@h2otara Thanks, I'll reset to factory and hope for the best. It only occurred maybe a half dozen times over the course of 100+ operations and wasn't overly detracting from my enjoyment of the camera. The concern being that it increases in frequency. It's a relief to hear they gave you a replacement and didn't take your original unit for servicing. I'm heading to Europe in about a month's time and the last thing I need is Panasonic absconding with my travel cam if something's gone amiss.

Edit: Turned it on to do the reset and nothing happened (no green light). Half pressed the shutter button and it awoke as if from sleep mode: lens click, green light flashed on, OLED lit up.

Turned if off and on a further dozen times without issue, but on the next it turned on but went directly to sleep. Deactivated sleep mode in menu.

Seven attempts later it went directly to sleep upon start.

Reset factory defaults.

Tenth attempt it went directly to sleep. A half press made the lens click, but camera remained asleep. Another half press and it clicked again and awoke.

I'll contact my retailer tomorrow.

@driftwood

Cool. Panasonic managed to fuck up in hotshoe department this time.

I'll speak up for my hotshoe. I knocked my camera off the back of an easy chair. It bounced off the seat cushion and landed on a hardwood floor. Mounted Rode video mic took the brunt of it and there was no damage to anything. Hotshoe still feels solid. Maybe that's the fix: mount something on your shoe and drop the camera on it. ;-)

Not really an issue but it only came with the Basic manual. I hate reading manuals on the computer.

@peternap Try a tablet or an eReader like a kindle?

My hotshoe also came loose, when I had a monitor attached to it. It doesn't seem to be secured well so I moved the monitor elsewhere and am only using lightweight shotgun mics on it.

wtf is this ?

@Lambo My 25mm f1.4 sounds like that when the camera makes an abrupt aperture change, but my 14-140 doesn't (well, its aperture mechanism is smaller). I'd even say this is normal when making relly fast changes, and Oly fans have been experiencing this with various Panasonic primes; however, my 25mm stopped sounding like that after I got ~150 shots through it except when changing like 4 stops really quickly. Perhaps the GH3 is driving your lens too fast?

Just wanted to finish up with my observations of GH3 audio matters. I also edited my previous comments deleting old information regarding audio levels.

The GH3's headphone volume can be adjusted of course but one has to go into the Setup menu instead of having it located next to Mic Level Disp. and Mic level Adj. which are located in the Motion Picture menu. This is certainly inconvenient.

Also, perhaps this has been mentioned before but the Headphone Sound (also located in Motion Picture) gives one the option to choose REALTIME or RECSOUND. REALTIME would be selected to minimize the audio delay from source to headphone but the fact is that even REALTIME has a delay and this is really annoying and although better than nothing, I find the headphone output of the GH3 very frustrating for critical monitoring say for positioning outboard mics where even a few inces difference will effect the tone of the recording. And monitoring live music while recording even when RECSOUND is chosen is not fun at all because of that delay. I wonder if this can be fixed in a firmware update?

So because of that delay problem on the GH3 headphones output, when using the Zoom H4N, I also used a custom Y cable adapter connected to the Zoom audio out so as to both feed the GH3 mic input and also monitor sound out of the Zoom. But this Y cable setup was actually part of my problem which during earlier sessions had caused excessive audio level readings on the GH3 - in order to drive my power hungry studio headphones and hear a nice full sound, I had to crank up the headphone/line output levels on the Zoom which required that the mic inputs be set to minimum on the GH3 and the Zoom. But this was a mistake on my part - I should have set good input levels on the Zoom and then turned down it's headphone Vol to feed the GH3 a perfect level. By switching to a more sensitive set of headphones I was able to lower the output of the Zoom feeding the GH3 and everything came into balance.

high-ranking officers at Panasonic and they can confirm that there is no technological limitation to prevent focus peaking to be added

This guys are very inconsistent :-) Btw, Pentax K-01 has good focus peaking :-)

@maxr The EVF and the rear screen can be adjusted separatedly at the general settings menu.

I find the colors on the rear monitor to be fairly accurate, while the EVF cannot be tuned to produce true reds and purples. Not a big problem for me as I always carry a gray card and set custom WB.

@maxr Well I certainly could :) . However, I think my camera isn't representative of all since it looks like many issues from early batches didn't make it into mine from the late january batch (evf, flash firing when closed, loose hotshoe). For the wb shift, after testing through HDMI, I see it. It's not so much a wb shift, but a subtle gamma shift (however the camera's displays do change their balance slightly). Personally it doesn't bother me, but I know a few colorists who do find those things irritating. :)