Panasonic vs Olympus Quality, Help Required

thomas610 · Oct 21, 2017

I have been reading a lot about the Lumix GX85 and the Olympus OMD EM-10 Mark II to purchase as my first camera. From my reading it seems as if the JPEG colour profile of the Oly is more desirable than the Lumix but despite this I still prefer the lumix due to it's more accessible layout/shape for travelling and the type of photography i'm interested in (i'm interested in street, urban and night photography). Can anyone speak for the JPEG quality of the GX85 and how it differs from the Oly? Another question I have is that if I am to get the GX85 I would almost definitely get the 20mm 1.7 Zuiko lens to go with it... would this make any difference to the JPEG profile at all over the Olympus? Thanks!

BrentC · Oct 21, 2017

If layout and shape is an issue have you looked at the Olympus Pen F? For what you photograph the Pen F might be a great fit, its almost made for Urban and street photography. Also the great Olympus IBIS may help out a lot for night photography.

jaomul · Oct 21, 2017

Olympus I'm my opinion have nicer jpeg output from the camera. The gx80 had a very nice monochrome setting that does very nice black and white output, the Panasonic has a great 4k photo extract ability that allows 8mp jpegs to be taken from a video type sequence.

I mostly shoot raw, but even still I sold my gx80 because it simply did not give the same pleasing image quality results to me that any of my Olympus cameras did, I returned to Olympus. I now do without 4k but prefer my m43 photos with Olly than Panasonic, it is of course only my opinion

raschmidt · Oct 21, 2017

I own a GX-85 and my gf has an E-M5 ii (and previously an E-M10 mk1)

I can't tell a huge difference between either camera. I have seen a 20mm f/1.7 on an E-M5 mk1 and the images looked great, tons of contrast and good color. I thought it looked better than my GX-85 + 15mm f/1.7 - but i can't tell which was the camera and which was the lens. You can easily tweak the colors on the Panasonic or Olympus jpegs so I don't think either one should be a problem.

My personal opinion on the GX-85 however, is the camera to me doesn't feel as high of quality as the OMD's - which makes me "feel" not so confident in the camera. It's a perfectly good camera otherwise, and while the Panasonic IBIS isn't as good as the OMD's it's not far behind either.