Focus Numérique has posted an exclusive interview they did with Uematsu Michiharu who is responsible for the development of the Panasonic Lumix range of mirrorless digital interchangeable lens cameras. The interview is in French and we provide a summary in English here.
Phase-detect AF vs. Contrast-detect AF
The constrast-detect AF on the Panasonic GH2 is twice as fast as that on previous models. Panasonic claims it is even faster than the phase-detect AF on some DSLRs for low light and continuous AF such as for movie recording, but concedes that phase-detect AF is still far superior for capturing moving subjects as well as burst shooting.
12MP vs. 16MP
Asked why the GH2 has 16MP when six months before he stated that 12MP was more than enough, he answered that it was simply a marketing decision.
Mechanical vs. Electronic Shutter
Panasonic is working on replacing the mechanical shutter with an electronic shutter but, faced with the lack of internal resources to work faster on accomplishing this change and the diversion of resources to work on 3D projects, they decided that improving image quality remains the priority.
3D Lens
3D will only work on GH2 and G2. All other current cameras (including the GF1) simply do not have enough internal memory to process the 3D algorithms.
Electronic Viewfinder
Lack of internal resources prevented improving the EVF and LCD much but Panasonic’s goal is to design an EVF of extremely high quality.
Read the original interview at: Focus Numérique.
