Panasonic DMCG7/B 14-42mm

Pros: This may be a bit older model of camera, but don’t let that dissuade you from buying this camera. The low light video and photos of this camera are pretty amazing. This was the main reason why I purchased this camera. I shoot videos in low light situations when doing sound for bands, and you also have the challenge of bright stage lights, and nothing comes out overexposed or blooming in the videos I have recorded so far. Even night time sky shooting is pretty good with the built-in exposure timings up to 60 seconds. The included 14-42mm lens gives you a good starting point, but for more specific applications such as serious night time shooting, a lower f-stop lens would be of much more use. That also applies to portrait shooting if you really want to get the bokeh effect. The stock lens achieves this, but not as much depth of field as a full frame camera, but still pretty darn good. Images are crisp, and do not suffer chromatic aberrations, and rarely does anything but the brightest objects become over-exposed. And with a quick change to exposure settings you can fix that instantly. The viewfinder has a LCD screen built-in, so the image you see is going to be roughly what your picture will look like since it’s a direct image of your sensor, and not a reflection from a mirror like full frame cameras. The multi-shot capabilities is pretty fast. The auto-focus is also blazing fast with up to 49 areas of focal point. Continuous auto-focus for video works really well too for times when you want to focus on the action without having to think of focusing the camera yourself. Cons: The function buttons are spread out a bit, and learning the menu takes a bit of time. I wouldn’t say it’s overly difficult, but I found it easier to just dig into the menu system without reading the lengthy manual that comes with the camera. Overall Review: I would recommend this camera to anyone looking to upgrade from the smaller sensor point-and-shoot cameras, that just don’t cut it in low light photo and video environments! The Lumix GX7 gives you plenty of options like a full frame camera, but at a lower cost. If you can find good deals on extra lenses, this setup can easily beat the cost of full frame cameras giving the Lumix G7 a very good value/performance ratio in my opinion.