Both Panasonic GX85 and Nikon D7000 have 16.0 MP resolution sensors but Panasonic GX85's sensor is Four Thirds (17.3 x 13 mm ) and Nikon D7000's sensor is APS-C (23.6 x 15.7 mm ).
Since Nikon D7000's has a larger sensor area with the same resolution, this means that it also has a larger pixel area hence better light collecting capacity for a given aperture compared to Panasonic GX85.
Another difference between these two cameras is that Panasonic GX85's sensor lacks anti-alias (Low-Pass) filter. Removing anti-alias filter increases the sharpness and level of detail but at the same time, it increases the chance of moiré occurring in certain scenes.
Below you can see the GX85 and D7000 sensor size comparison.
As seen above, Nikon D7000 has a 1.6x Larger sensor area than Panasonic GX85. Larger sensors give photographer more control on the depth of field and blurry background compared to smaller sensor when shot in same focal length and aperture.
DxOMark Sensor Scores
DxOMark is a benchmark that scientifically assesses image quality of camera sensors. It scores camera sensors for color depth (DXO Portrait), dynamic range (DXO Landscape) and low-light sensitivity (DXO Sports), and also gives them an overall score. Panasonic GX85 and Nikon D7000 sensors have been tested by DxO and the results show that D7000 has a better overall score of 80, 9 points higher compared to GX85's score of 71.
Model |
Overall |
Color Depth |
Dynamic Range |
Low-light ISO |
Panasonic GX85 |
71 |
22.9 bits |
12.6 Evs |
662 ISO |
Nikon D7000 |
80 |
23.5 bits |
13.9 Evs |
1167 ISO |