Ever since I bought the GH3, back in January, as a birthday self-present, I have been taking pictures every week in the streets of Bangkok, where I currently reside, and in other places of Thailand. Before that, I never considered photography too seriously; I was more interested in video (I studied filmmaking), so when I had the money to buy my first serious camera, I needed something that could shoot good video and stills as a second thought.

However, what has happened is that I have been shooting stills much more than video these months, so much that I have created a blog to show my advances and experiences. I have learned how to use the camera through practice, and I definitely see an improvement over the months. All I can say is, this camera is a terrific tool for stills. We all know how good it is for video but GH3 happens to be also a very capable stills camera, even though many tend to forget or ignore that fact.

In my last photo session, I was invited to shoot a Thai traditional wedding. It was a friend's wedding, and there was no money involved, so it was all amateur and enthusiast, but I enjoyed a lot that day, and I will just share a few tips that I learned that day with the rest. For more details, you can see the whole post in my blog.

I had 2 lenses with me, the Lumix G Vario 12-35mm and the Olympus M. Zuiko 45mm; I had never attended a Thai wedding before, so I had no idea about the stages and rituals of the ceremony, nor where I should be and what was going to happen next, so I had to be ready for anything. Speed was the key. I knew I would probably miss shoots being at the wrong place at the wrong moment, but that couldn't be avoided, so I tried to have my eyes wide open and shoot as much as I could. The wedding was held at a porch in front of the house, a bit dark, and I had nothing but my camera with me (not even a tripod), so I chose to use the Olympus lens, as it was faster, f1.8, and I needed as much light as I could. I think it was the right choice.

True, I missed some wide and group shots due to being limited to a short telephoto lens, but I gained more light and, not less important, shallower depth of field. This was essential to get nice portraits, though I overdid it a bit, and now I'm aware that I should have shot more with the lens stopped down a bit, specially in the group or couple pictures, as most of the times the pics had only one of them in sharp focus, while the other was unfocused.

I shot in aperture priority mode most of the times, sometimes in program mode, and I trusted the autofocus almost in every shoot. The camera behaved admirably in both regards, focusing fast and accurately most of the times in the place I wanted, and the white balance, which I set to auto, was quite correct always. I needed speed over precision, so I didn't shoot much manual. All the pics were shot in raw and have been graded later with lightroom.

All in all, it was a nice day, and should I have the chance to repeat it again, I will probably change just one thing: I will use my new lens, the Lumix G Vario 35-100, for the wider reach plus nice bokeh at the longer end for the portraits.

http://gonzalobroto.blogspot.com/2013/08/my-first-thai-wedding-part-i-ceremony.html

@timfrakes Great to know I'm not alone! But I haven't acquired the legacy lenses-purchase syndrome yet. Maybe once I save again, who knows? :p

@Vitaliy_Kiselev any word on a hack upgrade for the GH3? Somewhere on this forum? Thanks!

I'm loving the 1080 60fps on the GH3 and have been using it on a lot of projects. Here is a short film I recently made that I used it a lot for.

Hi All. I was lucky enough to get one of the first GH3s and posted a couple quick test clips of how well the AF worked on the Lumix 14-140. I've had the GH3 for almost 9 months now, and I just have to say I am a very satisfied customer. I had a (hacked) GH1 for several years before the GH3. For stills, I only shoot raw, and even with careful raw processing, any still or video from the GH1 at ISO 1600 got pretty awful. And the #1 complaint I had with the GH1 was how it would create visible ugly banding in clear blue skies. I live near the ocean, so, blue skies on the horizon are often part of my scenes. I'm happy to say I've never seen banding in the GH3 in over 9 months.

I've placed a lot of videos on Vimeo. None of them are professional (I'm just a dad capturing some scenes from his daughter's childhood. But..even not being a pro: I'm getting very pleasing results.

Here's a couple examples.

This was shot inside and out of the Monterey Aquarium. It's a little long, but once inside the aquarium you see some clips with great color from the Lumix 20 mm.

This was a recent clip that actually displays some nice bokeh (from using the Lumix 100-300 mm, and my new acquisition, the Oly 45 mm)

There's millions of other much better results out there with the GH3, but...I just wanted to say as a stills camera and as a video camera it is far far better than my Hacked GH1 (which I love, but gave to a good friend).

Also, I tend to compress the videos I render quite a bit so that they will play well enough in our home wireless network. I don't compress them nearly as much a Vimeo, so, you can download better renditions of the clips from Vimeo, but...to save disk space and save bandwidth, I don't encode with a fixed bitrae of 50 Mbs (which is what I always shoot with). I've settled on a variable vit rate with Target=14 and Peak=24 Mbs. This looks much better than the Vimeo encode, and is 'good enough' for our 1080p TV.

So, bottom line: I couldn't be happier with my GH3.

I've been using the GH3 for about 6 months now and I'm very impressed with it. Coming from a PD-150 / Z5 background I've found the GH3 to have better image quality, it's less intrusive, and has the option for creative lens choices. I've made a list of the good and bad things about the camera:

Good points

• Small + lightweight but big enough to grip firmly and carry with one hand.
• Amazing battery life, especially with the additional battery grip. Never had to worry about the power running out.
• Good responsive touchscreen with useful additions like an indication of how level the camera is. Having it flip out is great for low level shots and almost all slider shots.
• Timelapse - saves kit having it inbuit and also you can playback the timelapse afterwards. Two features I've found very important and my Canon friends are very jealous of!
• High quality video recording. I've settled on 1080p50 at 50mbit and the quality is excellent. The noise is OK even at higher ISO levels.
• Lots of settings to configure the camera how you want it.
• Well made - feels solid in your hand and confident taking it to extreme places in extreme weather.

Bad points

• OLED viewfinder is blurry round the edges, though I rarely use it as I wear glasses, and the back screen is fine for me.
• The back screen doesn't match what the recorded video is like. Often the recorded video seems over exposed compared to what I'm seeing on the screen at the time. I have played around with the screen settings without being able to get it completely accurate.
• No focus peaking. This really is a big disappointment and drawback. Focusing the SLR Magic 0.95 25mm is incredibly difficult without any focus aides.
• When you press the record button to stop recording it actually takes a second off the end of the video you've recorded. Took me a while to get used to counting a couple of seconds before I stopped recording.
• HDMI - doesn't output the frame rate you set it until you press record. I've used the GH3 for live IMAG work and this was the workround I had to use. When its not recording the frame rate over HDMI seemed stuttery / below 20fps, and totally unusable for IMAG work.

Overall I'm very happy with the camera. People are amazed at the quality of the image (and that's from geeks through to your average bod), so I can certainly recommend it.

Some videos made using the GH3:

Hi. We just finished our first short film "Rose Wagner" where we used a GH3. I was positively surprised on how the camera performed and especially on how the footage grades. This is my first shortfilm so I am by no means a professional. Below a list of things which I would consider the top 5 both positive and negative

Positive - Overall camera built quality + software quality (didn't crash a single time, didn't overheat) - HDMI out => eventhough it seems to be interlaced it was great for waveform monitoring on scopebox. Also recorded some dolly shot raw. - Picture quality in 50MBit IPB (was shooting everything in Natural -5, -5, -2, -5) - Footage grades really really good (at least with this settings) - Battery life

Negative - Mini HDMI => was huge work to always detach the HDMI protector (Zacuto) to change battery - Horizontal moves (e.g. dolly => sideways) in 24p (couldn't use a single), jittering. RAW was much better. - Some moire, but it was due to some bad clothing choices.

Attached some framegrabes and the link to the trailer. Movie will be available soon.

Thanks @SuperSet

Thanks @RottenCarcass for the feedback. The shortmovie will be released somewhere end of October. More info and some nice insight on the #RoseWagnerProject at www.facebook.com/christianwengercine

@Chris74 It looked super clean. What ISO did you end up shooting at night on GH3? Wide open on 12mm?

ISO 200 on the 12mm. Don't remember the exact lens opening but i think it was around 2

Hi guys! I had a GH2 for about a year and a half, and I was very happy about it. But a few weeks ago I bought the GH3 since I expected it to be step up from the GH2. I've been shooting quite a bit with it and I'm devestated - the videos coming out of it are way worse than the GH2. I posted a few videos to show you guys what I'm talking about. The first one is a comparison between the two cameras both using my Nikon 50mm f1.2 lens. I think the image looks way better on the GH2. The two other clips were shot with the GH3 using the Panasonic 25 mm f1.4 and the 12-35mm f2.8. The 25mm has always been my fav lens and on the GH2 it has produced some amazing images. But on the GH3 I find it dull and almost ugly. The 12-35mm I never used before, but I don't think it's sharp and the colors look bad. Please help me! What am I doing wrong? All the clips on the GH3 were shot in 1080 50p, the other settings will show in the clips.