May photo comp - Cold Comfort (96)

you might like to look closely at type lens you fit to it

extract from review


The Micro Four Thirds system is now very well-established, with a lot of excellent lenses on offer from Panasonic and Olympus that cover almost all of the popular focal lengths. You can also use regular Four Thirds lenses or even Leica D lenses via optional adapters from either Panasonic or third-parties, but lenses that are not compatible with the GX7's Contrast AF function can only be used with manual focusing and cannot use the Tracking AF, AFc (Auto Focus Continuous) or Continuous AF functions.

But unlike every other Panasonic compact system camera, the GX7 also offers image stabilisation built-in to the camera body too, a surprising but very welcome development. Panasonic were keen to point out that this is of benefit for Leica lens owners, but obviously it applies to lenses from heir main rival, Olympus, too. At a stroke, you can now fit any Olympus Micro Four Thirds lens to the GX7 and benefit from image stabilisation. When an optically stabilised lens is fitted, the GX7 defers to the lens rather than using the body-based system (you can't manually choose between the two), with Panasonic stating that the optical image stabilisation supplied via the lens is still the best system - but crucially no longer the only one. If you fit a non-stabilized lens, you need to enter its focal length from 8mm to 1000mm via the main menu system to benefit from the body stabilisation system.

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my older E500 camera lens could be fitted to my newer OM-D camera, however i'd need to also get an adapter to fit them, a cheap one cost round $60, however the cameras auto-focusing (AF) wont work with the lens, i'd only be able to therefore use MF. A dearer adapter that would work with the E500 Zuiko lens cost (the adapter) $500 + that however would enable AF.
Worse still using an adapter takes away the cameras and lens, water proofing, anti-freeze features.