@nac It really depends on what you value in your images. With a hacked GH2, you'll see less mud and smoother motion in the finer details of scenes with a lot of movement. But arguably the stock G6 image can still be nicer, depending on the conditions. The image has less contrast, smoother highlights and shadows, and less yellow shift. Not to mention that the image can be made much flatter and the shadows are more liftable, which helps if shooting for the grade in certain lighting conditions.

But all that said, I think we can all agree that a hacked G6 is what we want.

@nac .....on julians posted video comparison of the g6 and gh2, I saw mud in the moving water next to the ship. On cameralabs venetian water, it looked so much cleaner. Give me an example.

@vicx Hopefully there will be issues with the wifi :-)

G6 needs hack as does a bunch of other panasonic cameras with good hardware. Am I understanding that public firmware is essential to hacks. Does that mean we need to find bugs to report so that these new cameras receive firmware updates. Maybe we can complain that certain lens focuses too slow or something like that or the zoom speed is wrong. Anything to get a firmware update?

The grip does look more substantial.

But a negative for the G6 is media in the bottom battery compartment. It's nice to have it mounted on something (like my battery grip) and I can still swap out media as needed.

@Cde,

At the same time, the two reviews above (respectively) write about a nice beefy grip: " It's a comfortable fit in the hand, with a contoured grip that's much more substantial than most CSCs offer"

" the G6 is styled like a mini DSLR with a decent sized grip and viewfinder head"

And DPreiew noted: "The G6 is impressively small, but pleasantly chunky thanks to a large contoured hand grip."

Mathematically, it is a few mm smaller in every dimension, but the issue I have with the GH2 is holding it. My hand have so little to grasp. So these reports of a beefier grip bode well to solve that problem for me. Of course, I will need to actually hold it to be sure.

I bought a 3rd party vertical grip/battery holder just to give me more finger space on my GH2.

My older Cann SX20 is considerably smaller than my GH2, but the grip holds 4 AA batts so it's fatter & rounder. MUCH easier to hold than my GH2.

@IEBA1

The G6 is smaller and lighter than a GH2, so 'more compact' would actually be a point for it.

Interesting that Expert Reviews said the MPEG-4 mode is sharper than the AVCHD.

http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/digital-cameras/1299940/panasonic-lumix-dmc-g6/2

GH2 was stock at that point if I recall correctly. It was seeing how badly the GH2 performed that led me to hack it, and the comparison with the Nikon P7700 (previously linked) demonstrated that the darks didn't improve much with the higher data rate on the GH2. It's the image processing that's obliterating the detail before it reaches the compression engine. So gobs more data doesn't really help.

@nac I agree that it's not a fair comparison- in either direction. The GH2 has way better sharpness (my article shows that with some still pulls from video, compared to still resolution) and the GH2 has way less moire and aliasing. The GH2 has much better image control and lets you control the image how you see fit (the D800 won't allow shutter priority in video). So I was shocked to see the incredible amount of detail the D800 preserved in the darks compared to the GH2.

So, in many ways, the GH2 simply blows away the D800 for video. In one way, the D800 blows away the GH2.

I'm hoping the G6 can at least do better than the GH2. Maintain that detail in the darks so it's recoverable, without screwing up resolution, moire, aliasing, and all the other GH2 advantages.

@oscillian Butt is Adam mada...Just a hunch :-)