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Isn’t this a patent for the GF1 instead of the GF2? I didn’t read the patent, but the pictures clearly depict a GF1…

How disappointing that Panasonic haven’t chosen to take the GF1 concept to another level, so much potential barely half fulfilled.

OK m43 fanboys, sharpen your knives and please form an orderly queue with the death threats……

I’m sorry, but to me this whole m43 format is one of the big disappointments of the current photo scene. Don’t get me wrong, I would love it to succeed, but it just hasn’t seemed to gel yet.

43 made lots of claims about smaller lenses but didn’t really deliver on that front, so they came up with m43 as a further step in that direction. It certainly promises much, but little has been delivered. The Pany G1 with standard zoom may have shaved a few millimetres off a Canikon entry level APS-C, but not enough to make any significant difference, Even the GF1/zoom combination still cannot be described as pocketable. To really make a difference a selection of pancake lenses is needed. And for that we need to accept some restrictions on aperture values, f1.4 wide angles, for example, are never going to be compact.

Many posters on this forum speculate about “pro” lenses. Have you thought this through? Something like the Oly 14-35/2 is huge on 43, it would be a nightmare on m43! Primes made to pro standards might make sense if we were prepared to compromise on max apertures, but there would obviously need to be a pro level camera to match. But both Oly & Pany seem to be going in the opposite direction, increasingly concentrating on the lower end market.

Anyway, pros don’t use m43, they use Canon or Nikon for handheld cameras. Perhaps a few invested in the Oly E3, but they were burned and probably deserted when they realized the system wasn’t coming.

Ironically, the name “Compact System Cameras” seems to be catching on. Ironically, because no one yet has a real system. And if you mean a compact system, i.e. with pancake primes, Pany have 2 of these lenses, Oly just one, Sony also just one, and Samsung 2 – which of these brands qualifies as a system? Although I have invested in one of these brands, I don’t see it as an unalterable choice, as none of them really measures up yet. Even something like an EPL2 or EP3 plus v/f with 12/2.4 & 20/1.7 pancakes, a slightly bigger 50/2 and the existing 7-14 w/a zoom would be a useful package and significantly smaller than DSLRs, but even this minimum seems too long coming.

Rant over……no, one more thing…… Could we stop the notion that, say, 25/1.4 on m43 is the equivalent of 50/2.8. What?… For FOV comparison OK, for DoF comparison arguably, but some seem to have the idea that light dissolves when acting on a smaller sensor. Follow this example. Take the standard lens from a MF Hassleblad – 80mm f2.8. Mount it on a FF Nikon, you have 80/2.8, a short telephoto lens. Now mount it on a Pany GH2, you have 80/2.8, a mid telephoto lens. In each case we are taking a section of the image and using it for a smaller format. The level of light at the film/sensor remains the same in each case (ignoring minor vignetting). If we set exposure with a separate meter we will use the exact same exposure level. It remains an f2.8 lens throughout, just as the actual focal length also remains constant. We’re just using a smaller part of the image, giving the effect of a longer lens.