Panasonic Lumix GF3 [Review]

FULL REVIEW

Panasonic's GF3 is the smallest, lightest, Micro Four Thirds camera that the company has introduced to date. In fact, it's so small that at first glance you could mistake it for a point and shoot compact camera. The Lumix GF3 uses interchangeable lenses and the reduction in size has been achieved by a redesign of the lens mount box. It feels like the body of the camera would undergo tremendous stress if bigger lenses are applied to it. Although it measures only 107.5 x 67.1 x 32mm, the GF3 is a little larger than the Sony NEX-C3. Nevertheless, the Panasonic Lumix GF3 is still smaller and lighter than the GF2, which in a strange way, works in its favor. Panasonic GF3 is now its entry-level model, designed specifically for compact camera users who want to move up to a semi-professional camera if I may call it so.

Lens options

The Panasonic GF3 looks great, and feels perfectly balanced with the Lumix 14mm f/2.5 pancake lens mounted on it. It gives a more wide-angle aspect to your photographs. Photographers who love shooting with a wide angle lens would definitely like it. Panasonic's 14-42mm lens is more versatile, producing an effective focal length range of 28-84mm. This might interest novice photographers.

Features

The Panasonic GF3 is built following the Micro Four Thirds design standard. At 17.3x13mm, its sensors are a little smaller than APS-C sized sensors, which measure around 23.6x15.8mm. Four Thirds' sensors also have a native aspect ratio of 4:3 rather than the 3:2, made popular by 35mm photography. The GF3 has a LIVE MOS sensor with an effective pixel count of 12.1 million, and images are processed using its Venus Engine VII HD which enables sensitivity to be set in the range ISO 160-6400. As with most Micro Four Thirds, there is no viewfinder and it also does not give you an option to mount an external one. So all your picture compositions have to be on the 3-inch touchscreen.

Auto focus

Panasonic GF3 uses a contrast detection autofocus (AF) system, this draws information from the image sensor of the camera. It’s a slower system of AF and proved so as it took more than even a second at times to get the focus on a subject. There is a variety of auto focus modes on the GF3, like AF Tracking, 23-Area, 1-Area, Face detection AF and the new Pinpoint AF mode. The AF point is selected with a press of the finger on the screen and its kind of edgy at times.

Exposure modes

The Panasonic GF3 is primarily aimed at users who have newly found their love for photography, modes include aperture priority, shutter priority and manual exposure options. Also you get a collection of 17 scene specific shooting modes.

For those who like to flaunt a semi-professional camera but just like to keep things simple and sweet, the GF3 provides an Intelligent Auto plus (iA+) mode. There is a dedicated iA+ button on the G3's top-plate and pressing this in any exposure mode switches to Intelligent Auto plus. Like a point and shoot, the camera will take care of all the settings and scene modes.

Look and Feel

The Panasonic Lumix GF3 looks and feels great with the super-slim pancake lenses mounted, but its a little unbalanced with a longer lens. It's slightly difficult to grip at times if you have sweaty palms. It's easy to use but you do feel scared if you don’t have the camera wrapped around your neck. The GF3 has a new jog-dial on the camera back, which makes on-the-fly menu navigation and setting adjustments possible.

Quick Menu

The Lumix GF3 has a Quick Menu that can be accessed via a button on the back of the camera near the bottom, or by touching the icon on-screen. The Quick Menu can be navigated and options selected using either the touchscreen or the jog-dial. The Quick Menu is also customizable.

Touchscreen

The GF3 has a resistive screen, it is pretty responsive, and most selections can be made with a single touch. But then the screen is also a fingerprint magnet and after using it for setting composing right images might be a little bit of a hassle. In bright daylight, objects are a bit tough to see on the camera. Our suggestion would be to use the jog dial for all your menu navigation and leave the screen just for composing images.

Colour and white balance

Auto white balance on the camera works brilliantly, but you might get cold tones while shooting under low light. Colors come amazingly well for a compact camera of this sort. Only thing is you have to get the settings right.

Built-in flash

The built-in flash pops up like a bullet as soon as you press the dedicated flash button on the camera. Exposures are well balanced and for a small camera such as the GF3, the flash on it is quite powerful.

Panasonic GF3 specification highlights:

• 12MP Micro Four Thirds format CMOS sensor


• ISO 160-6400


• 3.8 fps continuous shooting


• GF2-style touch screen interface


• 1080i60 AVCHD shooting


• All-area AF point selection


• Pinpoint AF mode (magnifies focus point to allow confirmation and fine-tune of AF position)


• AF Tracking in video mode


• Picture-in-picture manual focus magnification


• 460k dot fixed LCD

Full Specifications

Sensor
17.3 x 13.0 mm Live MOS (CMOS) with 12.1 million effective pixels and 4:3 aspect ratio

Focal length conversion
2x

Memory
SD/SDHC/SDXC

Viewfinder
None, LCD only

Video
Motion JPEG: QVGA: 320 x 240 at 30fps, VGA: 640 x 480 at 30fps, HD: 1280 x 720 at 30fps
AVCHD (NTSC): Full HD 1920×1080 at 60i (sensor output is 30p) (FSH:17Mbps), HD 1280 x 720 at 60i (sensor output is 30p)（SH:17Mbps)
AVCHD (PAL): Full HD 1920×1080 at 50i (sensor output is 25p) (FSH:17Mbps), HD 1280 x 720 at 50i (sensor output is 25p)（SH:17Mbps)

ISO range
ISO 160-6400

Focusing
Face detection, AF Tracking, 23-area-focusing, 1-area-focusing, Pinpoint AF plus manual focusing, Quick AF, Continuous AF and Touch shutter

Max burst rate
3.8fps

Screen
3in 460,000 dot touch-sensitive LCD

Shutter speeds
1/4000-60sec, bulb

Dimensions
107.7 x 67.1 x 32.5 mm

Power supply
Li-ion Battery Pack (7.2V, 940mAh)

Verdict

The Panasonic GF3 is a very good option in the compact camera range. It’s capable of shooting and processing high-quality images and has wide range of controls that offers you plenty of room to play with. The only real downside to the GF3 is the lack of a viewfinder which any professional photographer would prefer even if he wishes to buy a GF3 as his secondary fun camera. It’s a very good camera to start your world of serious photography with a easy to use vibe to it.