Although the GH-3 is pretty much out of my price range right now, I've been following developments closely.

As I imagine we all have.

From what I've been able to gather, getting good video is just a matter of learning what settings the camera likes best.

Although I'm willing to grant that it may not be perfect, I don't expect perfection.

And believe the bias here is so strongly in favor of the GH-2, the new camera may have a lot to live up to.

As to me, it seems that with the two fast zooms, and ultimately improved auto focus, this is a dangerous weapon.

Heretofore I've been shooting my GH-2 with primes, and a Small HD.

Even with my tired old eyes, I've been able to focus reasonably well.

Although when I went back through the footage of one of my shoots, I'm am literally begging for a focus.

"Please," I pleaded.

God know what the model thought!

So.

With the two fast zooms, one can apparently with reasonable confidence, shoot away.

I like this idea.

In the meantime, I've ordered the Nokton 25 to match my 17.5.

Recently, I told a beautiful model that I wanted to "fill the screen with... your eyes... your lips."

Vis a vis the model, this may or may not pay off.

But the Nokton 25mm f 0.95 will allow me to do this.

With indoor, available light.

RBD

Sorry I meant the GH3.

So does the GH2 still shoot 50mb at 1080 60p?

Hi Vitalyi, I've been shooting tests with my brand new GH-3.....and I must say....there is a surprising level of noise in shadow areas, even at highest bit rate of 72 mbits/sec in H264. In fact the Vitalyi-hacked GH-1 produces CLEANER video than the factory GH-3 does!! I hope that your hack of the GH-3 will be able to address the noise issue (just made a $10 donation towards the effort) None of these noise problems were mentioned in Philip Bloom's initial review (of GH-3 prototype). It gets worse: shooting a daytime exterior of a mini-mall, the dark green awning of Starbucks was buzzing like crazy.....forced me to add noise reduction. (Shot without pushing gain, i.e. at 200 ASA and plenty of stop) The camera absolutely struggles in low light situation when you push the gain past 800ASA....image just falls apart. By the way I noticed no difference in image quality between high bit rate AVCHD and high bit rate H264 (.mov). I bought the GH-3 primarily for its theoretical 60p capability (apply 40% speed setting to 60p shoot mode to achieve slow mo) , but the bit rate goes down to roughly 20 mbits/sec max. It's an extrapolated slow mo sort of like a low rent Varicam, but it'll do for the budget. Looking forward to hear from other GH-3 users re their experiences.

@jfilmmaker I'm using the follow focus that came with my shoulder rig, the Fancierstudio one, and it does work although not perfectly. For manual focus, I always use the Assist Manual Focus (the zoom feature) as I find it difficult to do without it.

@Manu4Vendetta The only GH2 footage I have online that's w/the 25mm PL is in the start of a demo reel here... shot 1, 2 and 4 -

Those were shot mostly wide open, probably not the best examples but I liked 'em at the time. There's something special about the way the Leica renders an image. And there's no vignetting on the GH3, whereas it seemed to vignette noticeably on the GH2 wide open. The vignette elimination may be a combination of the increased crop and in camera lens correction, not completely sure.

@SuperSet I'm going to run some focus tracking tests, but I like lumix lenses for those times when I shoot event coverage and I run in AF-S mode and just roll the cam and then half press the shutter on each subject I isolate. I've found it to be accurate thus far and it saves me the time of having to punch in the magnification to manually focus (that is also tough when people are moving around).

@SuperSet Auto focusing issues still exist on Panny 25mm when used with GH3? How would Voigt do with shooting buildings, street traffic, etc.?

@Tron thanks for input... Tough decisions....

@Tron. Do you have shots on vimeo or youtube of the GH2 wth the PanaLeica 25mm 1.4?

After expressing a few opinions about the GH3 based on others sample footage, I finally got to test it myself. Side by side with the same lens, a Nikon 50mm 1.4. My first impression is that this is a serious camera, it feels wonderful, it looks sexy... I wanted to buy it just for that. After doing an indoor and outdoor test, I easily noticed where the GH3 had more DR in the shadows in all kinds of situations, it was actually a lot easier to see than I was expecting. In terms of highlights, I'm not sure if I like the roll off, the GH2 seemed to be smoother outdoors with bright sun washing over skin. The noise is considerably improved, it really looks decent now at 1600iso. The improvements are undeniable.

That said, even after getting to use the camera myself along side my GH2, I'm not completely convinced at buying one new for the price they're currently at. In terms of image... I'll side with the minority here on personal-view and say that I do prefer the GH2's image for about 70-80% of the stuff I shoot (If I use phrases like more "cinematic, filmic, better motion cadence- I know I'm gonna get an arrow through my head... so I won't go there : ). The remainder, in which I might find myself shooting in low light, in need of higher ISO's, higher res slow mo, and more DR in shadowy areas, I would really like to have something like the GH3 handy.

If I could get my hands on a BMC, I don't think I'd even be giving the GH3 any consideration at the moment... but it is what it is. It just might be worth picking up and playing with in the meantime though.

@FilmingArt, @christianhubbard, @jimagine, @clyde_t

Guys, this could be proper topic to continue your interesting debate:
http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/737/gh2-hack-myths-and-realities/p1

@shian, thanks for the candid straight up honest test. its great to see you two share your insights, I got a good feeling for the different cameras and there positives and negatives.

Good Job guys.

Тhanks again guys! Redemption is considered)

@Shian.. It's not a 23.6 MP camera either, but your buddy did say 26.3 mp.