Panasonic Lumix DMC-G5

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-G5 ($799.99 direct with lens) is the latest in Panasonic's line of SLR-styled Micro Four Thirds camera bodies. The 16-megapixel shooter looks and handles a lot like a scaled-down D-SLR. It has an extremely sharp eye-level EVF, a vari-angle touch-sensitive LCD, shoots at 5.3 frames per second, and shoots excellent photos through ISO 6400. It's not without its flaws?even though it records 1080p60 video there is no external microphone input, and its kit lens is just a tad soft at its widest setting. Its pros outweigh its cons, earning the camera a 4.5 star rating and our Editors' Choice award for compact interchangeable lens cameras under $1,000. If the $800 asking price is too big of a pill to swallow, the previous winner, the?Sony Alpha NEX-F3, is still an excellent camera and is currently selling for less than its original $600 asking price.

Design and Features
The G5 looks like someone took a typical D-SLR and put it in front of Rick Moranis's shrink ray. The handgrip, eye-level viewfinder, and physical control buttons are all arranged just like they would be on an SLR?but it measures just 3.3 by 4.7 by 2.8 inches and weighs only 12.2 ounces without a lens. It's bigger than compact-styled compact interchangeable lens camera like the Olympus PEN E-PL5?that measures 2.5 by 4.4 by 1.1 inches?but smaller than a compact D-SLR like the 3.8-by-5-by-3.1-inch Nikon D3200.

It's bundled with the Lumix G Vario 14-42mm lens, which seems a bit big for the camera thanks to the included petal lens hood. In reality, it's got a wider diameter than the collapsible Olympus 14-42mm kit lens included with its line of Micro Four Thirds cameras, but is not that much deeper when the hood is reversed for storage. The lens is optically stabilized, while the Olympus is not?this is due to a different approach in stabilization. Panasonic builds stabilization into its lenses, while Olympus puts it into bodies. Even though you can use lenses from either manufacturer interchangeably on Micro Four Thirds cameras, you won't have any form of stabilization if you opt to use Olympus glass on a Panasonic body. This also comes into play when using older lenses from other camera systems via an adapter.

Top-mounted controls include a standard Mode dial, a button to activate the iAuto mode, a Record button for video, a programmable Function Lever (by default it controls zoom when a power zoom lens is attached, but adjusts Exposure Compensation when one is not), and power switch, and the shutter release button. Rear controls include buttons to adjust Focus/Exposure Lock, ISO, White Balance, the Focus Area, the Self Timer, and Drive Mode. There's also a dedicated Q. Menu button, which gives you quick access to many shooting functions via an on-screen menu?it can be navigated via touch or via the physical controls. One weak point of the camera is the quality of the rear pad. It feels just a little bit mushy when using it, a departure from the crisp feel that I'm used to getting from similar controls on other cameras.

You can frame and review images using the 1.4-million dot eye-level electronic viewfinder or via the vari-angle rear LCD?that's 3 inches in size with a 920k-dot resolution. The LCD EVF is sharp and bright, but it's not quite on the same level as the OLED finder that is built into the Sony Alpha NEX-6?it has more contrast and a resolution that is in excess of 2.5 million dots. If you use the EVF, the G5 will start to focus just as you bring your eye to the camera?this can help you capture a quick shot that you may have just missed as the camera will be focused on what is in front of it by the time your eye is up against the eyecup.

The rear LCD is extremely sharp, although it lags a bit behind the 610k-dot OLED on the back of the top-end Olympus OM-D E-M5, and is touch sensitive. You can touch it to select a focus point and fire the shutter, or to adjust shooting settings. During playback it's possible to scroll through photos by swiping, just as you would with an iPhone.

There are a number of art filters built into the camera, and Panasonic feels they are an important enough aspect of the design that it has reserved a spot on the Mode dial for them. Most of the seven options contained within deal with color?you can get saturated images using the Expressive setting, washed out ones with Retro, bright photos with High Key, and darker images with Low Key. There's also Sepia, Dynamic Monochrome (high-contrast black-and-white, essentially), and Impressive Art (high-contrast color). A High Dynamic Range mode brings out the detail in shadows and tries to suppress blown highlights, Cross Process gives you the same funky color palette you get when developing slide film in color negative chemicals, and the Toy Effect mimics the plastic lens of Lomo cameras and adds a dark vignette around the edges.

There's also a Miniature Effect that mimics a tilt-shift lens, a Soft Focus effect, a Star Filter which adds star points to bright lights in your photos, and a One Point Color mode that lets you highlight a specific color in your image, leaving the rest in black and white. You can preview each of these in real time, and they work for video recording as well as for stills?although shooting video of the processor-intensive Miniature Effect requires a lower frame rate that noticeably speeds up your footage, reducing the time of your overall clip dramatically?and you can't record video at all when the Star Filter or Soft Focus engaged.

The camera doesn't have built-in Wi-Fi. You're seeing this more and more on cameras, including compact interchangeable lens models like the Sony Alpha NEX-5R and NEX-6, as well as the Samsung NX line, including the entry-level NX1000.

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