In summary
A minor update to last year’s DMC GF7 camera, which adds new ‘Beauty Retouch’ functions.
Testing revealed close similarities with shots from the GF7, GM5, GM1 and GX7, all of which share the same sensor and image processor. We found plenty of detail recorded in images, which were usually sharp and colour accurate.
Autofocusing while shooting stills was acceptably fast and accurate in most situations, particularly when the touch screen was used to set the focus position. No significant slowing was evident when shooting stills in low light levels or while panning.
Like the GF7, the GF8 is a nice enough camera for snapshooters and its still imaging and video performance levels are generally competent. Its small size and light weight make it usable as a back-up body for a more up-market camera, although the lack of a viewfinder will be an issue to consider for anyone buying the camera for outdoor use.
Full review
The DMC-GF8 is the latest addition to Panasonic’s G-series of mirrorless interchangeable-lens cameras, replacing the DMC-GF7 at the entry-level. Otherwise identical to its predecessor, the new model adds new Beauty Retouch in-camera editing functions for improving the appearance of portraits after they are taken. The GF8 is being offered in Australia in silver with a black or orange faux leather facing and comes with the H-FS12032E-S retracting zoom lens.
Front views of the DMC-GF8 with the bundled 12-32mm lens, showing both colour options. (Source: Panasonic.)
While Panasonic has introduced 4K video and a higher-resolution in other recently-released cameras, it’s kept the GF8 at purely entry level, limiting video resolution to a maximum of 1920 x 1080 pixels (Full HD). It has also retained the relatively low price of the previous model (which was still on sale when this review was published).
Back view of the DMC-GF8 with the monitor reversed. (Source: Panasonic.)
Part view of the top panel of the GF8 showing the main controls. (Source: Panasonic.)
We’ve covered all the key features of the camera in our review of the GF7, which was published a year ago. So this review will focus upon the Beauty Retouch features and report on the results of our normal Imatest and shooting tests.
What’s new?
The new Beauty Retouch tools that have been added to the Playback menu have been designed to enable users to ‘touch up’ portrait shots by smoothing the skin, whitening teeth and eyes, slimming the face and adding makeup by simulating foundation, lipstick, blusher and eye shadow. They are more likely to appeal to female buyers, particularly those who take ‘selfies’.
Essentially, these additions are a logical complement to the GF7’s Silky Skin Scene pre-set and the Defocus Control setting in the two auto modes, which carry over into the new camera. Like these settings, they are only applied to JPEGs, although the GF8 is also able to record RW2.RAW files. Movies could not be adjusted.
Adjustments are made in Playback mode by selecting the Beauty Retouch sub-menu. Pressing the Menu/Set button activates a face-detection tool that scans the frame, looking for an editable face.
When a face is detected, the message shown above is displayed.
Moving the yellow arrow to confirm selection of the face to be edited.
We found the camera had problems detecting older women’s faces, faces in profile or semi-profile and faces wearing glasses. According to the user manual it can also fail when shots were taken in a very dark place or when bright light was reflected from a flash or the sun. Black and white shots were also unsuitable for retouching since most of the adjustments rely on colour.
Two examples of images that were not detected by the face recognition algorithms in the Beauty Retouch function.
The tools worked best when the face was full-on to the camera and dominated the frame. Perhaps surprisingly, the face didn’t have to be female; we found the Beauty Retouch functions could be used on men’s faces, provided they met the other criteria.
The Beauty Retouch tools are grouped into four sections: Aesthetic Retouch, Foundation, Make Up Retouch and Smile. There are five ‘sub-items’ in the Aesthetic Retouch palette, three in Make Up Retouch and only one each in Foundation and Smile. The illustrations below show the user interfaces for each tool set.
The Aesthetic Retouch palette.
The Clear Skin tool is used to correct blemishes and dullness in the skin. The Shine Removal tool (not shown) suppresses shiny areas of skin.
The Whitening tool lightens the tone of teeth and the whites of eyes.
The Lift Up tool slims cheeks and ‘sharpens’ the lines of the subject’s face.
The Eye Emphasis tool makes the subject’s eyes appear larger and better defined.
The Foundation tool provides adjustments for the colour of the ‘foundation’ on the skin.
The adjustments in the Foundation tool are extended in the Make Up Retouch tool, which provides adjustments for Lip Colour (above) “¦
Cheek Colour, and “¦
Eye Shadow.
The Smile tool tilts the ends of the mouth upwards to produce a smile.
After these adjustments have been made, pressing the MENU/SET button displays a confirmation screen, shown below.
Selecting Yes displays a before and after comparison of the edits.
Then pressing the MENU/SET button saves the image as a separate file, using the next available file number.
When the Beauty Retouch function works, it is quite effective. The adjustments are relatively subtle and the strength of most adjustments is controllable, enabling users to apply as much or as little adjustment as they wish.
The main problem is that you have to judge the degree of adjustments by looking at the image on the screen, which is relatively small. You can’t enlarge the image while in the Beauty Retouch menu and you are forced to rely upon the inherent colour balance and brightness of the monitor for assessing how much adjustment is required.
Nevertheless, these adjustments should appeal to the main target market for this camera: people who shoot ‘selfies’. For those users who are active on social media, the Beauty Retouch functions will provide a quick and easy way to ‘touch up’ portraits before posting them.
The related Clear Retouch function, which carries over from the GF6, is designed to remove unwanted elements from photos in playback mode. While it worked well with simple intrusions like power lines across clear skies, with complex subjects, the sampling algorithms often picked the wrong areas to replicate and the result ended up like the illustration below.
An example of a failure of the Clear Retouch function. We wanted to remove the distracting background elements to the left of the main subject (left side image) but the camera sampled the central area and duplicated it, producing the result shown in the red outlined rectangle on the right hand picture.
The other features of the camera ““ including its video capabilities ““ are identical to the GF7 and covered in our review of that camera. The battery and memory card share a compartment in the base of the camera, a situation typical of entry-level models. The battery is CIPA rated for approximately 230 shots/charge with the supplied H-FS12032 lens.
Performance
Not surprisingly, both subjective evaluation of test shots and our Imatest testing revealed close similarities with shots from the GF7, GM5, GM1 and GX7, all of which share the same sensor and image processor. We found plenty of detail recorded in images, which were usually sharp and colour accurate, albeit with a slight tendency to emphasise reds and purplish blues.
Since the GF8 wasn’t supported by our preferred raw file processor, Adobe Camera Raw, when we conducted our tests, we chose to process RW2.RAW files with the free file converter, Raw Therapee, rather than using the supplied Silkypix Developer Studio (which we have found to consistently deliver indifferent results). The resulting TIFF files were close to colour-neutral but with low saturation, a common feature of raw files processed with third-party converters.
Imatest showed JPEG files showed higher resolution than the GF7 files we reported on and were easily able to meet expectations for a 16-megapixel camera with optimal lens and ISO settings. However, as expected, converted RW2.RAW files delivered noticeably higher resolution across more focal length and aperture settings but colour saturation was reduced and the colour balance was distorted. Resolution held up very well with both file types across the camera’s sensitivity range, as shown in the graph of our Imatest results below.
Long exposures taken in dim lighting showed little visible noise up to ISO 3200, with a progressive increase in noise thereafter. By ISO 12800 granularity was quite obvious in test shots and at ISO 25600 colour noise was very noticeable, although image softening was less than we found with the GF7.
Flash exposures were roughly two stops under-exposed at ISO 100 when the 32mm focal length was used, but correctly exposed between ISO 400 and ISO 25600. Colour reproduction was faithful at settings up to ISO 6400 but the influence of ambient lighting could be seen from then on. Slight softening could be seen at ISO 25600.
The auto white balance setting delivered similar results to the GM5’s. An obvious warm cast remained in shots taken under incandescent lighting, although shots taken under fluorescent lights and flash shots were free of colour casts. The incandescent pre-set introduced a faint purple cast, while the flash preset remained colour neutral. No preset is provided for fluorescent lighting. Manual measurement produced neutral colours with all three lighting types and there’s plenty of scope for fine-tuning colour rendition via the touch screen.
Autofocusing while shooting stills was acceptably fast and accurate in most situations, particularly when the touch screen was used to set the focus position. No significant slowing was evident when shooting stills in low light levels or while panning.
Metering was as accurate as we’ve found with previous G-series cameras. The default Standard setting in the iDynamic mode delivered well-balanced highlight and shadow detail, even in quite contrasty situations, although only for still shots. Video clips sometimes contained over-exposed highlights in contrasty conditions.
We haven’t bothered to supply screen grabs from movie clips because video quality from the review camera was virtually identical to the GF7’s. Autofocusing was also similar and able to keep pace with slow and medium-paced movements, occasionally failing to lock on when subjects moved quickly towards the camera.
Our timing tests were carried out with a 64GB Lexar Professional SDXC Class 10 UHS-3 card, the fastest in our collection. Provided the lens was unlocked first, the review camera powered up in roughly half a second.
We measured an average capture lag of 0.25 seconds, which was reduced to 0.1 seconds when shots were pre-focused. Shot-to-shot times averaged 0.55 seconds without flash and 3.4 seconds with.
On average, high-resolution JPEGs took approximately 0.45 seconds to process, while RW2.RAW files were processed in 0.8 seconds and RAW+JPEG pairs in 1.3 seconds.
Recording times and buffer capacities for the four continuous shooting modes available matched Panasonic’s specifications.
The Super high-speed mode can record at 40 frames/second for one second but is JPEG-only. Processing this burst of shots took 10.2 seconds. The High-speed mode captures records JPEG and raw frames at 5.8 frames/second. The review camera recorded 29 frames in 5 seconds before pausing, which equates to approximately 5.9 frames/second. Processing of the final frame was completed within a second of its capture.
With RW2.RAW files, the camera slowed after 10 frames, which were captured in 1.9 seconds. It took 6.3 seconds to process this burst. Changing to RAW+JPEG capture, we found the buffer memory filled with the eighth frame but the capture rate of around 5.8 frames/second remained stable. However, it took 8.6 seconds to process this burst.
The middle and low speed settings record at four and two frames/second respectively with live view supported during capture. Both settings are available for bursts of RW2.RAW files and the buffer limit is seven frames. Frames are processed on-the-fly and processing was completed within one to 1.5 seconds of the last frame captured.
Conclusion
Like the GF7, the GF8 is a nice enough camera for snapshooters and its still imaging and video performance levels are generally competent. Its small size and light weight make it usable as a back-up body for a more up-market camera, although the lack of a viewfinder will be an issue to consider for anyone buying the camera for outdoor use.
It’s a bit early for discounting prices of this camera in local stores, although we’ve seen it listed for between AU$620 and $650.
If you’re not interested in the GF8’s new “Beauty Retouch” functions, the GF7 is still on sale with prices ranging from around AU$400 to $580.
SPECS
Image sensor: 17.3 x 13.0 mm Live MOS sensor with 16.84 million photosites (16 megapixels effective)
Image processor: Venus Engine
Lens mount: Micro Four Thirds
Focal length crop factor: 2x
Digital zoom: 2x, 4x in Live View mode
Image formats: Stills: JPEG (DCF Ver. 2.3, Exif Ver.2.3), RTW2.RAW RAW+JPEG, MPO (with 3D lens); Movies: MP4 (Audio format AAC 2ch), AVCHD (Audio format: Dolby Digital 2ch)
Image Sizes: Stills ““ 4:3 aspect: 4592 x 3448, 3232 x 2424, 2272 x 1704; 3:2 aspect: 4592 x 3064, 3232 x 2160, 2272 x 1520; 16:9 aspect: 4592 x 2584, 3840 x 2160, 1920 x 1080; 1:1 aspect: 3424 x 3424, 2416 x 2416, 1712 x 1712; Movies: [MP4] 1920 x 1080: 50p/28 or 25/25 Mbps, 1280 x 720 25p at 10Mbps, 640 x 480 25p at 4Mbps; [AVCHD] 1920 x 1080 50i/28Mbps, 50i/17Mbps, 50i/24 Mbps, 24p at 24Mbps
Image Stabilisation: Lens based
Dust removal: Supersonic wave filter
Shutter (speed range): Electronically-controlled focal-plane shutter / Electronic shutter, 60 to 1/16,000 second; X-synch at 1/50 sec.
Exposure Compensation: +/- 5EV in 1/3EV steps (+/-3EV for movies)
Exposure bracketing: +/-3EV plus 3, 5, 7 frames in 1/3, 2/3 or 1 EV Step
Other bracketing options: WB: 3 exposures in blue/amber axis or in magenta/green axis
Self-timer: 2 or 10 seconds delay plus 10sec, 3 images
Focus system: 23-area Contrast AF system with AFS (Single), AFF (Flexible), AFC (Continuous), MF
Focus modes: Face/Eye Detection, Tracking, 23-Area, 1-Area , Pinpoint AF; Full area touch focus is available
Exposure metering: 1728-zone multi-pattern sensing system, Multiple, Centre-weighted and Spot metering patterns
Shooting modes (mode dial): Program AE, Aperture Priority AE, Shutter Priority AE, Manual, Portrait, Child, Scenery, Panorama
Scene presets: Silky Skin, Backlit Softness, Relaxing Tone, Bright Blue Sky, Romantic Sunset Glow, Vivid Sunset Glow, Glistening Water, Clear Nightscape, Cool Night Sky, Warm Glowing Nightscape, Artistic Nightscape, Glittering Illuminations, Handheld Night Shot, Clear Night Portrait, Soft Image of a Flower, Appetising Food, Cute Dessert, Freeze Animal Motion, Clear Sports Shot, Monochrome
Creative Style modes: Expressive, Retro, Old Days, High Key, Low Key, Sepia, Monochrome, Dynamic Monochrome, Rough Monochrome, Silky Monochrome, Impressive Art, High Dynamic, Cross Process, Toy Effect, Toy Pop, Bleach Bypass, Miniature Effect, Soft Focus, Fantasy, Star Filter, One Point Colour, Sunshine
Photo Style modes: Standard, Vivid, Natural, Monochrome, Scenery, Portrait, Custom
Colour space options: sRGB and Adobe RGB
ISO range: Auto, Intelligent ISO, ISO 100 (Extended) to ISO 25600 in 1 or 1/3 EV steps
White balance: Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Shade, Incandescent, Flash, White Set 1, 2 , Colour temperature setting; Blue/Amber, Magenta/Green bias adjustments
Flash: Built-in flash GN5.6 equivalent (ISO 200/m)
Flash modes: Auto*, Auto/Red-eye Reduction*, Forced On, Forced On/Red-eye Reduction, Slow Sync., Slow Sync./Red-eye Reduction, Forced Off; * For iA, iA+ only.
Flash exposure adjustment: +/-2EV in 1/3EV steps
Sequence shooting: Max. 5.8 shots/sec. with AFS and mechanical shutter, 5 fps with AFC, in 1-area-focusing AF mode; 40 fps with electronic shutter (SH mode)
Buffer capacity: Max. 39 Large/Fine JPEGs, 7 RAW files
Storage Media: SD, SDHC, SDXC cards (Compatible with UHS-I standard SDHC / SDXC Memory Cards)
Viewfinder: None
LCD monitor: Tiltable (180 degrees) 3-inch, 3:2 aspect TFT LCD with static touch control; Approx. 1.04 million dots
Playback functions: Normal playback, 30-thumbnail display, 12-thumbnail display, Calendar display, Zoomed playback (Max. 16x), Slideshow (All / Picture Only / Video Only / 3D / Category Selection / Favourite, duration & effect is selectable), Playback Mode (Normal / Picture / Video / 3D Play / Category / Favourite), Location Logging, Beauty Retouch (Aesthetic Retouch / Foundation / Make Up Retouch / Smile), Clear Retouch, Title Edit, Text Stamp, Video Divide, Time Lapse Video, Stop Motion Video, Resize, Cropping, Rotate, Rotation Display, Favourite, DPOF Print Set, Protect, Face Recognition Edit, Picture Sort, Delete Confirmation
Interface terminals: USB 2.0 High Speed Multi, microHDMI TypeD / VIERA Link
Wi-Fi function: IEEE 802.11b/g/n, 2412 MHz – 2462 MHz (1-11 ch), Wi-Fi / WPA / WPA2, Infrastructure mode, QR Code Connection
Power supply: 7.2V, 680mAh, 4.9Wh Rechargeable Li-ion Battery Pack; CIPA rated for approx. 230 shots/charge with H-FS12032 lens
Dimensions (wxhxd): Approx. 106.5 x 64.6 x 33.3 mm
Weight: Approx. 263 grams (body only); 266 grams with battery and card
Panasonic Australia www.panasonic.com/au
TESTS
Based on JPEGs taken with the H-FS12032E-S lens.
Based on RW2.RAW files from the camera converted into 16-bit TIFF format with Raw Therapee.
SAMPLES
Auto white balance with incandescent lighting.
Auto white balance with fluorescent lighting.
Auto white balance with flash lighting.
12mm focal length, ISO 200, 1/400 second at f/10.
32mm focal length, ISO 200, 1/400 second at f/10.
2x digital zoom, 32mm focal length, ISO 200, 1/400 second at f/9.
4x digital zoom, 32mm focal length, ISO 200, 1/500 second at f/11.
60-second exposure at ISO 100, 25mm focal length, f/5.2.
20-second exposure at ISO 800, 25mm focal length, f/6.3.
8-second exposure at ISO 3200, 25mm focal length, f/7.1.
6-second exposure at ISO 6400, 25mm focal length, f/8.
4-second exposure at ISO 12800, 25mm focal length, f/9.
2-second exposure at ISO 25600, 25mm focal length, f/11.
Flash exposure at ISO 100, 32mm focal length, 1/50 second at f/5.6.
Flash exposure at ISO 800, 32mm focal length, 1/50 second at f/5.6.
Flash exposure at ISO 3200, 32mm focal length, 1/50 second at f/5.6.
Flash exposure at ISO 6400, 32mm focal length, 1/50 second at f/5.6.
Flash exposure at ISO 12800, 32mm focal length, 1/50 second at f/5.6.
Flash exposure at ISO 25600, 32mm focal length, 1/50 second at f/5.6.
Strong backlighting; 12mm focal length, ISO 200, 1/500 second at f/10.
Close-up in macro AF mode; 12mm focal length, ISO 200, 1/300 second at f/3.5.
‘Soft Image of a Flower’ Scene preset; 12mm focal length, ISO 200, 1/160 second at f/4.
Rating
RRP: AU$699 (for single-lens kit with H-FS12032E-S lens)
- Build: 8.5
- Ease of use: 8.5
- Autofocusing: 8.5
- Image quality JPEG: 8.6
- Image quality RAW: 8.7
- Video quality: 8.5
