The GM also makes a good few compromises for that size, no tilt screen, 4K, slower burst rate, few physical controls, and it was never going to be a budget option.
One reason it wasn’t cheap was that both the GM1 and GM5 were nicely made with metal housings, etc.
Panasonic also had to recoup the costs of innovation in the shutter. The stepper-motor-driven shutter should be added to your list of compromises above, because although it was only one-fifth the size of a conventional shutter driven by clockwork and springs, it had a slow flash-synch speed due to the lower speed of the curtains traversing the gate.
The GM5 sort of sums up Panasonic’s approach to cameras for years. It was innovative, practically useful, and loved by owners – but the marketing was
off-key (I like pretty young people as much as anyone but they were never realistically the target audience of this sophisticated, expensive camera), the quality was too high for the market to bear, and the camera was more than a sum of its parts – something the spec-obsessed market rarely rewards.
I craved a GM5 more than any other camera I never got. Maybe I’ll get one yet although the used prices are off-putting.
