RAW files are very slightly larger (by about 0.5% in each dimension) but I&#8217;m damned if I understand why as otherwise things seem to be identical.<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s a nice size, very slightly larger than the GH2 and GX7, and fits very nicely in my hands.<\/li>\n<li>It feels like a &#8220;professional&#8221; camera, capable of taking the odd splash or minor knock without problems. With the 12-35mm lens on it&#8217;s officially splashproof and dustproof, although just as with the 7D I&#8217;ll probably still put it in a rain cover in very harsh conditions. Also I suspect we won&#8217;t be auctioning off 50 year old examples held together with sticky tape, unlike a few Leicas of note&hellip;<\/li>\n<li>It has a great electronic viewfinder, which really is not much different from using an optical one. However I&#8217;m not convinced that the colours in in-camera JPEGs completely match the viewfinders, which I thought was supposed to be one of their strengths.<\/li>\n<li>The ergonomics and haptics are an improvement on the GH2 in some respects, but have ended up as a bit of an odd mix of physical switches, physical buttons and soft buttons or menu choices. Some are an odd compromise &#8211; there&#8217;s still a physical switch for focus mode, but you have to switch between &#8220;single shot&#8221; and &#8220;follow focus&#8221; in the menu system, which is very poor. Overall I much prefer the cleaner model of the GX7, but when I get the programmable elements of the GH4 set up to my satisfaction things may be better.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It&#8217;s too early to judge action performance. The frame rate seems to be as high as promised, but I haven&#8217;t yet been able to confirm whether the autofocus does the job. I tried shooting some dogs and rabbits last night, but in very low light, which meant even at ISO 6400 I was wide open on my lenses and at too low a shutter speed. The above was probably the best, but certainly won&#8217;t be submitted for any competitions. More practice required!<\/p>\n<p>At least I won&#8217;t be struggling with software. After the long wait for GX7 Phase One delivered Capture One support on Monday, a few hours after the camera was in my hand. No complaints there&hellip;<\/p>\n<p>Watch this space, and eBay if you want a lightly used GH2 or Canon 550D!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since I got the Panasonic GX7 I&#8217;ve been thinking about whether I could switch entirely from the big Canons to smaller cameras. Two things were stopping me: the GX7&#8217;s poor performance with action, and the fact that occasionally I need &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.andrewj.com\/blog\/2014\/all-change\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewj.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1411"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewj.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewj.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewj.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewj.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewj.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1411\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewj.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewj.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewj.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}