It's nice not be alone in this GH3 adventure. Looks like my camera may have some issues, so to rule out manufacturing defect the local seller is giving me another GH3 to try out tomorrow. The Class 10 SDHC card I'm using is rated @ 10MBs. I'll buy a SDHC Class 10 rated @ 30MBs tomorrow to rule out video read/write speed issue. Any thoughts on SD cards for GH3? Pany specs say we don't need SDHX @ 95MBs card for GH3. But what is your experience? Discovered that some of the stutter/jitter I was seeing had to do with my display setting, and graphics card. I have two Graphics cards on my Mac, the normal and a GT. I was curious about that this morn, so switched it back to the normal, so called slower G-card, from the GT card, where I usually have it set. Lo & behold raw HD video from GH3, in MOV H.264 all-intra played back more smoothly, but not yet stutter free. And notably, still terrible stuttering playback in FCPX, both in raw form and when transcoded to ProRes. Then I cleaned up FC plists and ran Mac HardDrive thru disk utility repairs, fixed a few errors. Got even better playback, but still intermittent stutters. According to Mac tech support, there may be issue with my FCPX app itself, so I am reinstalling the software tonight. Hopefully this will cure the beast. Regarding shutter setting: A GH2 user recommended I shoot 30fps @ shutter speed of 1/160th or @ 1/200th. Other say 1/60th is fine for 30fps. My only experience is shooting HD video at 30fps, with shutter speed @ 1/60th. But that is with EX1 and other camcorders that have 3 RGB sensor systems, not a single sensor like GH3. From my tests shots it images certainly seemed smoother at speeds higher than 1/60th. Are the single sensor cams and 3 sensor cams such different beasts? Haven't had much need to shooting at 24fps. Do appreciate the look it gives though, and may be inspired to experiment with it down the road now that the option presents itself more reliably. All tolled, from this forum support and feedback, and Mac support, I'm feeling confidant now we'll fix the stutter issues I've been having. Decided I'll keep the GH3, and am looking forward to more productive, worry free use of this amazing little camera in the near future! Lens& Tripod: I've been using the 14-14mm Lumix lens with GH3, and even after one week, I've realized how faster glass would be useful at dawn and dusk, my fave times to shoot in the wild. So i'm thinking bout, M42 prime lenses and wondering what your experience is with them on GH3? I understand they are more affordable. But does loss of GH3's auto features have significant drawbacks I may not be aware of? I trained on everything in manual mode in formative years shooting 16mm cameras, and am comfortable eyeing aperture/iris manually even without zebras on fixed lens video cameras. Will M42 to M43 adaptors work well on GH3. Any lens recommendations? I'm also debating better tripod and head system and looking at Miller DS20 or Compass 12 heads for use with GH3 and EX1. Pricey though. Any thoughts on tripod systems for GH3? I may have veered away from tips & tricks discussion. Happy to go where lens & tripods are best discussed. Thanks heaps for your help!

@V_Bee & @mpgxsvcd Good idea. Can you upload 3 short versions of some pans: 24p@50fps - 30p@60fps - and 60p@120fps? Are you using the panny 12-35mm lens? One last thing try playing back your quicktimes directly on a television.

All my GH3 video stutters during playback on all pan and tilt shots. Especially pans. Static shots look fine, even with motion in the frame. I've seen a few other posts her regarding this issue. Any recent solutions found? I'm using MBP 2.8 GHz/8GBRam, with graphics card NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT. When playback raw MOV files from camera on the Mac, in Quicktime and VLC players, all panning shots stutter. Also tried importing both optimized and non-optimized footage in FCPX - stutter continues. same shots also stutter on 60 Hz external 1280x720 monitor. While testing chose all record quality options and settings, finally settled on 30p/72mb All-intra, as it gave smoothest result during pans and tilts. Dolly shots or handheld shots were unusable. Tried shutter speeds between 60 and 400. Oddly, shutter speeds higher that 160 seem better. What is the solution? Is this a Mac issue? Is it a monitor issue, compression, codec or cpu issue? Spoke to a Panasonic techs, their only suggestion was to view footage on a PC! Not too helpful. Playing panning shots back on the GH3 look better, but I still see some stutter in pans. The seller has no idea and no GH3 users have reported this issue to them. I've read some of the threads on this site, but have seen no solution that works for me. Only have 2 more days to resolve the problem, then must return it to store for refund. When I imported my footage into FCPX, I tried transcoding a few panning shots to ProRes422 (optimized), strung them together in a project and then shared from timeline to MOV H.264 file. Stutter effect in playback continued. Also tried outputting from timeline as ProRes422 file, same stuttering results. Normally when shooting HD video on other cameras, I select 30fps with shutter speed @ 60, and I get smooth flowing pans playback no problem. But panning shots on GH3 @ 60s, look jerky. When shutter speed is @ 160, 200 or 250, pans look a bit smoother. But then of course higher shutter speed makes image darker when shooting in manual mode, aperture @ F4. There must be a solution. Other users are having success dollying, tracking, zooming and panning with GH3. Thanks in advance for your help.

Glad I could help. However, just for the record I am not advocating any particular color mode. That is completely dependent on the user’s taste.

The nice thing is that all of the GH3’s color modes are usable and they all will yield the exact same RAW exposure values. The GH2 color modes all yielded vastly different RAW exposure values.

Dpreview's preview report is the best summation of the color modes that I have seen.

http://www.dpreview.com/previews/panasonic-lumix-dmc-gh3/7

The cliff notes are that the portrait and natural modes offer the flattest profile. Ironically the natural mode actually is ever so slightly flatter than portrait. Scenery and Standard are next flattest. Scenery offers a realistic image in my opinion. When I don't plan to ever edit the image then I use Scenery at -2 Contrast and everything else at zero except for Noise Reduction. I always use -5 noise reduction.

Standard is fine for shadows but falls off a bit for highlights.

The one that is most interesting is Vivid. Yes it completely crushes the blacks. However, it is fine for the highlights. I use it for Astro Photography in very light polluted areas with contrast set to +5. With these settings it acts like an artificial light pollution filter as long as the objects are fairly bright. It works very well with HDR images of Orion's Nebula.

Monochrome is a black and white version of standard.

Another interesting thing is that i.dynamic finally does something useful. It actually underexposes the RAW image and then raises the shadow region. For low ISO images and videos this is useful as it mimics what you would do in post processing anyway.

If you want the absolute flattest image I would try Natural with contrast at -5 and use the idynamic feature set to high. You can turn sharpness and color to -5 if you want. However, I don't know how much benefit you will really get from that(Except for if you shoot RAW or use the HDR mode).

And contrary to other popular findings the extended ISO settings are not real ISOs even on the low end.

I have so many of these it wouldn't do them justice just writing them down. I will try to do a video for them. This post is a place holder for now.

Here is a sample.

The Economy setting that controls when the camera goes to sleep and turns off the monitor is not controlled by the C1,C2...etc settings like it was on the GH2. If you need to have the camera stay on then you have to adjust this setting instead of just switching modes.

The High Dynamic mode uses Program Priority but with a much longer shutter duration. It does an excellent job of flattening out the image in stills mode. However, in video mode it doesn't always work if the shutter speed needs to drop below 1/60th of a second.

The "Flicker Reduction" shutter duration setting is disabled in High Dynamic and Aperture Priority video mode. That is just stupid. Those are the two modes where it would be most useful. It is enabled in the Aperture Priority stills mode. This would allow you to fix shutter speed, control Aperture, and still use Auto ISO. That could be huge for some people who have lighting that varies a lot.

For RAW stacking you can use any shutter duration including Bulb mode. However, you are limited to ISO 1600 and you can't do aligning in that mode. For the HDR mode you can use any ISO but you are limited to 60 seconds or less shutter duration.

HDR stacking reduces noise significantly. Also the RAW stacking mode has a setting that will reduce noise. Too bad we can't go above ISO 1600 for that mode.

Shoot RAW only or burst mode if the single exposure LCD black-out takes too long and you are using an ISO at or above 3200.

There is a lot more where that came from. I will do another video like this one that goes into more advanced features.

GH3: Auto ISO drives me to 1/60s in Europe.

Hi everyone. Sorry if someone came up with this before.

I just wanted to point out something that I noticed in the camera settings. Here's my story:

I have been shooting lately in Movie Manual Exposure Mode. I noticed that in this mode, there's no Auto ISO. I thought it'd be handy to be able to set aperture and speed (to 1/50, since I live in Barcelona, ie Europe, and I shoot at 25fps or 50fps), max Auto ISO to 1600 and good to go! So I swapped to Movie Aperture Priority Mode; press Q and bam! Auto ISO is there! BUT I am stuck to 1/60s. Nor the front or the rear wheel let me change that. Shouldn't it be 1/50s?!?!

Bug? Purpose? Walk-around? Is there any other way I can get Auto ISO is Manual Exposure Mode?

Thank you in advance for your feedback!

P.