A question I needed to have answered and it is far from it, but early tests have opened the door, is whether I am silly not to use my G9II for more stills shooting, specifically low light sport where the full frames are ok, but lens limited and my MFT champions (EM1x for me) are stretched.
At higher ISO’s noise is not an issue, up to 6400 without extreme effort taken, higher with deep NR applied, but white balance is touchy. I cannot usually tell which ISO has been used by eye except that at 6400 white balance errors are harder to refine.
My tests was quick and rough, relying on my instincts rather than direct and scientific comparison, but this is my space most of the time and I know it well.
G9II with 40-150 f2.8 Olympus, the lens that will shoot most sports for me in poorer light.
AF was……. annoying to be honest. There is decent tracking, but if it got lost, and it did get lost, I found the wait for the combo to catch up was longer than I could bare in the field. To put it into context, using the S5II with 85mm S-prime took a little adjusting to, but it worked fine when I did. This combo had no “warming in” period, it just would not do.
Mixing Oly and Pana gear can be like that, but that is what I have, simple as.
On top of that there is no way to set my preferred focus shape (a small-tall cluster in the centre, far too much reliance put on subject detection for my liking). It had a horizontal/vertical grouping, but it was full screen width. I want my focus to go where I put it, that is what works for me.
Noise and stuff.
I was hoping the newer camera would make a real difference in the high ISO space.
Noise is not the real issue these days, I get clean 6400 when I treat the cameras I use right, but dynamic range and white balance can be “twitchy”.
If I give the file plenty of light (better to over expose at 6400 than under expose 3200), get white balance roughly right (blue-yellow WB, cannot fix magenta-green tone), then I am most of the way there.
The G9II files had good white balance, looked decently sharp and tonally alive, but they were noisy.
At 6400 this looks decent at first.
Closer in, I was surprised how noisy it looked.
I am not looking for problems (or a fight), I am chasing solutions, but at this point, I see little reason to push this camera into service in this role. The same money spent on a Panasonic lens for the old G9 would likely have more benefit (and I am not buying both).
I sometimes feel the G9II is the “lost child” of my kit. It does not get serious video treatment with a BMVA because it is the camera that is best suited to go it alone, it is not a preferred stills option because it has a video role to play, it is not better it seems in poor light than older MFT stills or dual ISO video cameras or any full frame option and the superior stabe and AF are only preferred over the S5II because of it’s other video features (ProRes and All-i).
The role best suited to the G9II (in my kit) it seems is light weight and small footprint run-n-gun video cam in AF and with hand held stabilising, matched to Pana glass and SSD mounted.
An OM-1 would be the better stills cam in this space, but I can pick up second hand EM1x’s for less and I like how those run.
The reality is, I have seen more advancement in software (and firmware) over the last few years than hardware. You need to jump at least two generations (EM1x to OM-1) to see any difference and even then, I have seen at least that much improvement in Capture 1’s processing capabilities over that time.