Today I did my first big engagement for the school with my Panasonic-centric kit*.

In a word….awesome. The G9 is made for this environment. I loved the face detect accuracy and feed back, my custom layout, which included ISO on the back wheel and a few other touches was more instinctive and faster and the 12-60 Leica lens just rocks! As I oved from brightly lit outdoors to mixed light rooms, the thumb just rolled to adjust. For ISO performance, I put it up with the G9, which I put down to the sensor not having to house phase detect pixels. I noticed early on a big difference in sharpness to noise betweent eh G9 and EM1 mk2’s in Lightroom, but C1 bridged much of that gap. The EM1x matched the cleaner sensor with more powerful processing, but only matched it. AF paid the price, but for some tasks, the G9 still beats the EM1.2’s.

The G9 also handles the mixed lighting I have to deal with better, with white balance and ISO quality that generally means less processing. For the school, I shoot quality in bulk, so less processing is a boon.

The electronic shutter seems to be banding free up to ISO 3200 at least. I have not tried it everywhere or at higher ISO’s, but so far, all good.

Even the reversed zoom action is not a big deal. I feel I can get the hang of this by using only G9’s for the zoom lens work and primes on my EM5’s amd EM10’s for the school and limiting the Pro Oly cameras and zoom lenses to the paper, but it may just be one of those things that takes some adjusting to for each job.

Performance with Olympus lenses is surprisingly good. I shot a very speculative sequence with the 75mm in a poorly lit gym and it hit more than I expected wide open. Not sure I would expect better from an Oly camera. This was in face detect and with no specific AF considerations used, so more may be possible. This may put on hold my desire to get a long Pana lens for this kit (35-100 or 50-200).

It’s funny how your needs change. I would have once felt under done in a school shoot without my 40-150 Pro, but now the combination of a 75 prime and slower long lens (40-150, 75-300 kit) is enough. Ironically, I started with these two and felt they were enough, bought the big zoom back off a friend and quickly became dependant on it.

I have pressed the f804 into service for the school. At the school, especially because I use more cameras and with them prime lenses, the bigger bag gives me plenty of room to handle three mounted and ready to go. School shoots tend to be about reacting to and capturing every opportunity, the paper needs more method, less volume.

The f802 is better it turns out for the paper, where I need fewer cameras, but ever changing choices of lenses and lighting. It has two extra external pockets (900 series pouch additions). The f804 is just roomier in the main compartment, but without pockets, it lacks options.

From the long haul 217 roller bag (best purchase this year), I pack the f802 as needed, with the bigger pocket even handling a 200 LED kit or rain coat.

*G9 for stills, G9 for video (both backups to the other), 1 of 2 EM10.2’s and 1 of 2 EM5’s with the 8-18, 12-60 Leicas, 45, 75, 40-150 kit and 75-300 kit lenses, all in a f804 Domke.