Micro 4/3 GX880, first impressions and some output.

[JensM]

Caveat, this is a post I orginally wrote and published on MU-43, I am transfering it here, because of the circumstances but am not going to take it down from MU-43 (yet, I`ll see how it fares). It was orginally two posts, one on the general usability and one on shooting in high ISO, but I am collating them into one post here. Now onto the (hopefully) good stuff:

Having horsed around some months for a (semi) pocketable camera. I have looked at the GRIII, the Nikon Coolpix A and the Fujis X70 and XF10, but been a bit on the fence as to a fixed 28mm equivalent camera for a rather high price, so looking to "home base" for the smaller (and normally older) offerings.


I have been going back and forth trying to find the right one, buying a GX1 which had a peeling screen and a GF2, mostly due to it being used as a back lens cover for a 14mm f.2.5, oogling GX800s, GM1s and just missing a GM5. I strayed off the reservation with a GX9, but it is just a tad to big, even with the compact primes and zooms. I found out yesterday that a local electronic chain store had the GX880 for about $230 including the 12-32 Zoom so off I went and snagged a black one.

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Not the most groundbreaking work, but I do like how that little fellow captures. I even like the selfie mode.

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Some quick observations:



It is not the easiest camera to work, and it somehow lends itself to one hand shooting, which is not the smartest move with it.



The menu ring selector could have been a bit stiffer, it is probably one notch from free-spinning as it is now.



Due to the Micro SD card, I hooked it up to the PC for transfering the files, lo and behold - it didnt just transfer the picture files, it also transferred the camera profiles, so that those where accessible in LR. Its magic, I tell you, MAGIC...



The one negative I have found so far, is in the ISO dept, a lowlight master it is not. I have primarily worked the 20MP sensor from the GX8 and onward and have a tolerance for 6400 ISO on those, the 880 is rather hard pressed at 3200ISO. It is NOISY.



Somewhat to sum it up: It fits in a trousers side pocket with the 14mm, the 20mm, the 12-32 and the 14-42 PZ and if you are looking for a pocketable camera, I would recommend picking one up, I would probably even recommend getting one, just for fun. I think Panasonic shot themself in the leg with its "Its for Vloggers" spiel when it was released.

To be continued:

 

[JensM]

To illustrate the 3200 mushiness I wrote about in my initial post, I have run 1 version of the picture through Denoise Ai and one through Sharpen AI using the automated choices, they come in the order of Orginal, Denoise and Sharpen:

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Not to sure how they will fare, through here, but I hold the orginal one to be of doubtful value, the denoise is okayish, but the sharpen AI one I see as usable. I "flattened" the original picture in LR (All handles on Zero), and created a virtual copy for the two that been through Topaz.



Forgive the example photo, it was just a quick grab from recliner. The cartons is stuffed where they are, due to me giving the study a make-over, an idea that surfaced after I had ordered the stuff.

 

[Iron]

Caveat, this is a post I orginally wrote and published on MU-43, I am transfering it here, because of the circumstances but am not going to take it down from MU-43 (yet, I`ll see how it fares). It was orginally two posts, one on the general usability and one on shooting in high ISO, but I am collating them into one post here. Now onto the (hopefully) good stuff:

Having horsed around some months for a (semi) pocketable camera. I have looked at the GRIII, the Nikon Coolpix A and the Fujis X70 and XF10, but been a bit on the fence as to a fixed 28mm equivalent camera for a rather high price, so looking to "home base" for the smaller (and normally older) offerings.


I have been going back and forth trying to find the right one, buying a GX1 which had a peeling screen and a GF2, mostly due to it being used as a back lens cover for a 14mm f.2.5, oogling GX800s, GM1s and just missing a GM5. I strayed off the reservation with a GX9, but it is just a tad to big, even with the compact primes and zooms. I found out yesterday that a local electronic chain store had the GX880 for about $230 including the 12-32 Zoom so off I went and snagged a black one.

View attachment 281977

Not the most groundbreaking work, but I do like how that little fellow captures. I even like the selfie mode.

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Some quick observations:



It is not the easiest camera to work, and it somehow lends itself to one hand shooting, which is not the smartest move with it.



The menu ring selector could have been a bit stiffer, it is probably one notch from free-spinning as it is now.



Due to the Micro SD card, I hooked it up to the PC for transfering the files, lo and behold - it didnt just transfer the picture files, it also transferred the camera profiles, so that those where accessible in LR. Its magic, I tell you, MAGIC...



The one negative I have found so far, is in the ISO dept, a lowlight master it is not. I have primarily worked the 20MP sensor from the GX8 and onward and have a tolerance for 6400 ISO on those, the 880 is rather hard pressed at 3200ISO. It is NOISY.



Somewhat to sum it up: It fits in a trousers side pocket with the 14mm, the 20mm, the 12-32 and the 14-42 PZ and if you are looking for a pocketable camera, I would recommend picking one up, I would probably even recommend getting one, just for fun. I think Panasonic shot themself in the leg with its "Its for Vloggers" spiel when it was released.

To be continued:

The samples feature the lens more than the body, showing that if we put a good lens on a rather OK body, the results will still be great.

To illustrate the 3200 mushiness I wrote about in my initial post, I have run 1 version of the picture through Denoise Ai and one through Sharpen AI using the automated choices, they come in the order of Orginal, Denoise and Sharpen:
View attachment 281991View attachment 281992View attachment 281993



Not to sure how they will fare, through here, but I hold the orginal one to be of doubtful value, the denoise is okayish, but the sharpen AI one I see as usable. I "flattened" the original picture in LR (All handles on Zero), and created a virtual copy for the two that been through Topaz.



Forgive the example photo, it was just a quick grab from recliner. The cartons is stuffed where they are, due to me giving the study a make-over, an idea that surfaced after I had ordered the stuff.

I like the Sharpen AI sample best. The sharpening from that denoise is very subtle.

 

[JensM]

The samples feature the lens more than the body, showing that if we put a good lens on a rather OK body, the results will still be great.

Well, shooting it without lens would be a bit moot, I think, hence two different lenses.

One with overall high remarks, P-L15, and then the somewhat "dark horse" PZ with rather mixed reviews to flip it up a bit. Personally, I like both of them.

 

[mike3996]

GX880 probably has the same sensor my GX80s and G80 does. The best M43 chip out there, if you ask me. The noise is pervasive even at base ISO but it produces such beautiful color and grain.

If Panasonic produced a compact viewfinderless camera with IBIS to kind of compete against Olympus EPL/EP lineup, it could be interesting.

 

[MiguelATF]

To illustrate the 3200 mushiness I wrote about in my initial post, I have run 1 version of the picture through Denoise Ai and one through Sharpen AI using the automated choices, they come in the order of Orginal, Denoise and Sharpen:
View attachment 281991View attachment 281992View attachment 281993



Not to sure how they will fare, through here, but I hold the orginal one to be of doubtful value, the denoise is okayish, but the sharpen AI one I see as usable. I "flattened" the original picture in LR (All handles on Zero), and created a virtual copy for the two that been through Topaz.



Forgive the example photo, it was just a quick grab from recliner. The cartons is stuffed where they are, due to me giving the study a make-over, an idea that surfaced after I had ordered the stuff.

Looking at these different versions, I totally agree with your conclusions - that is, I prefer the Topaz Sharpen much more than the DeNoise. It works nicely with this image.

 

[RAH]

Looking at these different versions, I totally agree with your conclusions - that is, I prefer the Topaz Sharpen much more than the DeNoise. It works nicely with this image.

It seems to vary depending on the image being worked on, IMHO. I have had images that DeNoiseAI sharpens nicely and others where SharpnAI does a much better job. I usually try Denoise first, I guess, but I have no hard and fast rule about this, since it varies so much. Both are good tools to have, I think.

 

[JensM]

It seems to vary depending on the image being worked on.

It does, and the work-flow recommendations found on-line seems to be all over the place.

I utilizing the different apps on a case to case basis. I think it lends new life to older cameras quite well, and it shines there.

 

[RAH]

I think that the normal flow of post-processing is generally (with any software) denoise (in the RAW, if possible), then sharpen plus other operations.

But I have noticed that if you use DenoiseAI on the RAW file immediately (or even on an exported tif , like from OWS, that has few changes), if the image is under-exposed a lot, all DenoiseAI is good for is the denoising, but not sharpening.

For one thing, it's hard to tell because the image can look so dark on the screen. There's even a Menu>View option to "Toggle Auto Brighten" presumably to help with this. But I'm guessing that the sharpen algorithm cannot work well without something reasonable to work with ahead of time. So in a case like this, I think it is best to just do the denoising, export to 16-bit tif, do some editing to brighten it, and then do SharpenAI.

On the other hand, if the image is exposed properly in the RAW version, then DenoiseAI seems to be good at doing it all - denoising and sharpening in one operation.

But there's a new version of DenoiseAI that came out today, so this could all be different...

 

[mike3996]

What I struggle to understand is how you guys bother to go through all those steps and dozen different apps just to post a heavily compressed jpeg to a small photo forum for free viewing.

 

[JensM]

What I struggle to understand is how you guys bother to go through all those steps and dozen different apps just to post a heavily compressed jpeg to a small photo forum for free viewing.

Because we see the originals?