Pittsburgh and the G7

I recently was “transferred” for my job. I am still based out of Bozeman, but am now part of the Information Systems team for the parent company, Woodard & Curran. As you might recall, I traveled to Portland, ME in the Fall of 2014, this was to visit the very same company. One of my new duties with this position is the support of some more offices. A network transition was planned for the Pittsburgh (Monroeville to be precise) office. This provided me an opportunity to work along the lead network engineer and see how everything is set up.

This was my first time to Pittsburgh, so I was excited to experience a new city. The first day was a long one, about 6 hours of travel followed by 9 hours of work. The second and third days were normal-ish, so I was able to spend the evening wandering the city both days. I took the time as an opportunity to master the newest camera in the arsenal, the Panasonic Lumix G7 and the 20mm f1.7 lens. It was a handy kit and nice for a urban explorer kit.

A bit of a mini-review here. I have been a Nikon shooter for the past 7 years and feel confident in the system. The major downsides of the system are the size/weight and the cost of lenses. I’ve gathered a decent selection of glass for my Nikon cameras and have used them professionally, but I have long been on the hunt for a secondary system that needed to meet the following requirements: light-weight, compact, affordable lenses and good video performance. I’ve been on the lookout for a while and there are quite a few camera systems that ticked those checkboxes. Sony has a nice system, but at the time the aging a6000 was just a bit too long in the tooth and lenses were expensive. Nikon has the 1-series cameras, which have some decent feature, but ultimately fell short. Many were rejected just for their high price. I settled on the Panasonic Lumix G series cameras. The G7 was still relatively new and not many reviews were available on the compact little powerhouse. Amazon had a great deal on the camera, bundled with a shotgun mic for video ($250+ value). The camera is part of the Micro Four-Thirds (MFT) family of cameras spearheaded by both Panasonic and Olympus, with countless other camera manufacturers utilizing the system. I hope to post a full review soon, but that’s how I got to the point of purchasing the G7.

My second acquisition in the MFT lens system was the Panasonic 20mm f1.7 “pancake” lense. It is incredibly compact, light and superbly sharp. I am very pleased with the performance of the lens. For street photography, it is an adequate focal length to capture the environment and the large aperture lets you stay out longer without a tripod. Focusing was fast enough for me and I am generally pleased with the lens. The only gripe I have would be that manual focusing can be a little dicey, mostly due to the compact nature of the camera, not necessarily the len’s fault.

The G7 isn’t known as a low-light power house, but with a fast lens and some steady hands, it performs admirably. Had I a tripod, I think there wouldn’t be too many issues with extended low light photography. I’m excited to see what else I can do with this setup. Here are my pictures, I hope you enjoy!