On this day 2008: Panasonic announces the world's first Mirrorless camera

As part of DPReview.com's twenty fifth anniversary, we're looking back at significant launches from that time. And today we're looking at one of the most significant: the arrival, sixteen years ago today, of the world's first Mirrorless camera.

In early August 2008, Panasonic and Olympus had announced their plans to develop "significantly lighter and more compact interchangeable lens type digital camera systems," based on a variant of the Four Thirds system, but with a shorter flangeback distance. Or, as we called it: a mirrorless format and lens mount.

At first there were only diagrams showing that the lens mount would be smaller, not demonstrating how the new system would bring lenses closer to the sensor, so I had to quickly rough something up in Illustrator and then watch as it was used by countless other sites to show what had really changed.

Just over a month later, my colleague Lars and I found ourselves invited to Germany just before the Photokina trade show opened, to get our hands on the first example of this new technology: Panasonic's DMC-G1.

What was perhaps so striking about it is how familiar it felt: Panasonic had essentially made a miniature Canon Rebel, with a very similar form-factor and control layout. The only thing that seemed radical about the camera was the use of an electronic viewfinder on an interchangeable lens camera. And the fact it was appreciably smaller and lighter.

The original G1 was conventional to the point of being forgettable, which could be because Panasonic didn't want it to seem in any way different from a DSLR, other than being smaller. But, one way or another, this is the camera to which most modern ILCs owe a debt.

Freed from any direct connection between sensor size, mirror size and viewfinder size, the G1's finder delivered a vast 0.7x magnification figure in full-frame terms, compared with 0.51x on the rival Canon EOS 1000D / Rebel XS. Admittedly, it used the rather off-putting field sequential technology that (rather slowly) flashed up the red, then green, then blue parts of the preview, leaving strange rainbow artifacts in your vision if you looked around the scene too fast, but it offered some taste of things to come.

And, considering it was an entirely contrast-detection AF system, the G1 was impressively competitive against its DSLR peer group, at least in terms of AF-S.

Interestingly, given what the move to mirrorless has subsequently brought us, and considering it was a direct contemporary of the Canon EOS 5D II and Nikon D90, the G1 had no video capabilities.

The G1's decidedly conventional approach means it risks being somewhat overlooked historically. Once the Photokina show began, there appeared to be much more buzz around Olympus's Micro Four Thirds camera, despite it being made of wood.

Panasonic had working G1s on its stand at Photokina 2008, yet Olympus was getting similar amounts of attention for its PEN mockup.

But it's understandable that, rather than drawing attention to what was different, Panasonic would want to make a camera that looked, felt and behaved as much like the established options as possible. But, whether it was apparent or not, the G1 represented the first domino that started a cascade out across the industry.