When there is a lot of buzz before the camera hits the store, and none afterwards, guess that is a good thing -- mean we are out using the cameras instead of on internet forums complaining about them
Overall I am happy with mine, with few regrets.
Here's some things that come to mind. First: When I got the camera, I thought the white balance was off something horrible, and even using the custom white balance did not help. Luckily, just before I was going to return the camera, I figured that I was still running a version of Adobe DNG professional (I cannot be nothered to u;grade PS every time I get a new camera) which happily converted the CR2s without any mention that the camera only had preliminary support.
My other camera are EOS 60D and I also have an ebay PS S95 to always carry in my pocket. S95 is great, but GX1M2 is miles ahead in picture quality. Also, S95 just takes too long to focus on a moving subject. In good light, GX1M2 focuses fast and good. On the CONS side, G1XM2 cannot focus on bright lights in dark -- shooting moon or night skyline you *will* be focusing manually, which is a hassle.
Initially, I was going to turn off the touch screen and keep it off. However, once I tried it, I found I do not want to live if I cannot have one. The selection of focus point is as easy as touching the screen, and I have the video record button set up to enable/disable shutter by touch. When this is on, the camera additionally focuses on the selected point and takes a shot. Compare that to move the focus point-focus-shoot or focus-recompose-shoot, and you are left with incredible freedom to concentrate on the scene rather than operating the camera.
On the con side. The much-hyped rings around the lens.... I don't much care for them, and especially I don't like how they are implemented in g1xm2. It's like we are supposed to go back to using aperture ring around the lens, like no one has done since the 90's. It is just confusing, and with a camera that you hold just above your waist level with the screen tilted up (much more steady than eye level with stretched arms) these controls are hard to access. An Canon implementation of these suck: You use the back dial UP to select which function the you want to use, then you have to entirely reposition the camera and your hands to twist the ring in the front. All while our finger is already on the back control dial which does nothing when rotated, just because the lens ring is the hype. The rings are customizable, but with limitations; somehow I find that the combinations of functions that I want to assign are almost always unavailable. I finally settled to: aperture on the rear wheel, as that is the most accessible; exposure on the click lens ring, and the smooth ring is unused.
With the physical buttons available, the UI could be great, but it fails. Only two of the back buttons are customizable -- video record button (I have it set up as touch screen shoot on/off, it still works as video record btn when in video shooting mode) and custom button. I have the custom button as set as CustomWB1, and for the first time with Canon cameras that is set up so it works: Use this one button to shoot something gray, it measures and -- finally, Canon -- sets the custom white balance instead of asking you to do so.
The manual focus button is right under your thumb, and is really easy to press accidentally. The inconsistent way the things work makes it easy to accidentally do things: Press Menu or Function, and the pressing rear dial left or right moves the selection. But press ISO and trying to set the value using rear dial left closes the ISO selection and sets the macro mode instead, because you will now need to rotate the ring. That is a problem with the too many rings for the rings sake on a camera -- you end up assigning things on the rings just because they are there, even though there would be an easier way.
Another annoying thing, as with all Canon cameras, is how from camera to camera, the available setting for custom menu differ. This makes it impossible for one to have one single identical menu across the different models. Now you can no longer have LCD brightness on custom menu! What is worse, it is in the middle of the settings menu, move to tools menu, and click down nine times to find it.
As you see, my problem with this camera is primarily the UI. That is something one will get used to, mostly it just annoys me that with the physical buttons available the UI could be so much better than it now is. When you are out shooting, and hav the things configured in a way they work for you, you will not think about them any more. Overall the shooting experience is great, and the ease of moving focus point, focusing and shooting on one touch of the screen much compensates for anything else.
Here's how the background blurs on f/2.0 focus 0.7m
Here's the 'wide head' distortion, that one will have to look out for with f/2.0 (Sorry bout the mess, I never post pic of ppl without their permission). ACR does not have lens correction profile for G1Xm2
Other things I do not like is how the RAW and JPEG are not working together. When shooting RAW and JPEG, you are unable to use any of the JPEG filters, so what you get is the CR2, and a camera processed JPEG of that CR2 without any JPEG settings applied to it. Which kind of makes the RAW+JPEG mode pointless. I would like to shoot RAW and compose the image on grayscale LCD, but I cannot do it on this camera (I cannot do that on my S95 either) I think that is a serious and unnecessary limitation.
Now I've gone ways to point out just everything I would want to have changed in mkIII, but take them in the context that I am overall very happy with this camera, and I have no regrets that I have chosen it. I pointed out those things just so if you get the chance to play around with one, you can see if they matter to you. The most important thing for me is that this camera is small enough to easily carry along as opposed to D60 with a 'walkaround' 15-85. It is wide enough so I can mostly zoom in bit to avoid worst distractions on the edges (Customs settings saves the zoom as well, so you can have the camera turn on at , say 28mm by default, and zoom out if necessary).
If I don't like a camera, I don't take pictures. Overall, I enjoy using my G1Xm2, I take a lot of picture with it, and I am happy with what I am getting. At the end of the day, that's all that matter to me.
