7 Instagram Worthy Pancakes, Taken with Panasonic LUMIX GX85

Breakfast is the best meal of the day. It builds champions. Especially when you get that wafting eggy aroma lingering in the café, this is what makes people happy. Carrying the new Panasonic LUMIX GX85, I visited 7 cafes in Singapore that serves instagram worthy pancakes. Some serious café hopping happening here!

My first stop is Habitat Coffee where I get to try out GX85 for the first time! Together with the tiny, collapsible 12-32mm F3.5-5.6 zoom, it felt very nice in my hand. Small, discreet but still a very solid-feeling camera.

Singaporean owner Ryan was inspired by Melbourne cafes, he’s taken his passion for coffee back to Singapore and started his own cafe Habitat in a neighbourhood in Upper Thomson populated with cafe-goers. Paired together with a cup of cappuccino, Stuffed Berries Hotcake ($15) was a swell circle of sweetness. Using cream cheese instead of ricotta, the hotcake is kept light and moist, a nice complement to a maple syrup and seasonal berries.

I love cafes with big space, because it gives me some breathing space to truly enjoy the coffee and surroundings. We sat by huge windows at Atlas, watch passers-bys walk pass and catch up with each other’s life. Its Butterscotch Banana Pancake ($18) featuring signature fluffy pancake served with caramelized banana and house-made butterscotch & honey comb ice cream. The wait is 20 minutes, but it’s worthwhile for the soft and tasty pancakes. Alternatively, go for the Breakfast Strawberry Maple Pancake ($16). Pair it with a cup of coffee, the thick velvety pillow of microfoam is amazing.

The ISO sensitivity for LUMIX GX85 is quite straightforward. It has a native ISO range of 200 to 25,600. Even at ISO 12800, the output images are still quite useable for online. Some details are lost but it still has the colour and contrast. Overall image quality is decent and comparable to a lot of APS-C sensor cameras.

The GX85 has a tilt LCD which helps especially when I love to shoot my food from a low angle. It also has a new 5-axis Dual I.S.(Image Stabilizer) for more effective suppression of blur and makes it easier to take clear pictures especially during night time. So say YAY to even better image stabilization performance.

By the same folks behind Stranger’s Reunion, Curious Palette was established recently at Prinsep Street. Waffles and coffee are crowd-pleasers at all Ryan’s cafe, as evident in Stranger’s Reunion. Offerings include buttermilk waffles with gula melaka and coconut cream ($14.50), or buttermilk waffles with wine-poached pear and walnut crumble ($15.50).

Or try the picture-perfect Berry Ricotta Hotcake ($18.90) with fresh berries, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and vanilla bean ice cream. Pour some maple syrup into the moist and fluffy hotcake to get maximum pleasure. It’s enjoyable with cold vanilla ice cream giving a great contrast. Don’t forget to pair the desserts with coffee (from $3.50).

As with many modern cameras, the LUMIX GX85 includes built-in Wi-Fi connectivity where you can connect the camera to their smartphone / tablet to expand the flexibility in shooting/storing/sharing images. Say yay to direct upload to Instagram!

Located at the corner of a row of shopshouses along South Buona Vista Road. I first got to know the cafe for their Berry Ricotta. But recently, they have replaced it with a colourful plate of Berry Muffcake ($20) – smaller but better! Inspired by the famous Top Paddock in Australia, it is a delicious combination of vanilla bean ice cream squares, chocolate crumbs, magic balls pink milk & pumpkin seeds. Yes, the huge square chunks are vanilla bean ice cream, not butter. Each muffcake is slightly crispy on the outside, while lighter and more fluffy on the inside. The tangy berries actually helps to balance the sweetness.

While taking delicous food pictures, you can use many picture effects from the camera, including one point color, star filter, impressive art, low key, high key, sunshine, dynamic monochrome, bleach bypass, soft focus, sepia, toy pop, old days, fantasy, miniature effect, Silky Monochrome, Rough Monochrome, Toy Effect, cross process, monochrome, retro, high dynamic and expressive.

The Academics Pancake Tower ($19) really made our day and it’s not often I get to eat it because sometimes, the wait is just ridiculous. But it really got us excited when the three pancakes arrived at our table. Not only was it beautifully presented, but the piping hot, thick and fluffy pancake totally satisfied our palettes. The delectable pancake tower goes really well with their ice cold berry sorbet, which was sweet and slightly sour. The whipped cream, on the other hand, wasn’t light and fluffy so we didn’t really like it with the pancake.

Pancakes with warm maple butter ($18) for example, have been voted ‘Best In the City’ twice by New York magazine, and are extra fluffy and flavourful from the use of whipped egg whites and American all-purpose flour. Boosting the proportion of eggs, butter and sugar at the expense of flour, they were impressive for their fluffiness but also for their deep flavor.

Choose from wild blueberries, banana walnut or chocolate chunk toppings to crown a generous serving of three fat pancakes. As you slice and devour it, it’s sweet and tart, but lovable as always. Honestly, the pancakes are so rich and delicious they can be served with nothing more than a dusting of confectioners’ sugar. But of course, we won’t complain for a little more sweetness from the accompanying homemade maple butter, made to a gorgeous drizzly consistency using Canadian maple syrup.

Goodbye sticky date pudding pancake, Pacamara has launched a new Matcha Pancake with azuki bean paste, fresh berries, azuki ice cream and vanilla sauce. The pancake itself is soft but wished it has more matcha flavour. Same for the azuki paste. But we love the azuki ice cream and matcha kitkat chunks. The small pot of sweet condensed milk could have been better.

Here’s me trying out the Post Focus function on the camera which allows you select in-focus area even after shooting. It’s easy – just shoot an image in a Post Focus mode and touch on the point where you want to set focus while playing it back. So in the above two pictures, you can see that the cup is in focus in one of the shots, while the pancake is in focus on the other photo. Post Focus is helpful in situations like macro shooting where severe focusing is required.

About The LUMIX GX85

For most of my everyday shooting, I use the S-AF autofocus mode, and it has worked great on the LUMIX GX85 — fast and decisive. You can reposition the AF areas easily by tapping your screen and swiping through images in playback. I’ve had no complaints about its responsiveness at all. Especially when we pour the syrup, the GX85 shoots fast; controls respond quickly and shutter lag is minimal.

Cameras today can offer so much for so little. Like Panasonic’s GX85, it is not as bulky but it has a huge lens selection, great IQ and a great price. What’s not to like?

The LUMIX GX85 is retailed at S$1,249 at all authorised dealers. For more information, click here.