I've been having a look again at what I believe is better dynamic range handling from the GX1 as opposed to previous m4/3 cameras. I've worked on another couple of samples, shown above.
Unfortunately since I no longer have the G3, I can't do a direct comparison, but I have looked at some G3 files, and I certainly have been unable to get such a "clean" result by lightening shadows as I can with the GX1.
Since processing and being very impressed with the results from the GX1 I've been looking at my Sony NEX-5n files, Samsung NX200 and Sony a77 files, as well as previous m4/3 images that I have from other cameras, and I really do believe that there is a significant improvement with the GX1, in terms of "cleaner" images and an increased dynamic range.
I won't claim its easy. It involves all sorts of tweaking in both raw conversion and Photoshop. I use fill light in Adobe Camera raw plus an amended linear contrast curve to avoid highlight burn out, and then in Photoshop I mask off the shadow areas and again use curves to lighten them. However, as I said yesterday, I have done all of these things to previous m4/3 camera files and haven't achieved this level of success.
So, is this my imagination, something to do with the particular images I took or is it a genuine improvement? I guess once more detailed reviews on production models start appearing, I'll see whether this is just me or if anyone else agrees with me.