tlovegrove

With advice from some of you, I picked up a G6 recently for corporate video work (actually replaced my Canon 6D with the G6 to save money). I thought I was getting a GH3, but due to an inventory error by keh I ended up with no GH3, so I picked up a G6 off Craigslist. This is my first experience with Micro Four Thirds.
FWIW, first impressions from my first weekend of shooting:
 
Ah, the joy of a camera from a manufacturer who cares about video!! Now that I've seen how video-friendly Panasonic can make these things, I'm even more dumfounded that other manufacturers don't do the same thing (Dear Nikon, I would have bought a D5300 and been all-in with Nikon if you didn't have that ridiculously short video time limit). In less than 5 minutes I understood the menu system and had all of my key video settings ready to go. Very intuitive. Love all of the custom fn keys.
 
Delighted by the battery life, no overheating issues, and no video time limits. First thing I did was set it up and just let it run - an hour and a half later, it was still recording just fine, and still had 2/3 battery life.
 
My first touch screen, and I like it. The very light plastic is a shock coming from DSLR bodies, but overall I like it. That LCD hinge just scares me a little bit. It seems flimsy. Glad to have the electronic viewfinder for shooting video outdoors. The "record" button frustrates me some - it's indented so much into the camera body. If you're not looking at the LCD, it's not clear when you've depressed it and when you haven't. 
 
I love the little lenses. I got rid of my 6D partly because I just didn't carry it around because of size, and so many of the lenses were truly massive.
 
I'm really excited about the deeper depth of field. I got the 6D partly because I wanted the super-shallow DOF. But for the kind of corporate stuff I do most of the time, I had to stop down to at least 4.5 just to get the nose in focus! So it's actually really cool to be able to shoot in the 1.4-3.5 range. Of course that also helps to offset the higher ISO noise issues.
 
Video autofocus is surprisingly usable. I manual focus most of the time, but am pleasantly surprised to see that this will do the job if I really need it. 
 
The 2x crop factor is going to take some adjusting. I love using older manual focus lenses for video, and of course anything wider than 24mm costs a fortune. So I'll have to use MFT lenses to go wide. But gratefully I've discovered that one of the key focal lengths I need is the FF 100mm equivalent - which means the whole world of affordable 50mm lenses are available as options!
 
Colors are really going to require some adjustment. Coming from Canon, I'm so used to pulling back the deep reds and rich colors. With the standard output from the Panasonic sensor, I can get a very natural look for skin tones if I do quite a bit of color correction. But overall I'm just surprised at how flat the image is, even when I crank up contrast and color. It seems to be really tailored toward film-look customizations in post processing. Again I'm not really concerned by this - I'll learn the PP that works best to get what I need. But it's a big shift from what I'm used to.
 
Grateful for your advice that pointed me toward the G6,
Tim
 
 

With advice from some of you, I picked up a G6 recently for corporate video work (actually replaced my Canon 6D with the G6 to save money). I thought I was getting a GH3, but due to an inventory error by keh I ended up with no GH3, so I picked up a G6 off Craigslist. This is my first experience with Micro Four Thirds.
FWIW, first impressions from my first weekend of shooting:
 
Ah, the joy of a camera from a manufacturer who cares about video!! Now that I've seen how video-friendly Panasonic can make these things, I'm even more dumfounded that other manufacturers don't do the same thing (Dear Nikon, I would have bought a D5300 and been all-in with Nikon if you didn't have that ridiculously short video time limit). In less than 5 minutes I understood the menu system and had all of my key video settings ready to go. Very intuitive. Love all of the custom fn keys.
 
Delighted by the battery life, no overheating issues, and no video time limits. First thing I did was set it up and just let it run - an hour and a half later, it was still recording just fine, and still had 2/3 battery life.
 
My first touch screen, and I like it. The very light plastic is a shock coming from DSLR bodies, but overall I like it. That LCD hinge just scares me a little bit. It seems flimsy. Glad to have the electronic viewfinder for shooting video outdoors. The "record" button frustrates me some - it's indented so much into the camera body. If you're not looking at the LCD, it's not clear when you've depressed it and when you haven't. 
 
I love the little lenses. I got rid of my 6D partly because I just didn't carry it around because of size, and so many of the lenses were truly massive.
 
I'm really excited about the deeper depth of field. I got the 6D partly because I wanted the super-shallow DOF. But for the kind of corporate stuff I do most of the time, I had to stop down to at least 4.5 just to get the nose in focus! So it's actually really cool to be able to shoot in the 1.4-3.5 range. Of course that also helps to offset the higher ISO noise issues.
 
Video autofocus is surprisingly usable. I manual focus most of the time, but am pleasantly surprised to see that this will do the job if I really need it. 
 
The 2x crop factor is going to take some adjusting. I love using older manual focus lenses for video, and of course anything wider than 24mm costs a fortune. So I'll have to use MFT lenses to go wide. But gratefully I've discovered that one of the key focal lengths I need is the FF 100mm equivalent - which means the whole world of affordable 50mm lenses are available as options!
 
Colors are really going to require some adjustment. Coming from Canon, I'm so used to pulling back the deep reds and rich colors. With the standard output from the Panasonic sensor, I can get a very natural look for skin tones if I do quite a bit of color correction. But overall I'm just surprised at how flat the image is, even when I crank up contrast and color. It seems to be really tailored toward film-look customizations in post processing. Again I'm not really concerned by this - I'll learn the PP that works best to get what I need. But it's a big shift from what I'm used to.
 
Grateful for your advice that pointed me toward the G6,
Tim