@Mckinise when you turn the electronic shutter on, it disables the mechanical one.

I need to setup a two cameras system for live presentations, one for the presenter and the other one for the slides, so i'm thinking on the G6 with a JuicedLink RM222 to record the presenter and a cheaper GH1 for the slides, so? i have some questions to a G6 owner:

1. How is the battery life on the G6?
2. In a NTSC G6 how long the video can be continuous recorded?
3. The audio can be adjusted as in the GH3?
4. How good is the quality of the audio?

Thanks in advance.

Can anyone suggest a good case for the G6? I don't have many lenses or big lenses so don't need anything large (just have the compact 14-42mm f/3.5 kit lens and a tiny Pentax CCTV lens and I keep one on at any time).

Waterproof would be preferable considering it's not a weather-sealed camera but it's not essential.

Thanks.

I looked at some by Lowepro which seem to be popular. I've seen the Adventura and the Apex AW, the latter has the benefit of being "all weather" which is useful On the website you can selected your camera and it tells you which ones fit and it's the 120. Some, however, have said it's bit on the big side for their DSLRs and would go for 110 (and possibly 100?--can't remember f I read that). Not seen anyone comment on these with a G6 so if anyone can give any tips I'd appreciate it.

EOS may have higer bitrate but the image is always worse (I talk stock, not ML or smth like that).

So I got my G6 on yesterday. Here's my review so far..

I love this camera. I gotta admit, i bought it as a B cam for things, but it's now the A cam and the GH2 is the B cam.

1080/24P on the G6 is just as detailed as any of the newer hacks for the GH2 even with the lower bitrate. I did some side-by-side comparisons of trees and things and it's not only sharper overall but when I put the files in Vegas and jacked up the gamma and gain, even the dark areas have detail and not a lot of blocking unlike the GH2 with one of the latest hacks, which still shows blocking and noise in the shadows.

1080/60P doesn't look quite as nice as 24P does. There is definitely a drop in overall sharpness on the same subject matter. It's not a lot but it's noticeable. Using this for slow motion looks pretty good, nice and crisp if you use the correct shutter angle.

1080/60P/MP4 looks almost identical to the 60P AVCHD. It's a tiny bit darker though. Looks like there is less details in the shadows.

Shaking the camera back and forth does not produce macroblocking. The picture is just blurred as we would expect.

To answer my own question from above, if you set the G6 to burst mode and manual focus and then set your shutter to 160+ you'll get around 7FPS. If you set your picture quality to 1080, then you'll also get unlimited burst shooting until the card is full, depending on card speed.

The camera also has a built in level. The screen has a line that comes up and you can tilt the camera back and forth to line up the marks for level. Pretty awesome.

Focus peaking works OK if the frame is properly lit up and you have decent contrast in the frame.

The overall picture looks similar to the Gh2 but is just cleaner. No banding, no strange color noise either. It looks like they did a lot of work on the codec and fixed a number of the things we always complained about on the GH2.

The WI-FI and NFC work great. You can do almost anything via WIFI that you can do on the camera itself, changing ISO, aperture, WB, shutter speed, focusing, etc. The best thing is the WIFI video. It's almost real-time and looks pretty good too. You could almost do focus pulling on it..

It uses the same battery as the GH2, which is awesome because I didn't want to buy a different kind of spare battery.

The cards with pics and vids from the GH2 will play on the G6 with no problems as well.

The ONLY thing that I'm having a hard time getting over is the lack of Live View during video recording. If Panny would give us that in another firmware release, this camera would be a TKO to just about any of the others, IMHO.

I'm about to do a multi-day shoot with the G6 and the GH2. I'll report back with my findings.

I mainly use 24P fully manually but I've found that in certain cases the AFS focusing can work well if there isn't a lot going on in the frame or there isn't a lot of moving around.

It looks like "portrait" style mode looks like it has the most DR out of all the choices, but they aren't as drastically different as they were on the GH2.

I've been using 50 shutter on the GH2 so I'll probably be using it for the G6 too.

@svart Thanks for the review. I am looking forward to your impressions after a shoot. I am looking to eventually upgrade from my current 2 cam GH2 set up.

@svart Can you explain what you mean by the lack of Live view during video recording? Do you mean external monitor? Thanks

Just a quick mention about cases. Most of you probably already have adequate gear to carry your camera in so this won't concern you.

Among the most popular cases are the Lowepro Apex AW handheld or shoulder carrying small bags. It's popular with great customer reviews because of the solid build quality, protectiveness, flexibleness and weather resistant qualities it has (includes a rain/dust cover in case something gets in via the zip openings).

I found the Apex 110 AW to be just the perfect fit. Very small and light. It does not suit bigger DSLRs some say but the G6 fits in snuggly (not moving about) with my compact 14-42mm plus space left for a lens of any size (don't think there are any lenses you would use on the G6 that are over 14cm). You can still squeeze in a spare battery, caps, sd cards and a tie clip mic wired as it's very flexible and can stretch round if it's packed.

I was tempted to go for the Apex 120 AW, which is the same width but taller. You could get more in there like another lens, charger (although I've squeezed the charger in the 110 AW) or other accessories. You might get wireless mics in but the 140 AW would be better but then you are increasing width as well as height. I tried all three.

If you want to travel with a smaller bag (sometimes it might be going in with the rest of your luggage) and don't have too many extra things with the camera the 110 AW is perfect for the G6. But then if you needed a lot of gear for a project, you'd probably want something that's bigger than even the 140 perhaps so the 110 is great for all other uses and you can use a bigger bag when needed.

A friend bought my two old GH1s (and some other gear) from me, and I replaced them with the GH3 and the G6. I've been shooting a new doc with them and they are performing well. The color seems to match with some tweaking for two camera interviews.

Anyway, one thing that I've noticed with the G6 is that the wifi functions differently than how it functions with the GH3.

On my iPad, the GH3 functions as advertised, but with the G6, there is no data on the screen and virtually no remote camera control. This isn't a big deal, because the app wouldn't really work for video in its current form.

BUT here's the thing, the stream from the camera to the iPad does not shut off when I push record on the camera. I've not tested it for a very long shoot, but it acts as a monitor with very little lag that I could notice. This is not possible with the GH3. I wonder how long it would last in an interview setting, which I will likely try in the future.

Have any of you noticed this?

Finally, here's a video of the moon I shot last weekend on the G6 with some legacy glass.

Thanks! That old lens is pretty cool. I remember my father using it when I was a kid. He had it before I was born. The moon is a tough thing to shoot. Note my settings in the Vimeo posting. That was shot at F22, which may not have been necessary. I don't have a filter for the lens so I just used the aperture...