The designer’s intent for Micro Four Thirds has been so badly distorted by marketing, the system no longer makes any sense. In the days of the Panasonic GH1, there would be never any question of simply sneaking a small sensor into the body of a full frame camera and calling it a day. This was never the ethos of Micro Four Thirds. Yet that is exactly what Panasonic have done with the G9 II. In fact you can trace back the system’s decline all the way to the GH3. The GH3 was the moment Panasonic started to abandon the original ethos of Micro Four Thirds. They had mishandled the GF line turning into a Micky Mouse entry level camera but with the GH2 they had a huge hit on their hands. It had opened up a whole new market, in filmmaking. However with the GH3, the homogenous black DSLR style design took over and the camera grew to be almost as large as a Canon 70D. I am sure many saw this as a good thing, a sign of a ‘toy’ coming of age and turning ‘pro’. Yet for me, this is where the fun factor and unique appeal of Micro Four Thirds started to go into reverse. The Panasonic G9 II is a further piece of really odd thinking by Panasonic. It cannibalises the Panasonic GH6, being practically the same camera for video despite being aimed at photographers, with the killer blow of adding phase-detect AF. Not content...
Published By: EOSHD.com blog - Tuesday, 19 September, 2023