Shooting Landscapes with the Lumix GX85

Today’s Post by Joe Farace

While Mark Toal and I were visiting the Garden of the Gods, he loaned me a Panasonic Lumix GX85 , with which I used to make the below shot. Mary ordered me a black Lumix GX85 with 12-32mm lens for my birthday last month and it finally arrived.

Here are a few random thoughts for the short time I’ve had the camera: There are many things I like about the Lumix GX85, including its look, feel and handling. It’s not perfect “but then again, who is?” It’s become a trend these days to eliminate the anti-aliasing filters from cameras, as I wrote about this in my review of the (not-mirrorless) Pentax K-1 for Shutterbug. The main reason to eliminate this filter is that it lets you produce sharper images with more detail and better resolution.

An anti-aliasing filter sits atop a camera’s sensor and reduces image quality in order to remove artifacts, such as moiré. Moiré is a secondary and superimposed pattern that’s created when two identical (transparent) patterns on a flat or curved surface are overlaid while rotated a small amount from one another. Some pundits have decried this trend arguing that removing the anti-aliasing filter is a design flaw, but others of us are just happy to get better sharper pictures from the 17.3 x 13.0 mm sensors used in Micro Four-thirds cameras.

The Panasonic Lumix 85 is rightly so an impressive little camera for the price. There is no doubt that I’m still in love with the overall look and feel of Olympus’ Pen F but dollar-for-dollar the GX85 seems to be a better buy but it’s not without some annoyances that nobody seems to mention.

Unlike every other Panasonic Micro Four-thirds camera I own, the Lumix GX85 charges the battery while it’s inside the camera. How can you tell it’s charged? I dunno? How can you charge a back-up? Same answer. Fortunately, the GX-85’s battery is the same as one used in the Lumix GX7, so if you already own a GX7 (like Mark) you already have a charger for the GX85. If you don’t (like me) there’s an inexpensive alternative from Amazon that costs less than eight bucks plus shipping. I bought one and it works great.