Official Panasonic GH3 topic, series 2

Aria

@SuperSet, I think the GH3 held up VERY well considering the advantages the BMCC has. Of course the BMCC has some great DR and Resolution, not to mention the gradation is butter smooth. Still the GH3 is going to be a great camera IMO. How can anyone complain at that price point? Right now nothing new competes with the GH3's overall package. The build quality, functionality of the cameras features and image are really pretty high for such a compact package.

Butt

@zigizigi

Große Prüfung. Sieht aus wie GH2 schärfer als GH3 ist. PS Lesen Sie einfach Andrew Blog genauer, wählte er Schärfe minimale Einstellung am GH3 Schüsse. Das erklärt den Unterschied.<

No - there is a lack of GH3 at "0" on basic sharpness (sony Photo-Sensor for film not good)

SuperSet

Hmm.. that's a little disconcerting. Not sure whether to buy this camera or 'upgrade' to the BMCC and slog through all that new workflow and storage issues.

ETA: Never mind. Just read Bloom's blog post and it convinced me that the BMCC's cons outweigh the pros.

hay

@ superset

take Bloom with a grain of salt or two. He gets paid very well, albeit indirectly, to write what/how he does. he never fails to lean towards certain cos.

raw 2.5k for 3k outweighs the cons for many

bwhitz

@hay @SuperSet

take Bloom with a grain of salt or two. He gets paid very well, albeit indirectly, to write what/how he does. he never fails to lean towards certain cos.

+1

All of his BMCC "reviews" have been secret commercials for the C300...

Watch them to get info... but keep that in mind.

Not sure whether to buy this camera or 'upgrade' to the BMCC and slog through all that new workflow and storage issues.

You could get both and still be under $5k!!! Then you'll have 12-bit RAW 2.5k, 1080p prores, and 1080p 60fps! And both with very close sensor-size specs... so there will be no need to two different lens sets!

azza_act

Don't know why people are so worried about the GH3... From Mr Bloom plus he was using a pre-pre production model.. "Even the one I had bettered the GH2 in every way. Stronger construction. Better low light, detail, dynamic range, sound handling, clean output, great crop mode, immensely improved codec. Better than a hacked GH2? Yes in most areas. The hacked GH2 gives it a much less compressed codec but doesn’t fix all the other issues. I own 2 GH2s, one hacked and one not. The GH3 is simply much better. I want this camera. BUT I want to review it first as it is a fair chunk more than the GH2." And this is coming from a "canon" guy.. I think Bloom is fairly stop on with most things. I think for him it's about a easy workflow for board cast.

danyyyel

@SuperSet It is true that beyond all of the super footage coming out of the bmcc you just take Bloom advise as gospel. All he is comparing to the BMC supposed con, is against a 8 bit $ 16000 camera. The C300 does have its forte mainly for run and gun compared to the BMC, with super low light, s35 sensor and built in ND filter. But you are still comparing a 3k to a 16k camera, that will beat the C300 in DR and codec. As these test shows the BMC is still a very good low light camera and the image is very cinematic.

Don't want to turn it into a GH3 vs BMC threat. I think these could be two very good camera for the low budget users and should be welcome for that. For now the BMC is more or less a known quantity, while we will still need a little bit more time to be sure about the gh3 capabilities.

The last thing is that Canon ass will be served on a plate with the similarly priced new 4k Sony RAW camera. They have so under specked their camera at the price point they are selling that it was bound to happen.

DrDave

I have to say that I'm amazed ppl are already finding excuses for why the GH3 is not as sharp as the GH2. Fact is, sometimes the "next best thing" is "next best" in some key areas. I mean, if you make the sensor smaller, what do you really expect? And as far as the stair stepping is concerned, stair stepping is just plain ugly. And ugly is not a great thing in a camera. You can rationalize it anyway you want, but it is ugly. Why did Panasonic shift to the new sensor? Well, first of all, they will make money. Money is important. And second, they had a real problem. As someone who owns Olly m4/3 cams, I can tell you that the still image quality is always just a touch better with the Olly. Panasonic knew about the new Olly sensor, and they had to decide whether they were going to make a camera that would ALWAYS be regarded as inferior by photographers, or make a better camera for photos. So they jumped ship, and I, for one, cannot blame them. Pictures are important, and there is no status in being always number two in the Photo world. Now they finally have a camera that can claim a share ofthe m43 crown. Of course, they could have spend another $10 per camera and ordered a million sensors that were larger, and maybe another $50 and put in a faster processor for binning, but that would cut into the profits. The multisensor is a triumph of engineering, and I think a company may very well take another look at it down the line. It makes sense for video and landscapes, even if it is a small difference.

jules

agghhhh, after agonizing long and hard, have cancelled my preorder for GH3. Nothing against it, looking forward to owning one maybe this time next year, but as a GH1-user who shoots as a hobby at best, the $499 GH2 price tag yesterday at amazon was too good to ignore. I'll ride it out from afar with my new GH2 and jump onboard once GH3 hacks are done and initial price drop has happened...

Diffusion33

Guys BBCM is a totally different beast all together! Up until now the GH2 was unparalleled, but with new ventures such as BBCM it is hard to compare the GH series with it! It's still to be seen wether the GH3 will produce and deliver on the hopes and expectations that we all wanted. @jules i'm with you mate, getting a new GH2 before they go like hot cakes and will carry on shooting hacked GH2 material investing in quality glass and wait and see what GH4/5 looks like. So Far BBCM has struggled to get their product out and i'm still wondering what kind of other issues are too come!!! It's easy to jump the gun before the race has stared. Let's wait for final production models!!! Either way people sticking to GHx series will have bags of support on this form/platform and workflow will be much easier.

Aria

I'm not going to ignore the fact that it's been repeated by multiple reviewers that the GH3 is superior to the GH2. They've explained that they've set the sharpness to -5 which we now know is the major reason for the softer image. As for Aliasing and Moire, from what i've seen these issues have been HIGHLY exaggerated. It's not as bad as so many are making it out to be. You have many videos that barely show any hint of those issues. Clearly it's not something that should keep someone from buying a GH3, not if they are honest about wanting a camera that has better DR, lowlight, gradation, 1080/60p, better build, etc, etc.

bwhitz

They've explained that they've set the sharpness to -5 which we now know is the major reason for the softer image.

Well, to be fair to both sides of the argument, I always shoot with my GH2 at -2 (max negative)... and it still has more detail than the GH3 at -5 (max negative). So, either the increments are actually the same, and the GH3 just allows you to go even softer (-5 from -2 on an equivalent scale). Or the scales are completely different... and GH2 detail at -2, might be around 0 or +1 on the GH3. Either way... we NEED to wait until it ships with final firmware and can be properly compared on all in-camera sharpness levels.

Aria

@bwhitz, well it's been said that -5 on GH3 is effectively lowering sharpness to a degree the GH2 can't get to. Of course we have to wait for more thorough tests of each setting on a production body but already it's clear that the sharpness levels can be adjusted to a greater degree. Tests were also done to test both cameras detail resolving power and they've said that the GH3 is giving great levels of detail. If that wasn't the case from multiple sources then i'd be more skeptical.

bwhitz

^ oh ok cool. That's pretty much what I've been suspecting myself based on the footage I've seen. I wonder what setting the "native" detail setting is? Maybe 0? Naw... that would make too much sense... :)

Also, the lenses, as some are saying, might be the cause of some over-crunched detail as well. That "Day in Montmarte" video is a really good example of some great looking 1000+ line detail stuff... and some crunchy 7D-esqe muddy detail.

magnifico

@Arquer053

...Seriously, this is going too far, particularly in regards to very subjective terms like how good colors are or wheter there's a filmic air to it...

Hmm subjective...

Of course when we use our eyes we are subjective. But specialists have already put some laws there : red is warm, blue is cold, etc. And color grading is a rational process. For instance skin tone is well decrypted now and is very important when grading.

When you see this :

You can vectorscope the face and you get that:

That graph says color of the face is too much yellow considering the standards.

For filming aspect of a footage, you can consider these parameters : 24p, Shutter speed, DR, DOF, resolution, colors etc. All these are not subjective at all.

apefos

In the BMCC review video, at 2min23sec the GH2 is handling the highlights better than all other cameras in the daylight shoots. I asked about the picture profile and he said it was Smooth. Do you all feel the GH2 highlights in daylight (sky, buildings) are better overall in the video or is this just my eyes seeing?

magnifico

@apefos be careful, at 2min23sec there is sun in the foliage for gh2. There was no sun for gh3 a few seconds ago...But you are right, 2.5K RAW BMC at 02:12 highlights are a little bit clipped. Because exposition is not the same between the shots.

Considering BMCC review, we got a lot of information here. More than enough. BMCC, gh2 and gh3 are top cameras indeed.

driftwood

The use of adaptive 4x4 / 8x8 transform in the GH3 is to minimise the computational complexity of the codec producing better mean QP results without subjectively deterring the HVS (Human Visual System of perception). The GH2 with only 4x4 transform is doing much more arithmetic and consuming vast amounts of bitrate to do a similar job. However, the hacked GH2 can achieve equal/sometimes better results in certain shots - especially where things are lit well - like daylight.

On the GH3 4x4 is being used predominantly on horizontal high freq luma areas - pretty much anywhere where this is a radical change in highlights. The rest of the picture is using 8x8.

Interestingly CABAC is being employed on AVCHD modes (High level 4.2) and CAVLC on All-I 24p/25p/30p (High level 5.0) for example. GH2 is CAVLC on all modes.

I am producing an encoder table of results showing each of the recording modes of the GH3 which will be up soon.

mpgxsvcd

@driftwood

Thank you for all of your efforts.

Unfortunately, I think some people will only read the one line below and proclaim that the GH2 is unequivocally better than the GH3 without reading anything else.

However, the hacked GH2 can achieve equal/sometimes better results in certain shots - especially where things are lit well - like daylight.

svart

It's funny that you guys begged for "flatter" profiles and less in-camera sharpening and now that you have it, you are complaining about the sharpness and the colors..

mpgxsvcd

For anyone who was as confused as I am about CABAC vs. CAVLC here is something that might help.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context-adaptive_binary_arithmetic_coding

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context-adaptive_variable-length_coding

mpgxsvcd

@driftwood

Does the use of the adaptive 4x4 / 8x8 transform mean that the GH3 is much less likely to fail with lower speed cards?

If you could change anything about how they are encoding with the GH3 would you change anything or is it good sound engineering?

Manu4Vendetta

Gysenberg

First post, hello to all.

There is a new review by "Videoaktiv" including some testfiles to download: http://www.videoaktiv.de/PraxisTechnik/CAMCORDER-Hintergrundinfo/Panasonic-Lumix-DMC-GH3-Testszenen-selbst-beurteilen.html

Have a look at this sample:

The wire in the tree has moire and the brown window shutter on the right side, later the green window shutter on the left. Seeems to be problematically

mpgxsvcd

@Gysenberg

I only saw it at the end in the black shutters. If that is problematic Moire then I guess that won't be a problem for my needs. Might give others pause though.

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