M43 cameras are just too small so I am jumping ship...

The Lamentable Lens wrote:

FourthHorse wrote:

... from my Oly em5 mkii to a Pana g9.

Sorry, couldn't resist. Ship jumpers and hand wringers took a toll on my patience lately.

Yet I really bought a g9, cheaper that my wife's paid in 2012 or so for her GX7... go figure!

BTW, if you live in Canada you'll find out that the body alone is priced most places at CAN$1495. This does not reflect the price of US$995. If you look around a bit though you should find the right price which is CAN1349$ in canadian currency.

To finish: I love that camera already to a surprising degree.

Congrats and enjoy! The m43 size advantage is in the lenses. The body comes down to personal ergo preferences. But for my money, the G9 has some of the best ergonomics on the market. Happy shooting!

My own discovery was that it takes perhaps a month to six weeks to get a feel for a camera as talented as the G-9,. Below some comments from a forum member whose name got dropped from my cut and paste, but ddoggoe I have it and aknowledge then and now his inspiration.

Heed and learn is my offering today. And be well always---

from a forum user Cyvan is the handle….and many thanks to him for some ideas like four months ago....good stuff to learn more about this amazing Panasonic.

I have a GX8, G85 and G9 and had a G7 and GX9. The GX8 and I have been thru hell and back and its built like a tank and a trusted friend but , alas, I realise now that I prefer DSLR styled bodies. Every time I get a RF style body I get a grip or half-case and an extended eyecup for it. So I usually reach for my G9 and G85 when going out now.
The other reason is the fabulous IBIS of the later models. I have a lot of primes so when I got the G85 and placed my 75 on it it was a revelation how slow and accurate I could take shots with it. If I'm doing an event with all 3 cameras I tend to put the primes on the later bodies and put a DUAL IS lens like the 12-35 on the GX8 so it more closely matches the effectiveness of the other two.
I agree with what a lot of persons have said re the G9's pluses like IBIS etc but one thing I haven't seen mentioned and that I absolutely love are the software features:
- First the sheer number of customizable buttons on the body , including the directions on the 4 way dial and joystick and the switch in the front; and the fact that you can re-assign any button by simply long pressing it. Brilliant.
- My Menu - I no longer have to rummage through menus to find an item I use often but don't want to assign to a fn key. I can just add it to my menu and it's 2 presses away.
- Exposure Compensation in M-mode with auto iso. I first saw this on my GX9 but its a great feature for when I need to control aperture and SS but still want the camera to compensate for small exposure changes by adjusting ISO, but I might tell it to bias a lil brighter or darker than what its choosing. eg I usually add about +1/3 EV EC by default anyways but I'd lose that with my older cameras. So I'd have to lift them in post. With the G9 I can get my desired brightness even with auto iso now. Great for events with unpredictable lighting. However this feature almost becomes unneeded because of the next feature:
- Min Shutter speed - Usually you'll want to use the feature above because u're shooting in marginal conditions. You control Aperture for DOF but u need to control SS so it doesn't go too slow for motion blur or stay too high and push up ISO /w auto ISO. With this feature you can tell it the min'm SS you want it to go to before it starts increasing ISO. That coupled with your max ISO setting +EC basically frees you up to adjust for Aperture and for composition and the camera will deal with exposure changes within the limits you set.
- Separate focus points for landscape vs portrait. This makes switching between them a lot easier. Using this method I can set the focal point to be at the head when I'm shooting a fashion show regardless of my orientation. Great when I'm shooting with the grip too.
- AF-Scope mode. Love it , I have it assigned to a direction on the D pad so I can quickly press it to to get a magnified view to make sure I have critical focus before pressing the shutter. [PS. I loooove the hair trigger shutter. I miss it when I switch cameras]
- AF-Near / AF-Far shortcuts. Handy for when it gets stuck on a foreground or background element. Just press the appropriate one to force a refocus in the right direction instead of having manually focus or do something like point at the ground first to break focus and try again. Great for shooting thru fences for example.
- Better integration with the ImageApp. I've used it to tether my camera to my tablet during a food shoot so that the client could more easily make her tweaks to the food positioning and even take and review the shot herself w/o either of us having to fuss about with the camera once it was in the right orientation. She was very particular about how she wanted things to look so in previous shoots there were a lot of shots taken and back and forthing with composition. Saved a TON of time. With the bluetooth connection connecting it was painless.
Basically, once you've set it up the way u want to I love how the camera generally gets out of the way and u can just shoot. Coupled with the amazing video features it just feels like the camera that I can do anything with.
My only gripe is that, yes , sometimes it's just a little too big to carry around.