Ergonomic Roundup November 2013, Panasonic Lumix

This picture has nothing to do with Panasonic or Lumix, but it's one of my favourites. The dog is taking it easy. Apparently there are more camels in Australia than any other country.

 

Background  Panasonic Corporation is a giant Japanese manufacturer which makes all kinds of stuff. It was, I believe, at one stage Japan's largest employer with hundreds of thousands of employees. In recent years Panasonic has fallen on lean times, posting successive annual losses of massive proportions. I believe the camera/ lens division regularly posts losses also. So why does Panasonic bother it's corporate self to make cameras ?   I don't pretend to know the answer to this question. It can hardly be to promote Panasonic brand recognition because the cameras carry a prominent "LUMIX" logo, which means nothing to most people of my acquaintance.

Panasonic has no  history of making film cameras, unlike Canon, Fuji, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax and Samsung.

Anyway, for whatever reason, Panasonic got  into the camera business in the digital era. It's first product was the LC5 compact of 2001.  I think this makes Panasonic the most recent entrant into the camera making world. Despite this, the company has built up a high level of in house capability, with expertise in aspheric and other  lenses and most of the mechanical, optical and electronic requirements of still and video cameras. From it's earliest days in camera and lens making, Panasonic partnered with Leica to share expertise between the two companies, one with a long and illustrious history of lens making, the other with electronic capability.

My Experience of Lumix Cameras  The arrival of the Micro Four Thirds system onto the market was of great interest to me, so I bought a copy of the very first M43 camera, the Lumix G1. In due course this was followed by a G3, GH2, G5, GH3 and G6. I have a GX7 on order. Actually it has been on order for over two months, with no delivery date, about which I am more than a little peeved.  I have owned 10 Lumix lenses in the last 5 years. My regular camera for most of the last year or so has been the GH3 with 12-35 and 35-100mm f2.8 lenses.

I also owned an LX2 and an LX5 compact for a time.

DSLR's   In association with Olympus, Panasonic had a brief dalliance with the 4/3 system DSLR. They produced the L1 in 2006 and the L10 in 2007.

Compacts  Panasonic in it's relatively brief history of making cameras has produced a multitude of different (but often only slightly different)  compact models. The LX2 made reasonably good JPG pictures and better RAW photos. But shot to shot time for RAW capture was about 6 seconds which was just ridiculous. A few years later I got an LX5 which was quite a nice camera. It made good quality pictures and had acceptable ergonomics except it had no built in EVF. This made it difficult to use in sunlight and difficult to hold steady in low light.  I came to realise that a camera without a built in viewfinder was no use to me.

Micro 4/3 MILC's  Panasonic's first and my first M43 camera was the G1 of 2008.  My experience with this camera started my thinking and research into camera ergonomics, leading eventually to the creation of this blog.

The problem, you see, was that the G1 had truly awful ergonomics, particularly as regards holding and operating. The shutter button was perched on the end of a small projecting handle, nowhere near where my index finger wanted to find it. The control dial was located beneath and in front of the shutter button where it was impossible to operate without completely releasing the right hand  from the camera. The cursor buttons were impossible for me to locate by feel so they had to be located visually which meant taking the camera down from the eye, completely disrupting the capture process to make adjustments which were required during that process.

I made many mock up cameras and mock up handle modules, trying to understand what exactly were the problems with this camera.

The 13 first posts on this blog, from February to April 2012 describe this process in considerable detail.

I sold the G1 and got a Samsung NX10 which was a much nicer camera to use.

After a couple of years I came back to Lumix M43 with the G3. This was another ergonomic disaster. The handle had shrunken to vestigial proportions. The cursor buttons were no better. The control dial moved to the rear but was so deeply recessed it could only be operated with the tip of the thumb, just below the nail bed. This was awkward, disrupted the grip and capture process and was painful.

I was so annoyed with Lumix, I went back to Canon in the form of an EOS 60D and some very well regarded lenses. But this just confirmed my growing view that the DSLR has no future.  The 60D would not focus consistently and I get very unhappy very quickly when presented with multiple randomly out of focus pictures. The whole kit was far larger and heavier than I wanted to carry around and I found the disconnect between eye level view and monitor view disconcerting.

So it was back to Lumix, this time in the form of the GH2. This camera still had ergonomic problems but it was a modest improvement on previous Lumix G Micro cameras. Then came the  G5 and that provided further modest ergonomic improvements. The handle was a better shape and the shutter button better located.  It appeared that someone in the Lumix design section was beginning to get the message about ergonomics.

The GH3  provided the biggest jump in ergonomic capability from one model to the next that I  have ever  encountered  in 60 years of using cameras.  Holding, viewing and operating were all dramatically improved over the GH2. I now rate the Lumix GH3 as having very good ergonomics and in fact the best ergonomics of any camera which I have ever used. It is still not perfect however and I have considered  here what improvements could be made to bring it up to an excellent standard.

Summary  On my evaluation Panasonic, the most recent entrant into the camera making club, is also the most improved ergonomically. It's G Micro 4/3 cameras have gone from absolutely dreadful  just a few years ago to very good and in my judgement, better than anything else available right now.   As a bonus, there are now many excellent Lumix and Olympus lenses available for the M4/3 system which becomes more appealing as time passes.

Crystal Ball  Panasonic has a lot invested in the technology of camera making. Much of this is very high tech with a high barrier to entry by newcomers. They can do imaging sensors, processors, electronics, mechanics, lenses and more. The company seems to be in the business for the long run. I think that  if Panasonic survives, and  if  it's camera division survives and  if said camera division becomes profitable, then Lumix could be positioned to provide some of the industry's better and more interesting products in the years ahead. Panasonic is now making good cameras which are appealing to photographers. But in Australia at least, their marketing is almost invisible. Panasonic really needs to get on top of this.