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GH3 user reviews and opinions
  • 1089 Replies sorted by
  • My first foray into stills with the GH-3.

    GH-3, Dynamic Monochrome, really old Nikkor 50mm 1.4.

    Creamy whites!

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  • I have GH2 an GH3. GH3 is better in stills and video. I made resolution test in 24p (flowmotion vs mov50mb) and GH3 has a little cleaner resolution. But I dont use 24p or 25p because I dont like stutter and resolution pumping when moving camera. So in 50p or 60p GH3 has much much better image than GH2. Color, DR, banding, sound, handling, battery etc... are better.

    There are still left some stupid things there in GH3 from GH2. Mode dial logic is frustrating. Shutter speed and iso etc. dont change when you roll the dial. So you cant do video and stills with different shutter speed or iso without changing them all the time. For example If you want shoot stills at 1/1000 and then rapidly videos at 1/50 that is not possible. Even C modes cant save shutter speed or aperture. And GH3 is supposed to be good hybrid camera.

    One way is to trust red video button and hope camera uses good exposure values (usually too short shutter about 1/500). My way is to use A to stills and S for video. But S in video leeds to jumpy exposure because of aperture stepping. And why in S mode camera cant show aperture value its chooses? M+auto iso would be nice but GH3 doesnt have it. M is now useless to me because it cant hold its values if you do something else and go back to M. It is a mess if you want to use automatic exposure for video. Unless you use cameras iAuto (aka idiot auto). I dont want to use full M but I think it is the only way to get decent video. But it may leed to severe under or over exposure if I dont watch exposure very carefully or conditions change during clip. Why cant it work like a normal video camera? No jumps in exposure and no idiotic shutter speeds in automatic video.

    In Canons and Nikon P A S M works independently. Why Panasonic must have their own weird Philosophy? Can anyone tell me one reason?

    Why there is EV button while one of the rolls always controls EV? Why is there 8 function buttons but you can program only some of operations to them? Why cant you set iso limit in video mode? Was it too hard to programme? It would also be nice to have contrast etc. under one button. I think they was hurry to get camera to christmas market.

    Viewfinder is softer in GH3 and you cannot check focus reliably. You must trust green rectangle of autofocus. Can they do some sharpening adjust in EVF? It is too very noisy in low light althougt recording is clean.

    I hope that firmware update could fix theese problems. Please, Panasonic!

    PAL/NTSC swichable is too must for me. I hope Vitaly can make it.

    Thank you all for testing and hacking and helping.

  • it's WAY to early to even consider the fact that "this isn't better than a gh2" It beats the gh2 in a LOT of ways. don't get me wrong, I have picked up and shot with my gh2 as much as my gh3 since owning it, and the detail of the gh2 goes toe to toe with the big dogs (red and such) I don't really get the whole "gh2 is filmic" bit because a lot of people that truly are digging deep to find that "affordable filmic appearance camera" always talk down about the GH2 and end up going with canon. I've owned my 6d for less than a month, and within 3 hours of messing with it, I instantly saw why a "majority" of the time canon is taken more serious as an industry standard (act of valor, red tails, CSI, and every professional photographer) the colors that canon can produce right out of the camera mop the floor with the gh2, not to mention it's extremely low noise in extremely low light. nobody is going to force you to stop using your gh2 and buy into a gh3. one thing to keep in mind with the "gh3 edits that look to crisp" is were they shooting 60p, and weere they using the 12-35 lol

    so far this is my take on the gh3

    low light performance being one of the better/most useful improvements.

    gh3 runs a lot fast in general as a camera (deleting clips)

    it has way better performance as a stills camera (with nifty effects to say "look what my camera can do")

    better dynamic range (from what I have seen so far)

    a WAYYYY better LCD (with no crazy color/gamma shift when you hit record)

    better auto focus with compatible lenses and for those that require AF.

    less moire/aliasing (from what I have seen so far)

    it actually FEELS like a real camera (and that's without battery grip)

    oh..... battery grip & shotgun mic

    although the wifi isn't perfected yet, it will be a nice addition when it is

    being able to drop to -5 across the board is a big plus for a lot of people

    and just a wild off the wall guess, the gh2 can be pushed to 2k in mjpeg, I would not be surprised if the gh3 can reach 4k....maybe not possible, but fun to imagine

    I'll probably update this list of things I like about the gh3 the more I use it.

    these are just things that stick out to me, and if you asked what I like better about the gh2 over the gh3, the only thing I would be able to say is "it's hacked" but at the same time 50mbs and 77mbs isn't no cupcake.

    there is still a lot of things to be discovered with the gh3, and if it can be hacked to the same level the gh2 has been hacked to, that "cold & crips" look you are concerned with can easily be fixed with a little post work. sometimes it's hard to accept the "new kid" but other than 422, RAW video, and a few other things that isn't possible to smash into a camera of this size, I think panasonic did a good job of the adding a lot of features that people wanted to see. My guess is the GH4 will truly be the camera we are all drooling for, but that's another topic.

    it's 3am where I live, and I have a headache, so please excuse any grammar, typos, and spelling errors lol

  • To my eye, GH2 is often the winner over the GH3. Why? Because GH2 just looks more cinematic to my eye. GH3 looks too "crisp" and "cold", like many Sony cameras do. Yes, GH3 has an improved ISO performance, but for me this is not a GH2 killer.

  • A gh2 - canon 6d - gh3 compare edit.

    GRADED

    UPDATE 1 - 19 - 2013

    UNGRADED

    (the 6d is AMAZING in low light, if you didn't notice)

  • NEW VIDEOS:

  • I'm not quite sure what the point of your post is or what your question is? Are we supposed to screw around in light room and see if we can make still images look bad or do you think there is problem with your specific camera?

  • The first reply 'hits the nail on the head.' Start with ISO 3200, then push two stops =12,800. And, the image is still under-exposed. In any normally exposed shot, this color mottling is invisible. So, this is not really an issue. I agree 100%.

  • Ignore the images below, I don't have permission to delete them. V.K.: if you would be so kind, please delete the images. My comments were about still images, (not video), and pertained to doing absurd things by adjusting for gross under exposures with still images...so...I'd like to remove the entire post...

    Thanks!

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  • The EVF has UNITS ARE BUGS OR BAD? BETTER OR NOT THAT THE GH2 EVF?

  • @driftwood Could you explain to the people here (me) what this means? Is this a good thing?

  • I'm curious if anyone is getting lines or banding in high ISO's with the GH3 in video mode, I get horrible lines/banding that honestly make my gh2 more pleasing to the eye. I have attached a file with file of 6400 ISO to make my point, of course I would probably never use 6400 but even at 3200 the lines are noticeable, any one else have this issue?

    UPDATE: lol I always end up finding answers to my problems, well as it turns out, I was testing the high iso feature with a 14-42 X lens and that was causing those lines, I slapped a manual lens with no IS and no electronics and now I see how clean my 3200 setting is, so people watch out with those Panny lenses :-)

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  • Insane picture size /macroblock sizes in the GH3!

    With 8x8 Adaptive Transform we're really seeing the Pany h264 Progressive codec shine. Here's a Elecard Intra slice grab showing Q range of between 13 and 16 on Stray's Death Chart for the whole picture in a 50M 1080p24 IPB recording.

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  • Another brief banding test. I shot the GH3 in black and white completely dialed down, 1080p 50fps, 25mm Voigtländer Nokton @ 0.95f. Subjectively I'ld also say that there's less banding than on the GH2, but it's still there,

    (Sorry for the shakiness etc. it was more a byproduct of testing the camera at my local shop than a proper test. Oh and make sure to download the original mov file because vimeo compression makes things a lot worse than they are.)

  • @ ehmeddie : check out my short test on GH3 banding and using grain plug-ins to help. As a note, banding is much less than the GH2.

  • Hi there everyone, can someone please post some raw gh3 footage for testing.

    3 or 4 seconds. Fullhd 24p 30p 60p, iso 200, 400, 800, 1600, 6400 72mb/s 50mb/s .mov

    Mediafire would be great.

    THANKS IN ADVANCED

  • Just some test shots, graded with Film Convert

  • I was filming the last weekend extensively with GH1, GH2 and the GH3. The GH1 only had a few shots, but the GH2 and GH3 had the same amount of takes, because all was filmed from 2 angles. Now to compate the amount of card space used: The GH2 which is hacked with Sanity 5.0 used 87 GB in 720/50p mode and the GH3 filmed with 1080/50p 50 Mbit IPB used up 105 GB. So that is not so much of a difference.

  • got my gh3 today and have a quick question, and i'm sorry if it's been asked and answered already.

    I notice when panning from lighter to darker areas I see some kinda of twitch take place. Is this some kind of "auto" setting I need to disable? or is it new new version of the "greenish color shift after hitting record" as seen on the GH2? LOL

    just watched it on my computer and the funny thing is my monitor doesn't show it happening, so I guess it's the gh3 making auto brightness adjustments based on the exposure it sees?

  • @Tobsen Great job! Those extra stops of dynamic range came in handy for that one.

  • Short video from my vacation. Mainly shot on GH3 25/50p 50 mbps. Portrait -3-3-3-5. 12-35mm with B+w ND filter and Canon 24-70mm USM II with Genus Eclypse variable ND. Was very happy with it.

  • No banding, can't notice even at high ISO during low light ... GH3 is a gift from heaven :-)

  • I've seen very little banding in anything with the Gh3. It's quite amazing...

  • The GH3 handles gradation better than GH2. I'm sure you can still get banding as its an 8bit codec but it isn't near as prone to it as the GH2 at least in my experience so far.