All we've tested so far is High DR scenes 16:1- 64:1 in available light and/or single bounce, at 1080 24p 72Mbit ALL-I setting. Very disappointed with the noise in the shadows. Tried a myriad of settings from -5 NR to +2 and even at ISO200 the noise in the shadows bugs me. All the NR seems to do is blur the noise slightly, but you can still see it moving under the blur. At first I thought it was just the high ISO when testing 6400 - 800, but it's there at every ISO. I hate the skin tones, they look video-y (It looks very much like sony footage). So far it's getting pounded by the Intravenus GH2 IMO. What it has gained in DR, it loses in grain character. If hacking this thing changes the noise characteristic, then it has some serious potential. For now, nothing is making me want one.

@shian interested to hear your impression

@driftwood what would you say the flattest setting is on the GH3? (A la Smooth -2 across the board) I have access to one for the next 3 days, and gonna do some testing. Just looking to save some time if possible.

GH3 AF-S test with 45-200mm lens. 40% slow motion. Minimal hunting or confusion seems visible during focus acquisition on dead center of frame. Password: GH3AFS

I just encountered a bug with 40% slow motion in the .mov container. When the clip is inserted into a Sony Vegas timeline the file becomes much longer than the final conformed length. Basically the final frame repeats until the end of the clip. It's easy enough to drag the clip length back to fix it, but I figure it's an annoyance worth mentioning.

That being said, the quality of the codec is ridiculously good on this SOB. I'm running with contrast at -5 and sharpness at 0, and it's grading very nicely. The shutter makes a beautiful sound in stills mode, it almost makes you feel like you're shooting shit with a rail gun. ChaWoooosh!!

@driftwood

So what is this problem of saccades with .mov 50 mbs at 1/50e?

@uzland that video made me very hungry.

Is the 25p actually 25p, or is it 25p wrapped in 50i? Wrapped 25p isn't encoded in the same way as true 25p - rather it is encoded as half intra and half inter interlaced, even though both halves are derived from a single image. Unwrapping it will not produce exactly the same result as a true 25p encoding.

@jjay, @cbrandin I am bothered by the jittery moves too. To figure out if this a GH3 flaw or my monitor/vimeo combination, I looked at other shots made with different, more expensive hardware. No such problems there. See for example http://benjamineckstein.com/2012/06/silencio/ - shot with SONY F3.

At 25P you would need to have a monitor refresh rate of 50, 75, or 100Hz to avoid the cadence problem. Does the footage show the same stuttering, etc... when displayed on-camera? Maybe there's something about your computer setup than doesn't like the GH3 video files.

Video captured at 24 FPS will always exhibit an uneven motion cadence when displayed on a monitor refreshing at 60 Hz because 60 isn't divisible by 24. If you can increase the refresh rate to 72 Hz on your monitor things should look better for 24 FPS footage (assuming you haven't rendered it to 60 FPS). However, then 30 and 60 FPS footage will end up looking odd because 72 isn't divisible by 30 or 60. Ideally you would want to change the monitor refresh rate according to framerate.

Seen it in every GH3 sample video so far : stuttering video in pans and object movements... Is this due to Youtube/Vimeo compression or can you guys see this in the source material too ?

Thanks !

:) It was indeed delicious.