[Kodachrome 25]

If you like to shoot in true manual mode (and not some auto-iso version) as I like to do, make sure to check out the current Panasonic style of manual exposure level display in real life. Hey, there is was still room for creative innovation in the visual display of that simple value of deviation from what the exposure meter reads to render the measured part of the image to average grey. 

What Panasonic did: Instead of a continuous scale from minus to plus 5 or 3 or 2 exposure values, some of us may have grown accustomed to since LCDs went into the viewfinder over three decades ago [1], they have divided the scale into three parts:

-3  .  .  0

+/- OK

0  .  .  +3

The actual value of the exposure level is displayed as bars representing one third exposure value: 

0  .  .  +3


|||||

or

-3  .  .  0


     ||||||

So if I was spot metering and moved the camera around to check the exposure values in the scene, the scale and indicator bars  flipped from left to right and back again only to be interrupted by that unspeakable "+/- OK" text. I found that most disturbing, since I constantly had to reassure wether the bars were left or right from zero.

That kind of display feature came (I think) with the GX80/85, but it is also in the G9. So I have not much hope in the GX9 to return to a traditional manual mode viewfinder display. Which is sad since it's otherwise a really interesting camera.

 
If I were a judge in a user interface court I'd sentence the designers who came up with that abomination to handwriting three copies of Adam's 'The Negative' 8-p

 

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/200702031617...nonT90.pdf around page 50