I paid a slight premium to get my GH2 from a Canadian retailer in time for my holiday vacation with the family in San Diego. Over the past 10 days I put it through quite a workout, shooting around 3000 photos and several dozen videos. I'll post some of my better shots here as I get a chance to sort through them, but I also thought I'd share my impressions of the camera since I've been wearing it like an accessory 12 hours a day for the past 10 days straight. It's been to the aquarium, the zoo, the beach, on several boats fishing and whale watching, and to legoland
Overall, I love it. I mostly used the 14-140 lens which was new to me also. I liked it quite a bit as well, aside from it's min aperture. As other's have said the focus is crazy fast. At first I thought I wouldn't care about that feature, but I got quite a few photos of birds in flight and similar high speed activities that I doubt I would have gotten on my G1.
The thing I was looking forward to the most was the higher ISO performance and man does it deliver. I think my ISO 3200 pics on the GH2 look the same or slightly better than my ISO 800 pics on my G1. I got a lot of photos at the aquarium at ISO 2000-3200 that I never would have gotten on my G1. I will post examples.
I really like the higher speed continuous shooting, however I am disappointed that the 7 frame RAW buffer wasn't increased. It almost doesn't help to have a faster speed when you use it up in just over a second. Similarly, the 40FPS mode is really neat, but it only does 40 frames, so if you're trying to catch something, you have to pic the right second. I got a couple cool examples of this, but on several occasions I missed the main bit of action because I started it too early.
The HD video is superb as far as I can tell. This was completely new to me as a former G1 owner, but it looked great to me, no noticeable artifacts, looked like a good blu ray disc. Again, I'm no video expert, but I'm happy with it so far.
In addition to speeding up the focus, there are a couple more new features I really like on the focus. First of all, there's an on screen meter showing where you are between macro and infinity. That was really lacking in the previous cameras, I really wish they'd add that to the G1 and GF1 firmware! Another nice feature is AF+MF, where it will autofocus with a half press, then you can fine tune with the manual. This was one of those things I always though they should have had in the past. The only problem with it is when you start to MF, it does the zoom in, which is great, but I wish it would automatically return after a sec or two of inactivity because once you get the focus, you can't tell if your framing is still on or not. You can hit the menu button to return, but doing that while half pressing the shutter is very cumbersome feeling and not natural at all.
The battery life is great, I ripped through about 500 shots plus some video on several occasions on 1 charge.
I'll post more thoughts as I have them! Here's some samples from the first couple days at the aquarium and natural history museum.
ISO 3200
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/zachpierce/5305004258/" title="P1000723.jpg by zach.pierce, on Flickr"> View attachment 154900 "480" height="640" alt="P1000723.jpg" /></a>
ISO 1600
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/zachpierce/5304406835/" title="P1000705.jpg by zach.pierce, on Flickr"> View attachment 154901 "640" height="498" alt="P1000705.jpg" /></a>
ISO 3200
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/zachpierce/5304398179/" title="P1000687.jpg by zach.pierce, on Flickr"> View attachment 154902 "640" height="548" alt="P1000687.jpg" /></a>
ISO 1000
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/zachpierce/5304725830/" title="P1000563.jpg by zach.pierce, on Flickr"> View attachment 154903 "640" height="480" alt="P1000563.jpg" /></a>
ISO 3200
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/zachpierce/5304720520/" title="P1000537.jpg by zach.pierce, on Flickr"> View attachment 154904 "640" height="480" alt="P1000537.jpg" /></a>
ISO 2000
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/zachpierce/5304702194/" title="P1000430.jpg by zach.pierce, on Flickr"> View attachment 154905 "640" height="480" alt="P1000430.jpg" /></a>
ISO 1600
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/zachpierce/5304698980/" title="P1000379.jpg by zach.pierce, on Flickr"> View attachment 154906 "640" height="480" alt="P1000379.jpg" /></a>
ISO 3200
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/zachpierce/5304097515/" title="P1000311.jpg by zach.pierce, on Flickr"> View attachment 154907 "640" height="480" alt="P1000311.jpg" /></a>
Overall, I love it. I mostly used the 14-140 lens which was new to me also. I liked it quite a bit as well, aside from it's min aperture. As other's have said the focus is crazy fast. At first I thought I wouldn't care about that feature, but I got quite a few photos of birds in flight and similar high speed activities that I doubt I would have gotten on my G1.
The thing I was looking forward to the most was the higher ISO performance and man does it deliver. I think my ISO 3200 pics on the GH2 look the same or slightly better than my ISO 800 pics on my G1. I got a lot of photos at the aquarium at ISO 2000-3200 that I never would have gotten on my G1. I will post examples.
I really like the higher speed continuous shooting, however I am disappointed that the 7 frame RAW buffer wasn't increased. It almost doesn't help to have a faster speed when you use it up in just over a second. Similarly, the 40FPS mode is really neat, but it only does 40 frames, so if you're trying to catch something, you have to pic the right second. I got a couple cool examples of this, but on several occasions I missed the main bit of action because I started it too early.
The HD video is superb as far as I can tell. This was completely new to me as a former G1 owner, but it looked great to me, no noticeable artifacts, looked like a good blu ray disc. Again, I'm no video expert, but I'm happy with it so far.
In addition to speeding up the focus, there are a couple more new features I really like on the focus. First of all, there's an on screen meter showing where you are between macro and infinity. That was really lacking in the previous cameras, I really wish they'd add that to the G1 and GF1 firmware! Another nice feature is AF+MF, where it will autofocus with a half press, then you can fine tune with the manual. This was one of those things I always though they should have had in the past. The only problem with it is when you start to MF, it does the zoom in, which is great, but I wish it would automatically return after a sec or two of inactivity because once you get the focus, you can't tell if your framing is still on or not. You can hit the menu button to return, but doing that while half pressing the shutter is very cumbersome feeling and not natural at all.
The battery life is great, I ripped through about 500 shots plus some video on several occasions on 1 charge.
I'll post more thoughts as I have them! Here's some samples from the first couple days at the aquarium and natural history museum.
ISO 3200
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/zachpierce/5305004258/" title="P1000723.jpg by zach.pierce, on Flickr"> View attachment 154900 "480" height="640" alt="P1000723.jpg" /></a>
ISO 1600
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/zachpierce/5304406835/" title="P1000705.jpg by zach.pierce, on Flickr"> View attachment 154901 "640" height="498" alt="P1000705.jpg" /></a>
ISO 3200
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/zachpierce/5304398179/" title="P1000687.jpg by zach.pierce, on Flickr"> View attachment 154902 "640" height="548" alt="P1000687.jpg" /></a>
ISO 1000
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/zachpierce/5304725830/" title="P1000563.jpg by zach.pierce, on Flickr"> View attachment 154903 "640" height="480" alt="P1000563.jpg" /></a>
ISO 3200
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/zachpierce/5304720520/" title="P1000537.jpg by zach.pierce, on Flickr"> View attachment 154904 "640" height="480" alt="P1000537.jpg" /></a>
ISO 2000
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/zachpierce/5304702194/" title="P1000430.jpg by zach.pierce, on Flickr"> View attachment 154905 "640" height="480" alt="P1000430.jpg" /></a>
ISO 1600
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/zachpierce/5304698980/" title="P1000379.jpg by zach.pierce, on Flickr"> View attachment 154906 "640" height="480" alt="P1000379.jpg" /></a>
ISO 3200
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/zachpierce/5304097515/" title="P1000311.jpg by zach.pierce, on Flickr"> View attachment 154907 "640" height="480" alt="P1000311.jpg" /></a>