Hasselblad is also using a Sony Sensor

http://photorumors.com/2012/09/18/breaking-this-is-hasselblads-mirrorless-camera/

http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/news/2206781/hasselblad-were-not-robbing-people-off-with-lunar-camera

Yup. Forget the GH3. At least until the Panasonic $300 rebates...meanwhile:

Dear Arri:

Alexa 2 for $899. please. With optional Rolls Royce hood ornament. -Thanks

Why are people whining about who made the sensor in the GH3? Does it really matter if it is made by Sony, Panasonic, or Toyota? These electronic products contain a gazillion parts from a gazillion different manufacturers. Can't we just wait and see if the GH3 has got the stuff we need?

Anyways, by the looks of the P.Bloom short, this thing really can produce some stunning footage, and most definately is a tool to be reckoned with.

I'm really excited about this, I skipped on the GH2 because I was happy with my GH1, now maybe I'll take a look at that GH3, because all of the new features are really looking promising to me.

DocZ

@thepalalias yes, to some degree that is what I meant but I also wonder about how they downscale the horizontal or vertical pixels to 1920x1080 resolution. Since we know that the GH2 binned pixels, the MAR action meant that the binning probably used the same number of binned physical pixels to equal a single summed "effective" pixel. In effect, the X/Y ratio stayed the same and necessitated a MAR sensor to do this. Now who is to say that they didn't figure out a new way to do this where the binned number changes or even switches to line skipping in the horizontal/vertical axis to change the X/Y ratio and utilize fewer pixels in either axis in order to optimize something like pixels size, ease of manufacture or simply cost of the sensor? At this point, I'm also just pondering different approaches based on limited data, much like most of the others in this thread. I'm basing all this on the fact that people are seeing aliasing and moire, which isn't a side effect of a non/MAR sensor but an effect from how the data is treated/processed from the sensor, I.E., line skipping/binning. I think once someone get's their hands on a GH3 we'll know a lot more.

Pure speculation on my behalf, and I don't reckon it will cool any of the catfights stirring in here.. but.. Is it not possible, neigh probable that Panasonic knows the true professionals will be right here on Personal-view.com waiting for the VGH3K to roll out, and thus they just make a marketable camera for the mainstream, and knowing doors they locked will soon be jimmied open by our beloved VK, they also know that the Pro's and Pro wannabes (mee) will buy their camera soon enough. Again pure speculation, but it seems probably obvious to me. At least if them boyz in the panahood have smarts.

What I am really trying to say though is... hush thy pussy, and relax till we know more =)

@thepalalias

Yes...I am aware of that. But as you say depends on how the GH3's are set up. The point I was making is this sort of material does not show performance compared to hacked GH2 (exactly same scene with cameras side-by-side). That is the only test that is relevant to me for making decision about upgrade or not.

@Vitaliy_Kiselev

Your enlightened "bullshit" comment the other day about what I said regarding manufacturers cynically "unlocking" new features in the same camera hardware with only a firmware upgrade is itself "bullshit" in view of recent comment from Canon that:

"Canon confirmed ... the 1D C 4K DSLR is a 1D X with a firmware update. Identical hardware." $6,000 firmware that is. (canonwatch.com)

So, as I said, maybe the GH3 hardware is actually capable of much more than Panasonic would like us believe.

@svart

But FOV of lens will still be adversely affected. That is the problem using less of the sensor. Down scaling algorithm irrelevant for this.

@svart

I think that there is a general misunderstanding of what the "Sensor Size" spec means. For the Panasonic GH3 it means that the size of the area of pixels used in 4:3 mode is 17.3 x 13.0 mm. Panasonic even puts a special note on there that this size is only with respect to the 4:3 aspect ratio mode.

This is NOT. and I repeat NOT the total size of the entire sensor in the camera. For multi aspect ratio cameras like the GH2(and yes the G5) the total sensor size is bigger than 17.3x13.0mm because it has to accommodate the different aspect ratios with the same field of view.

For non-MAR cameras the total sensor size is probably greater than 17.3x13.0mm because they can't use the pixels edge to edge. However, it is probably not as big as those cameras that have MAR capabilities.

There really is no way to convince you without showing you the exact same picture(Same Resolution and Same Field of View) taken with the GH2 and the GH3 in 4:3 mode. So until I have my GH3 you will just have to trust the specs that are listed on the Panasonic pages.

The sensor dimensions and resolutions in 4:3 mode are identical for all three of these cameras(GH2, G5, and GH3).

http://panasonic.net/avc/lumix/systemcamera/gms/gh3/specifications.html

@Svart This data is extracted from the specifications available at the Panasonic website.

GH2 Active Sensor: 17.3x13.0 (in 4:3 mode) Horizontal Resolution: 4608 (in 4:3 mode)

GH3 Active Sensor: 17.3x13.0 (in 4:3 mode) Horizontal Resolution: 4608 (in 4:3 mode)

The difference is that the GH3 maintains that horizontal resolution (and horizontal active sensor dimension) while the GH2 expands both (and the horizontal resolution in JPEGs hits 4976).

The two differ in the total sensor size (ca 18MP GH2 vs ca 17MP GH3) but the active sensor area in 4:3 mode (and resolution in that mode) are identical, at least as reported in the Panasonic official specifications on their site.

@mpgxsvcd where did you see that the pixels are actually the same size? As I mentioned before, the usable sensor area is the exact same, while total pixels is lower in the GH3. Because of this I think the pixels are actually larger since fewer pixels are taking up the same amount of room.. As we've been over before in other threads, people wanted lower pixel counts for larger pixels so that low light was improved. Why is it not feasible that panny did exactly that? We've already had reports that the GH3 is indeed a MAR sensor, but isn't enabled. Why isn't this just as likely as a Sony sensor without MAR? Panny didn't build a multi-million dollar sensor fab just to go with Sony's sensors. That just doesn't make any sense at all.

Here are some sample High Dynamic Range images from the GH2. These illustrate what a problem the GH2 has with getting DR out of its jpgs and also out of video.

The first file is the jpg image Straight out of the camera shot with Smooth -2,-2,0,-2.

The second is an edited jpg file to try to balance it out.

The third image is an edited RAW file.

The fourth is an HDR image that I created from 7 1 stop increment files. It is blurry because it was not on a tripod but you get the idea.

The edited RAW file actually does quite well. Even better than the HDR image(Admittedly not a very good one). The jpg image just falls apart when edited.

Any extra HDR is great in my book. I shoot a lot of scenes that will trigger the I.dynamic feature in the GH2. Hopefully, the GH3 will handle those scenes better.

Basically we either need RAW or much better DR. I actually don't want RAW because it is not feasible to manage it yet. That leaves us with just much better DR which is what I think the GH3 could offer. I will definitely redo this test when I get my GH3.

@LongJohnSilver "noise at 1600 ISO"

Maybe we have different ideas about noise, but using Canis Majoris night, I see zero noise at ISO 1600. Granted I haven't tried it underwater, but I have used it in very very low lighting.

@mpgxsvcd Could you point me a page where DR calculation is explained? How is possible calculating DR from a video. DO I need a controlled environment and shots?

Edit: I reply to myself: pretty in layman's terms:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/columns/determining-exposure.shtml

@mpgxsvcd Photo and video DR are related? Is it possible make some DR assumption from AKED original MOV?

@Astro @L1N3ARX +1 well put.