Panasonic LUMIX DMC-GX8 camera test by Our team

The main inno­va­tion that sets the LUMIX DMC-GX8 apart from its pre­de­ces­sors is sup­port for 4K video at 3840×2160 pix­els at 25p (50Hz) or 24p in MP4 for­mat. The high res­o­lu­tion of the result­ing video image allows you to imple­ment the “4K Pho­to” func­tion, you can cre­ate pho­tos at a speed of 30 fps in a res­o­lu­tion equiv­a­lent to 8 megapix­els. There are three modes of oper­a­tion of the 4K Pho­to func­tion: 4K Burst Shoot­ing, 4K Burst S/S (Start/Stop) and 4K Pre-Burst.

Let’s see in prac­tice what the LUMIX DMC-GX8 is.

Frame

The body of the cam­era, made of mag­ne­sium alloy, turned out to be quite weighty, the same as that of its pre­de­ces­sor LUMIX DMC-GX7. The weight of the device togeth­er with a mem­o­ry card and bat­tery, with­out a lens, is 487 grams. It can hard­ly be called com­pact (133x78x63 mm), the cam­era fits in a jack­et pock­et only with a 15 mm/f1.7 lens.

The lay­out of the con­trols, most of which are made of met­al, and their num­ber have changed com­pared to the LUMIX DMC-GX7. The shut­ter but­ton has moved to the grip ledge, the mode dial has moved clos­er to the cen­ter of the cam­era, and anoth­er con­trol dial has appeared in its orig­i­nal place. By chang­ing the posi­tion of the con­trols and the large, ful­ly rub­ber­ized grip on the front pan­el, it is con­ve­nient to shoot the cam­era with one hand.

On the front side of the cam­era there is a mount for Micro 4/3 lens­es, a func­tion but­ton to the left of it, a lens release but­ton to the right, and an aut­o­fo­cus back­light on top.

At the top there is a rotary viewfind­er, a hot shoe, holes for two micro­phones, a dual com­mand dial (shoot­ing modes + expo­sure com­pen­sa­tion), a com­mand dial com­bined with the cam­era pow­er lever and a func­tion but­ton (quick change of ISO or white bal­ance), start / stop video record­ing key , cam­era oper­a­tion indi­ca­tor and anoth­er func­tion but­ton. The shut­ter but­ton is com­bined with the con­trol dial and placed on the beveled end of the grip. It is worth not­ing that the LUMIX DMC-GX8 has a lot of addi­tion­al con­trols, dials and but­tons, so once you make the set­tings for your­self, you can work with­out access­ing the menu.

There is noth­ing on the right side of the cam­era.

On the left are the speak­er and under the rub­ber plug are the AV OUT, HDMI and remote control/microphone jacks.

Most of the rear sur­face of the cam­era is occu­pied by a rotary dis­play. Above it (from left to right) are an inclined viewfind­er with a prox­im­i­ty sen­sor, a but­ton for switch­ing between the dis­play and the viewfind­er, a focus mode selec­tor com­bined with a func­tion but­ton. The prox­im­i­ty sen­sor has good sen­si­tiv­i­ty, it only reacts to the direct approach of an object to the sen­sor. There was no blink­ing of the dis­play from poor­ly placed hands and objects near the sen­sor, like the LUMIX DMC-GX7.

To the right of the screen are a quick menu but­ton, a view mode but­ton and a dis­play mode selec­tion but­ton, four soft keys + an enter but­ton, a trash/back to menu but­ton, and a pro­gram­ma­ble key. On the ledge is the AF / AE LOCK key.

On the bot­tom pan­el there is a com­bined com­part­ment for the bat­tery and mem­o­ry card, as well as a tri­pod mount.

It is impos­si­ble to find fault with the build qual­i­ty of indi­vid­ual ele­ments of the case. The ergonom­ics of the cam­era is also at a high lev­el, as befits a func­tion­al mir­ror­less cam­era, aimed pri­mar­i­ly at advanced ama­teurs and pro­fes­sion­als.