Might need a bit more help...
I'm impressed with the 12-35mm f2.8 but maybe it should be mounted on a better body than my old G1. I have a GX7 but I think I'd like a mini DSLR style camera for zooms but I'm not up on spec and quality so I wondered if someone could give me a quick run down and tell me if there are any major quality differences between the G5, 6 and 7? I expect all will be a step up from my old G1 but if they're all about the same as each other I'll probably just go for the oldest and therefore probably cheapest. I'm not into video so it's stills only for me and I don't use focus tracking or wifi or anything. I just point and press the shutter...
Any strong views on which to go for?
Oddly enough, I had use of all 3 over the past few weeks. The G5 is showing it's age now, the EVF is very poor by todays standards - shows tearing, pushed blacks, lag, very small mag., I'd say it's not much difference from the G1, or it feels like it's from that era. The G6 EVF is lovely, the G7 adds to it by being slightly larger. In terms of feel I think they've got worse - the G5 has more weight, heavier plastic. The g6 is very light and very hollow, but a good grip. The G7 is somewhere inbetween the G5 and G6 for me. My friends had his G5 since it came out, I had a G6 on release and now the G7 and i've had no issues (as oppose to my 2 olympus' which have been fixed 3 times in a year). I think you'd like the G7 for the buttons, I read your post recently about wanting more dials and the G7 lets you assigned the two dials by pressing a button on the dial, so in A mode it'll do the usual (front dial exp comp and rear dial aperture) but pressing down on the dial button changes it to ; front - ISO and rear - WB.
In terms of image quality, I agree with gcogger. The G5 and G6 just don't have the same ease of editing as the newer 16mp m43 cameras. Highlights are hard to bring back, shadows get noiser with slightly raising, always felt like there was blue cast on the images which was hard to remove in LR, and the jpeg editing was always a little poor and finally, long exposures always had extreme digital noise . The G7 gives much nicer Raw files to play with, the blue cast has been replaced with a more saturated blue which is easier to deal with, the shadows are clean, the highlights are tameable and the jpeg engine is punchier. On the topic of jpegs, you can now adjust the shadows/highlights with an interactive curve tool, so if you're just wanting a snapshot with jpeg, one button and you can give it some more dynamic range.
Another issue I know you have is exposure simulation in the EVF. Both the G5 and G6 are terrible for it, giving a good 2 second delay between changing a setting and seeing it appear. I've just tried my G7 there and it's a lot snappier (unless you go to f22 and 15" on a bright day, for example). With the G7 it's instant and no lag at normal settings.
It's hard to say the G5 and G6 are poor cameras, as they're not and I loved my G6 for years. It's simply, the G7 added to the things I liked and they are noticeable upgrades. For me, the extra £100 was completely worth it after I sold my G6 for the G7. I've even found myself using the new added things I swore I'd never use, like post focus, 4k burst and even continuous AF.