Panasonic G7 hands on

If there's any company that's an expert in high-quality 4K video recording, it's Panasonic. The company pioneered consumer 4K video recording with its interchangeable GH4 and many videographers, and YouTubers swear by its versatility.

Next month, the company is launching the G7, a smaller 4K-shooting mirrorless camera for $800 — half as much as the GH4. I got to play with the camera and shoot some 4K footage recently. Here's my first impressions.

Although both cameras are of the Micro Four Thirds format, the G7 is way smaller and lighter. The body weighs 0.9 pounds versus the GH4's 1.23 pounds; even with the 14-42mm kit lens, the camera is a light.

The lightness, along with the plastic construction, makes the camera feel somewhat cheap. The 3.3-inch touchscreen swivels out, but I noticed it wasn't as bright and colors weren't quite as vivid as on the GH4. This isn't surprising considering the G7 uses an LCD and the GH4 uses an OLED screen. OLED screens tend to have deeper blacks and better colors.

Buttons and control wheels cover almost every available surface on the camera body. Amateurs may be turned off by all of them, but I didn't mind. Buttons are always better than settings hidden in menus.

While I did spend some time taking 16-megapixel photos and extracting 8-megapixel stills from the 4K video recordings, I focused more on the 4K video recording.

As you can see in the video reel above (make sure to turn on 4K 2,160p), the 4K video is impressive. I shot footage with the kit lens and colors and exposure came out looking accurate. The built-in optical image stabilization does a good job steadying the footage from light hand shaking.

From my brief time with the G7, the camera appears to be a solid little guy for video. I'll need to do some more testing in low-light situations and indoors, and with different lenses, but so far so good.

Also great: No conversion needed. I recently reviewed the Samsung NX500, another $800 mirrorless camera that shoots 4K video, and had to convert all the video clips from H.265 to H.264. The G7's 4K clips are encoded in H.264 so you won't have any issue using Final Cut Pro X or Adobe Premiere to edit them.