Studio Comparison (daylight)

Our latest test scene is designed to simulate both daylight and low-light shooting. Pressing the 'lighting' buttons at the top of the widget allows you to switch between the two. The daylight scene is shot with manually set white balance, but the camera is left in its Auto setting for the low-light tests.


Aside from some moiré at the center of the scene, there's not much to point out while the GX7 is at its base ISO of 200 - and that continues as the sensitivity rises. At ISO 800, you start to see just a bit of detail loss, which is noticeable when compared to the Olympus E-M5. As we reach the mid-level sensitivities noise becomes more obvious, though the GX7 avoids the blotchy details of the Olympus E-M5 and Sony NEX-6, in exchange for luminance noise. While noise is prevalent at ISO 6400, the GX7 still retains more detail than the E-M5, NEX-6, or Nikon D7100 do at this sensitivity. Only when you reach ISO 12800 do you see a substantial loss of detail, making this setting (and the one above it) best suited for sharing via e-mail or Facebook.

The first thing we noticed when switching to Raw is the disappearance of the moiré at the center of the test scene. Otherwise, there's just a little bit of luminance noise, which stays under control as the sensitivity increases. While chroma noise becomes quite noticeable at ISO 1600, you'll see that the GX7 is on-par with its competitors. Even as you hit ISO 6400, the GX7 is still holding its own. The two highest sensitivities (12800 and 25600) will require considerable work with the noise reduction sliders if you're going to get anything usable out of them.