A fresh look at the new Panasonic GF2

Christina has the pleasure of test driving some of newest gear! Here is another review on one of our newest models.

The first thing that I should mention about the new Panasonic GF2 is that it doesn't have a view finder. I mention this first because it took me some time to get used to that (there may have even been a few times when I put the back of the camera up to my eye purely out of habit). The good news is that if you're coming from the point and shoot world, you'd probably rather the live view. However, coming from the DSLR world, personally, I didn't like shooting in live mode, even after I got used to it.

What I did love about this camera is the fact that it has a hot shoefor a flash. I was able to use my wireless transmitters and sync with my Nikon flash for my little photo-shoot, and because I could remove the 14mm lens the body came with and trade it for the 45mm - 200mm, I shot my cupcakes from the opposite end of my kitchen! Another nice thing about the GF2 is that you can shoot in RAW format, however, I found the touch screen and menus took some time to get the hang of.

I think this camera is a great choice if you need some thing compact, I was able to put the body and two lenses into one of the smallest camera bags available. The Panasonic offers 12.1 mega pixels, high definition video and the option of manual or automatic settings.

Whether you're a point and shoot user looking for more control or a DSLR user looking to save some space, the GF2 will take some time and play to get used to, but overall I was surprised and impressed with the results.