It seems like every few months, a new camera is breaking down barriers in terms of resolution
and frame rate.
While it’s fun and all for us to drool over the Red Epic Weapon 8K, it’s not realistic
for your budget YouTuber.
It’s certainly not a realistic purchase for me any time soon.
What I did end up with, however, is what I believe to be the best budget camera if you
want to shoot 4K video: The Panasonic Lumix DMC-G7.
Or just the “G7” for short.
This lightweight little body packs a lot of value for the price, especially compared to
other starting options from the competitors.
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I’m EposVox, here to make tech easier and more fun here today with a camera review.
For context, in 2012 I spent about $800 on my Canon EOS Rebel T3i body and kit lens.
I was new to the camera scene, didn’t know how great the used market was, and saw this
as a great beginner’s option.
It was, and it served me well for the past 5 years.
But this past November I spent a mere $500 on my G7 on a Cyber Monday deal and got a
much better camera - at least when it comes to video.
The G7 is generally around 600 to 700 dollars not on sale, which is still a great price
to pick it up at.
Or you can pick up a decent used deal from all of those who just upgraded to the GH5.
The Panasonic G7 is a small mirrorless camera capable of shooting 4K video.
It takes decent photos, too - but I honestly still prefer my T3i or my Minolta 35mm camera
for stills, so this will be a mostly video-focused review.
The body is lightweight and compact.
This makes it great for packing on the go and taking it with you, but the lightweight
nature of it can actually add a lot of instability to your shots.
It’s a lot easier to keep my heavy T3i stable than the G7 just due to weight alone.
The screen fully articulates and flips out for self-shooting, which is very important
and something I just find hilarious when more expensive cameras don’t include this.
*Cough* Sony *cough*.
The screen is also a touch screen which adds to the overall navigational pleasure of this
camera.
There are 4 knobs and quite a few function buttons on this camera.
Most of the buttons are assignable to whatever functions you want.
This, combined with the touch screen and quick functions menu on it make any important setting
just a tap away.
I love it.
Way easier to control than my T3i.
I do have a couple nit-picky complaints about the physical form factor.
Firstly, the camera strap hooks are these keychain-like triangles on each side of the
camera, which flap around and make obnoxious sounds when you move the camera.
I would have much preferred embedded hooks like my T3i - but I guess I might have to
take the Neistat approach to these.
Also, the SD card slot is next to the battery on the bottom of the camera.
This isn’t inherently bad, but can be ridiculously inconvenient to remove or swap SD cards when
the camera is mounted on a tripod or rig.
This is probably just a manufacturing flaw with my unit, but the camera mode knob seems
to be glitchy.
I primarily keep it in video mode, but sometimes it’ll sit there switching between video
mode and a photo mode back and forth until I power cycle it or rotate the knob a few
times to lock it back into place.
I guess it’s possible the switch that detects the mode selection is a little loose.
Lastly, the microphone input jack is randomly thrown on the opposite side of the rest of
the camera’s IO.
Why?
I mentioned the battery slot cover - it’s easy to use and doesn’t turn off the camera
like my T3i.
Good to go there.
I use two of the Lumix BLC12PP 1200mAh batteries with a Watson dual charger.
With this combo, there has never been a situation where I’ve been unable to shoot with the
camera.
Even when constantly shooting 4K video, the batteries last a crazy long amount of time.
That was one of the first things I was blown away by - the batteries just last so long.
Under a secure flap, the G7 features a remote shutter jack, micro HDMI for 4:2:2 video out,
as well as a AV Out and Digital out port, along with the microphone jack over on the
left.
This isn’t a perfect setup - you can’t record in-camera while previewing via HDMI,
which rules out using an external monitor unless it’s also a dedicated recorder, too.
Also, there’s no turning off Auto Gain Control on the microphone jack, and it sounds pretty
compressed when I try using it.
Dual system sound all the way for me!
The video quality is, well, obviously quite nice.
It records standard UHD 3840x2160 at 24 or 30 frames per second - no DCI 4096x2160, though.
It also records 1080p at 60 FPS, which is nice.
There is an extra crop applied when shooting 4K.
This isn’t something I think about much since I almost exclusively shoot 4K with this
camera, but the couple times I did need to shoot 1080p60 I was thrown off by the extra
width.
It records at 100 megabits per second, a pretty nice bitrate.
I use a Lexar 128GB 633x UHS-1 SDXC card to shoot on daily.
It’s big enough to support all the shots I need, and fast enough to keep up with the
4K needs.
You can only record up to about 30 minutes without manually stopping and starting due
to the legal nonsense.
It splits the files up every 4GB or so - which wouldn’t be a problem, but then when I sync
the files up to my externally-recorded audio track, there’s always a black frame or two
where it stops and starts recording.
Very frustrating.
The menus are fairly easy to navigate, customize, and use.
I LOVE Panasonic’s system.
There is some confusion with the autofocus system, though.
You have a switch to switch between manual focus, continuous autofocus, and autofocus
set or autofocus face.
BUT there’s a menu option for “Continuous Autofocus” too.
This seems to affect both the AFS AFF mode and the AFC mode.
So I keep having to toggle that or else my AFF recordings of my face keep pulsing autofocus
and if I leave it off, AFC mode doesn’t continuously autofocus.
So what’s the point of having the switch??
This has lead to a lot of issues with my self-shot videos.
Very frustrating.
Overall, the autofocus isn’t the fastest or the best, but leagues better than my T3i,
so I’m happy with it.
Also, this camera has WiFi!
I’ve not used much WiFi features in a camera, but using Panasonic’s Image App on my phone
to focus on myself and quickly adjust settings for my a-roll shooting is quite handy, and
much better than the USB adapter tablet setup I needed for my T3i.
LOVE it.
The camera is a Micro Four Thirds mount and sensor, of course.
My only two native Micro Four Thirds lenses are the kit lens that came with the G7 and
a Rokinon T2.2 12mm cine lens I picked up when I got the camera.
The included 14-42mm kit lens is actually quite impressive for a cheap kit lens.
The cine lens is amazing when I need a wide aperture or wide field of view.
Since it’s a micro four thirds mirrorless, adapting lenses to the camera is a super easy
and awesome experience.
I’ve picked up a lot of vintage film lenses for the camera.
I’ve got my Helios 44-2 58mm swirly bokeh lens, a beautiful Nikon Nikkor 35mm F/2 lens,
a nice Olympus 50mm, and then I picked up a Roxsen speedbooster for my Canon 28mm lens.
I’ve just recently ordered a couple more speedboosters - for my Helios and the Nikon
- too, but they won’t arrive from overseas for another month or so.
I’m excited to reclaim my swirly bokeh.
Low light performance is actually one of the huge benefits I’ve gotten from the G7, which
may sound confusing since most reviewers and photogs would probably say mirrorless cameras
are generally not great in low light.
That may be true, but my T3i was incredibly noisy at almost all ISOs and couldn’t handle
low light well at all, so getting the G7 right as I was building my new studio has really
opened the doors for my creativity, and I honestly feel my content has pivoted in a
much better direction as a result.
Gear may not “matter,” but getting the right gear and studio upgrades when you’ve
pushed the limits of what you could do before does make a difference.
All of this video stuff aside, I honestly prefer the shots and shooting experience of
still images on my T3i.
So my T3i and Minolta 35mm will be my main stills bodies for now.
It does annoy me that I can’t take photos in video mode like my T3i, and that Auto mode
shots don’t save to RAW.
But that’s about all I have to say about stills.
But for video, just about everything looks great on this camera, and I’ve had a blast
shooting on it over the past 6 months.
This camera has really turned things around for my content, and I’m grateful for that
Cyber Monday sale.
I still drool over the GH5 and would do… a lot… to get my hands on one, but I’m
happy with my little G7 for now.
This is my first formal camera review.
I think it went pretty well, what about you?
I’ve got affiliate product links for this camera on both B&H and Amazon in the description
down below, please use them if you want to buy it.
Otherwise, hit the like button if you enjoyed, get subscribed for more awesome videos like
this, and I’ll catch you next time.