New to the forum, so firstly a big "Hi" to everyone! 
I see there's no G12 review on here, so thought I'd post one up now I've had the camera about a month and have a good feel for it.
A bit about my background in photography
I'm an 'enthusiastic' amateur and I've had DSLRs for a long time, and film SLRs before that. I've spent literally £1000's (certainly over £10,000) on camera gear over the years and thoroughly enjoyed it - buying the toys just as much as using them in a lot of cases if I'm honest! :nuts:
Digital wise, I started off on a 300D, then moved onto a 1Dmk2N, and had load of L series lenses and a 400mm F4 DO (which I loved - absolutely stunning lens btw).
When it came time to upgrade, Canon didn't really have a camera out that I fancied- I came up with a wish-list of features, which was: full frame sensor in a slightly smaller body, large area AF like my 1D, decent fps, around about 12MP, with really good high ISO performance and sensor cleaning. The nikon D700 fitted the bill perfectly so I swapped system.
The D700 is stunning, as are nikons lenses. It blew my 1Dmk2 out the water for image quality, and life was good
So why a G12?
Fast forward a year or so, and while I have taken a few cracking photos that I really love with it, I'm hardly using my D700. Why? Simply because I'm too lazy to carry it around with me very often, and if I do take it out with me, it dominates the outing, so it's not just something I can carry casually on a day out with my wife. I think part of the reason I got sick of the 1D was because I was becoming too lazy to carry it, but didn't quite realise it at the time and just thought it was getting a bit long in the tooth and needed upgrading. Looking back now, there was nothing wrong with it, and it's abilities where far greater than mine!
So I started to look round for a camera that I really could take with me anywhere without it annoying me -- could sit happily in my backpack every day during the week and slip into a coat pocket, or hang round my neck without breaking it when I go out for a walk in the countryside at the weekend.
Something with all the manual control I'm used to, be able to shoot RAW, and have good enough image quality, but not necessarily the crystal-clarity-at-100%,-with-my-face-pressed-against-my-widescreen-monitor kind of quality of a DSLR, and a hotshoe so I can use my studio flashes.
And the G12 came top of that list.
So, how does the G12 perform, from the point of view of someone that's used to high-end DLSRs?
Handling / Use
Well, some things really annoyed me to start with - the rubbish optical viewfinder was the first one; being used to a DSLR I wasn't comfortable with using live view.
The thing that annoyed me most was not the quality of it, but not having the shooting info in it; it basically turns the camera back into a REALLY basic point and shoot, and adjusting anything that doesn't have it's own dial like aperture is a nightmare - open then screen, play with settings, close it again so as not to get nose prints all over it, then shoot! Gaah! You can't even tell what's it's focused on! :bang:
Then I started to use the live view
Now part of the reason I've never been happy with live view is that holding a camera out in front of me at face height to see the screen seems to loose me about 2 stops of stability vs being able to use my head as a brace point, but then I realized how great the articulated LCD is - the way it opens is out to the side of the camera, where you can rotate it.
Ok you can then flip it 180 degrees and fold it back against the camera, but I find it great to just tilt it about to 45 degrees - I can then tuck my elbows in at my waist, which is much more stable, and look down at it, rather than trying to hold it out at face level. Brilliant! So the articulated screen, which I thought was a bit of a gimmick when I bought it, is actually a feature I use for every shot and for me makes live view stable and usable.
There's only really one thing that still annoys me now - not being able to change colour profiles in RAW mode. Yes I know I can change them on the PC, but it would be really nice to be able to have the live view in B&W. I love B&W photography, and while I am trying to learn the whole 'seeing the world in black and white in my mind' thing that people go on about, it would be a whole lot easier to be actually able to see it in black and white with my eyes and still shoot RAW rather than JPEG!
Image quality
Having experimented a bit with the G12 throughout its ISO range, then having a look back at shots taken with the 1Dmk2, I have to say that the ISO noise performance looks pretty similar. That amazed me. Ok, so it's not as good as the D700, and I didn't expect it to be, but the fact it looks close to a top professional DSLR from a couple of generation back is pretty amazing to me.
DxO labs completely disagrees with me on this one though, and gives the 1Dmk2 about a 3 stop advantage. Then again they only give the D700 about a 1 stop advantage over the 1D and that certainly doesn't match my experience, so either I had a dodgy 1Dmk2, or I have some inconsistency in my processing, or I can't read a graph
:shrug:
Noise is noticeable @ ISO 400, but it was my 1Dmk2 and I never held that against it! These modern DSLRs with perfect quality ISO 10zillion have spoilt us a bit in recent years!
And besides, the camera plus a small tripod (to keep me at ISO 80) is still much lighter and easy to carry around than my D700. By 1600 the colour noise is still fairly minor and easily removed, but there is a LOT of luminance noise, and completely removing that kills most of the detail. Fortunately, being luminance noise, it's quite film grain-ish and not too terrible looking...
As for sharpness, clarity, etc etc etc well it certainly is good - very good in fact! I can't quite believe how good it is be honest. The lens is fantastic!
Long story short, I couldn't be happier with the image quality, esp given the size of the sensor!
Other
The image stabilizer seems to work very well.
The hotshoe is great - I can use it with my studio flashes!
The huge DoF of such a small sensor is a mixed blessing; it's hard to get portraits to really 'pop', but you can add blur in photoshop. The upside is that you can take a landscape and get foreground detail in focus at F5.6, or to put it another way, a few stops faster, and that makes up for the ISO noise advantage of a DSLR.
Conclusion
+I don't have to lug a backpack full of gear with me.
+I don't have to worry about which lens to use / which lenses I should take out with me
+I don't need to worry about losing or breaking it - it cost £375. If i drop it in a river I'll swear, then just buy a new one.
-If ever a camera needed an EVF, it's this one
-Can't change a lot of settings, like B&W mode etc, in RAW mode.
-Really can't compete with a modern DSLR from ISO 400 onwarsd.
But none of those matter for one simple reason; This camera has put the fun back into photography for me!
I can't quite believe it myself, but... I've just sold my D700 on eBay!
I've taken more good pictures on the G12 in the last month than I had in the previous 12 months on the D700!
Not because it's 'better' as such, but because using it is soo much less hassle and more fun!
I love this little camera!
Some Sample shots
Handheld macro shot:
A little landscape:
And a bit of arty one - Handheld at 0.6 seconds (!):
Bit of a fun shot, made using a studio flash head fired on a radio trigger - as much of a test of it being able to work with it as anything else... but I guess it also shows you can still have some creative fun with this kinda camera on manual mode - it's not just for snaps of your kids birthday!
I see there's no G12 review on here, so thought I'd post one up now I've had the camera about a month and have a good feel for it.
A bit about my background in photography
I'm an 'enthusiastic' amateur and I've had DSLRs for a long time, and film SLRs before that. I've spent literally £1000's (certainly over £10,000) on camera gear over the years and thoroughly enjoyed it - buying the toys just as much as using them in a lot of cases if I'm honest! :nuts:
Digital wise, I started off on a 300D, then moved onto a 1Dmk2N, and had load of L series lenses and a 400mm F4 DO (which I loved - absolutely stunning lens btw).
When it came time to upgrade, Canon didn't really have a camera out that I fancied- I came up with a wish-list of features, which was: full frame sensor in a slightly smaller body, large area AF like my 1D, decent fps, around about 12MP, with really good high ISO performance and sensor cleaning. The nikon D700 fitted the bill perfectly so I swapped system.
The D700 is stunning, as are nikons lenses. It blew my 1Dmk2 out the water for image quality, and life was good
So why a G12?
Fast forward a year or so, and while I have taken a few cracking photos that I really love with it, I'm hardly using my D700. Why? Simply because I'm too lazy to carry it around with me very often, and if I do take it out with me, it dominates the outing, so it's not just something I can carry casually on a day out with my wife. I think part of the reason I got sick of the 1D was because I was becoming too lazy to carry it, but didn't quite realise it at the time and just thought it was getting a bit long in the tooth and needed upgrading. Looking back now, there was nothing wrong with it, and it's abilities where far greater than mine!
So I started to look round for a camera that I really could take with me anywhere without it annoying me -- could sit happily in my backpack every day during the week and slip into a coat pocket, or hang round my neck without breaking it when I go out for a walk in the countryside at the weekend.
Something with all the manual control I'm used to, be able to shoot RAW, and have good enough image quality, but not necessarily the crystal-clarity-at-100%,-with-my-face-pressed-against-my-widescreen-monitor kind of quality of a DSLR, and a hotshoe so I can use my studio flashes.
And the G12 came top of that list.
So, how does the G12 perform, from the point of view of someone that's used to high-end DLSRs?
Handling / Use
Well, some things really annoyed me to start with - the rubbish optical viewfinder was the first one; being used to a DSLR I wasn't comfortable with using live view.
The thing that annoyed me most was not the quality of it, but not having the shooting info in it; it basically turns the camera back into a REALLY basic point and shoot, and adjusting anything that doesn't have it's own dial like aperture is a nightmare - open then screen, play with settings, close it again so as not to get nose prints all over it, then shoot! Gaah! You can't even tell what's it's focused on! :bang:
Then I started to use the live view
Now part of the reason I've never been happy with live view is that holding a camera out in front of me at face height to see the screen seems to loose me about 2 stops of stability vs being able to use my head as a brace point, but then I realized how great the articulated LCD is - the way it opens is out to the side of the camera, where you can rotate it.
Ok you can then flip it 180 degrees and fold it back against the camera, but I find it great to just tilt it about to 45 degrees - I can then tuck my elbows in at my waist, which is much more stable, and look down at it, rather than trying to hold it out at face level. Brilliant! So the articulated screen, which I thought was a bit of a gimmick when I bought it, is actually a feature I use for every shot and for me makes live view stable and usable.
There's only really one thing that still annoys me now - not being able to change colour profiles in RAW mode. Yes I know I can change them on the PC, but it would be really nice to be able to have the live view in B&W. I love B&W photography, and while I am trying to learn the whole 'seeing the world in black and white in my mind' thing that people go on about, it would be a whole lot easier to be actually able to see it in black and white with my eyes and still shoot RAW rather than JPEG!
Image quality
Having experimented a bit with the G12 throughout its ISO range, then having a look back at shots taken with the 1Dmk2, I have to say that the ISO noise performance looks pretty similar. That amazed me. Ok, so it's not as good as the D700, and I didn't expect it to be, but the fact it looks close to a top professional DSLR from a couple of generation back is pretty amazing to me.
DxO labs completely disagrees with me on this one though, and gives the 1Dmk2 about a 3 stop advantage. Then again they only give the D700 about a 1 stop advantage over the 1D and that certainly doesn't match my experience, so either I had a dodgy 1Dmk2, or I have some inconsistency in my processing, or I can't read a graph
:shrug:Noise is noticeable @ ISO 400, but it was my 1Dmk2 and I never held that against it! These modern DSLRs with perfect quality ISO 10zillion have spoilt us a bit in recent years!
And besides, the camera plus a small tripod (to keep me at ISO 80) is still much lighter and easy to carry around than my D700. By 1600 the colour noise is still fairly minor and easily removed, but there is a LOT of luminance noise, and completely removing that kills most of the detail. Fortunately, being luminance noise, it's quite film grain-ish and not too terrible looking...As for sharpness, clarity, etc etc etc well it certainly is good - very good in fact! I can't quite believe how good it is be honest. The lens is fantastic!
Long story short, I couldn't be happier with the image quality, esp given the size of the sensor!
Other
The image stabilizer seems to work very well.
The hotshoe is great - I can use it with my studio flashes!
The huge DoF of such a small sensor is a mixed blessing; it's hard to get portraits to really 'pop', but you can add blur in photoshop. The upside is that you can take a landscape and get foreground detail in focus at F5.6, or to put it another way, a few stops faster, and that makes up for the ISO noise advantage of a DSLR.
Conclusion
+I don't have to lug a backpack full of gear with me.
+I don't have to worry about which lens to use / which lenses I should take out with me
+I don't need to worry about losing or breaking it - it cost £375. If i drop it in a river I'll swear, then just buy a new one.
-If ever a camera needed an EVF, it's this one
-Can't change a lot of settings, like B&W mode etc, in RAW mode.
-Really can't compete with a modern DSLR from ISO 400 onwarsd.
But none of those matter for one simple reason; This camera has put the fun back into photography for me!
I can't quite believe it myself, but... I've just sold my D700 on eBay!
I've taken more good pictures on the G12 in the last month than I had in the previous 12 months on the D700!
Not because it's 'better' as such, but because using it is soo much less hassle and more fun!
I love this little camera!
Some Sample shots
Handheld macro shot:
A little landscape:
And a bit of arty one - Handheld at 0.6 seconds (!):
Bit of a fun shot, made using a studio flash head fired on a radio trigger - as much of a test of it being able to work with it as anything else... but I guess it also shows you can still have some creative fun with this kinda camera on manual mode - it's not just for snaps of your kids birthday!
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