Photography News Issue 68

Camera test 47

Photography News | Issue 68 | photographynews.co.uk

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Performance: 4K focus features The G90’s 4K burst shooting mode lets you get creative with focusing. In Post-Focus/Focus Bracketing modes the camera shoots a burst while automatically, incrementally and seamlesslyadjusting autofocus fromnear to far between shots.

With Post-Focus, this in-camera feature lets you decide what plane of focus you want sharp after the fact and the result can be saved as a JPEG. In Focus Stacking, you select the nearest and furthest points of focus

requiredand the cameramerges the relevant frames to give a final sharp image. Or just let the camera merge the whole sequence for maximum depth-of-field. The four shots below illustrate how the focus bracketing works.

FULL-FRAME

NEAR FOCUS

FAR FOCUS

Image The Lumix G90 is perfect for vloggers as the monitor is touch sensitive and swings out sideways and can be swivelled to face forwards

Ergonomics generally rate highly with several shooting operations easilycontrollablewiththerighthand. The on/off switch can be operated by the thumb once you get used to it, so the camera can be switched on as it’s brought up to the eye. Around the shutter button is the front input dial and sitting nearby are three buttons for white-balance, ISO and exposure compensation. The movie record button is nearby, too. All four buttons have different surface finishes, so once you’re used to them, there’s no problem using them by feel while the eye is up to the viewfinder. The rear command dial is designed for right thumb use and at its centre is the Fn1 button, although it is not marked as such. There are no fewer than 11 function buttons, 1 to 4 then 9, 10 and 11 are physical controls, while 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 are virtual and sit on the monitor. There is a number of options for each – for capture the minimum is 63 options and the most is 67, which includes restore and off. In playback mode, you get 15 options in Fn1 and Fn3. The rear panel layout is logical and similar to what you see on most cameras, although there is no focus lever. The back scroll wheel is a four-way control, too; the top, right and left being Fn buttons 9, 10 and 11 respectively. Also on the back is the focus control with the usual AF, continuous AF and manual options and Fn2 is the QMenu by default. Generally, handling is very good and there is massive potential for user customisation for a camera at

this price level – all you have to do is remember what you assign to each function button. The menu is pretty thorough in terms of what you can do and it is pretty logically laid out, too. I especially liked the C/spanner layout. Enter thismenuand there are five category headings (Exposure, Focus/Release Shutter, Operation etc) and select one of these and you leap straight into the relevant section among the 52 individual menu items under this overall heading. The monitor is touch sensitive for menu setting and AF point selection anditswingsoutsidewaysandcanbe swivelled to face forwards, so ideal for vloggers. It’s perfect, of course, for waist or low-level shooting, too, or you can fold it facing into the body for the ‘shooting film’ experience. One thing I found frustrating was with the eye sensor when using the monitor swung out to one side. I’m right handed so by reaching across, I managed to switch from monitor view to EVF without meaning to. Five-axis image stabilisation is getting to be a common sight in the mirrorless camera landscape and it isan important feature, especially for handheld video shooting. The G90’s Dual I.S. 2 five-axis in-body system works well. Dual I.S. 2 combines in-body sensor shift and in-lens optical stabiliser to give up to 5EV benefit, which is about 1EV better than the original Dual I.S. – existing OIS lenses need a firmware update. I did test shots using the mechanical shutter and with the supplied 12-60mm zoom at

Images Normal JPEGs shot with the 12-60mm f/3.5-5.6. When you shoot 4K, you get a cropped image as you can see in the shots above. Using the camera’s touch monitor, focus was selected on the front flower. Here, focus was selected on the stem of the rear flower

STACKED IMAGE

Images This is the stacked image with the near and far focus points selected and the Lumix G90 does the merge in-camera. The images are full-frame, so you can see the final image is cropped

Lumix G90 burst mode

There is massive potential for user customisation for a camera at this price level

IMAGES The enlarged section (right) of the gull’s head, taken from the middle frame of the five images above, shows how good an 8MB still from a 4K burst mode can be

The 4K burst mode gives you 30fps and then you can take a still 8-megapixel file from the video footage. These five shots are from a sequence – we used every fifth shot.

The resulting file is 3328x2496 pixels, so big enough for a photo quality A4 print without any software interpolation. The enlarged frame of the gull’s head (shown far

right) gives you an idea of the impressive image quality possible. Taken on the Lumix G90, fitted with the 12- 60mm zoom. These images are used full-frame.