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GH3 user reviews and opinions
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  • @RBD Thanks. This footage was recorded in .mov 24p in standard mode ( 0.0.0.0 ) and i.Dynamic in standard mode... That's the only settings I had, except of the frame rate at 40% naturaly.

  • @jul Really nice vid. Good music choice too. I'm going to have to revisit the 40% mode. Shooting at 60p and slowing down in post works well but man you got some great shots using 40%. Again nice stuff.

  • @David I have found that for short films the GH3 is great. I can compose my shot use magnification to ensure focus. However when documenting theater using close ups having to use an 85mm lens in a low light environment to record an improvised performance in the round where you only have 1 chance, it makes focusing more difficult. I was able to do this with the evf of the GH2.
    I have not had the same success using the GH3's EVF in such environments. Hence my comment was for critical live work only. Now I am not bashing the GH3, just speaking from my experience. I hope the loupe will fix this issue for me.
    I like the GH3's image and capability, I love the absence of green skin. And I am trying to find a solution to a problem that I encounter in certain shooting situations.

  • jul 4:03PM @RBD Thanks. This footage was recorded in .mov 24p in standard mode ( 0.0.0.0 ) and i.Dynamic in standard mode... That's the only settings I had, except of the frame rate at 40% naturaly.

    Additionally, this was shot with the 14-140 Pany tele that many people don't like, my experience with this lens is also great colour, it's what I use 98% of the time outdoors.

    R

  • Hey Everyone. I recently went to Whistler BC and got a chance to try out the timelapse feature and make a video out of it. The calculation was very odd. I set it up for a time lapse that should have left me with 3000 photos. Instead I picked up 120+ photos. The set up was 30 second exposure for each frame. Then I set the next photo to be taken the next available second after the previous frame is saved. What i realized is the camera compensated the time a single frame is taken out of the total amount of photos that should be taken. So 3000 expected frames with 30 second exposure resulted into 120+ Frames. It was odd that it would instead of actually take the 3000 frames, it would just compensate the long exposure's given time out of the time it should take 3000 frames. Oh well, heres the result. The experimental was the 2nd to the last timelapse which was obviously too short to my liking. The last timelapse was when i finally figured out the error in the calculation and i think it came out great.

  • I took a look at a second GH3 today, at a different camera store, and the EVF focus assist worked exactly as I hoped it would.

    The previous GH3's focus assist didn't fill the entire screen or EVF, and was incredibly blurry. I can only guess that improper camera settings were conflicting with the focus assist, or possibly the camera was defective. I showed the issue to the first GH3 salesman, who stated that he has seen this with other GH3's, so I didn't pursue it further. In retrospect, I should have asked to do a factory reset on the camera or look at another GH3.

    At any rate, the second GH3 satisfied my concerns so I bought it.

  • @stanlymanly2 Wasn't the timelapse feature fixed in the last firmware (v1.1)?

  • The focus assist has a 3x (doesn't fill the screen and is incredibly blurry), 5x (which is great) and 10x, which is too much. The back dial controls which zoom you have when in focus assist mode.

  • bwhitz - I whole heartedly agree with you that there should be "nothing difficult about finding manual focus with the GH3". The one I tried, simply didn't give me remotely useable results. User error? Maybe.

    Maybe there's a batch of them miss-calculated from the factory?

  • The focus assist has a 3x (doesn't fill the screen and is incredibly blurry), 5x (which is great) and 10x, which is too much. The back dial controls which zoom you have when in focus assist mode.

    @h2otara exactly what I was writting ;-) and that happens both in back screen and EVF

    this is a very helpful feature, can be also used (EVF wise) with back panel touch pinpoint (or small area) AF

    @jul and @mankus71 very cool videos guys, even my heartbeats slowed down ;-)
    Julien the inside the monster video promo is pure awesomeness XD

  • @RBD and @maxr

    I appreciate the compliments, guys.

  • @Rambo yes I think the 14-140 is a good lens. Ok I'm lucky to have beautifull lighting all the year in my country.. @maxr Many thanks. The movie 'Inside the Monster' will be uploaded on august the 15th in Vimeo. I hope you'll enjoy this 26 minutes movie about the monster wave of Teahupoo..

  • @SuperSet i think what they fixed the last time was the buffering time messing with the actual timing of the timelapse. The weird thing that occured with mine was it took less photos i programmed it to take to compensate for the longer exposure. I had it set up for 3000 photos 1 second apart with a 25 or 30 second exposure. What it did was it divided the number of photos by the actual exposure time and gave me 120 ish photos instead. So that really confused me. :p i might be wrong or just dont get the process but it threw me off completely :p

  • @stanlymanly2 I think it is quite obvious that what you program is the time interval from start of one shooting cycle to the start of the next shooting cycle, and that if you don't yourself take focus time, exposure time, bracketing, noise reduction time, and writing time into account, you will be prone to set up interval shots that the camera can't keep up with (which is what you did).

    You would of course have focusing, and noise reduction disabled, and most often bracketing as well, so you only end up with exposure time, and the writing time should always be possible to discount since it should be parallellized with the next shot and buffer-fill is impossible I think with the minimum-interval of one second.

  • Just wondering if anyone uses AvCHD 50p 28mbps for weddings? Or is MOV the best all round setting.

  • @larsarus yeah its a big lesson for me. now im going to consider the number of shots for long exposure work to be the "time" to base off for the time-lapse duration. I should consider getting an external battery or the grip too. they could make me worry less about the timelapse overnight :p thanks for the info!

  • I recently bought the GH3, after having great success with the GH2, and I have to say I am disappointed with it out of the box... I did some side by side shots against my GH2 with Moon T5 and the GH2's footage is just as good, if not superior. From what I've read, the 50mbps is a superior setting on the GH3 than the 70mpbs all-i? How is that even possible. Also, I've read that .MOV is far superior to the AVCHD (if this is true, it's understandable)... I get that the situation is more complicated than that, but is there a good resource for learning about the GH3, and how to set it up properly to maximize the currently 'accepted' best video settings for NTSC 60fps and 30fps? I was hoping EOS HD would put a guide out, since he was a huge help to me with learning the GH2, but I don't think one is going to happen... Most of his recent work is surrounding the Canon 5D Mk III raw footage.

    Also, I've read that people with editing skills prefer a flat profile with sharpness turned down, however I am relatively new to video editing and do not have the skill set for lots of post-shot editing. Any settings advice for someone who wants very little post work?

    Any advice is welcomed.

  • Hi. This is my second shooting with the GH3. I realy like it. Here is 24P, .mov, standard mode, some shoot in 40% mode. No grading in post.. Welcome in the Heiva in Tahiti.

  • I have a question about sharpness, contrast, saturation.

    I understand many people reduce -5,-5,-5, so as to reduce in-camera processing as much as possible. Can anyone confirm that using -5 settings in fact has the least amount of in-camera processing?

    Is it possible that after a certain point (-3, -2) etc, that the camera starts adding softness, actively de-saturating, or reducing contrast. My question is what setting will give the optimal results from the camera, with the least amount of in-camera processing.

  • @larrysanders My experience has been that you can reduce contrast to -5 without any issue (at least in the standard mode which I use most of the time). You may gain a little visible noise, but it dissolves after adding back some selective contrast, in fact it looks very much like film grain while helping to preserve shadows and highlights. I've been shooting at around -1 with sharpness, as I'm not 100% convinced that the image at -5 is displaying true native resolution (it may very well be softening the image artificially). I leave saturation at 0, because you can always desaturate later so it's not worth the risk of losing color info by crippling the baked-in image at the time of capture.

  • Any update on what settings people are using for the best image out of the GH3? I really liked the flat looking footage from StanlyManly2's video above.

    Also does anyone know if the GH2 got framerate options when VK hacked it? I have the NTSC version of the GH3 and am using it pretty much solely for 60p footage (I live in a PAL country but I needed a camera that could do slow motion for a sporting event and it wasn't out in AUS yet).

    Not particularly bothered by no 25p since I plan on getting a BMPCC and keeping the GH3 for slow motion but I wouldn't mind having it as an option.

    At the moment I am still trying to nail down the best settings for the best picture straight out of camera.. But it seems pretty much everyone is using something slightly different.

  • @Sanjuro I'm pretty sure that is the grade in Stanlys video there. There's no way these cameras are shooting anything that comes close to that.

    @jul Your video should be a damn promo video for the GH3! Looks great.

  • Hi, I"m looking for a replacement for my 550d which will have a main purpose on a steadicam during weddings but will be used for other projects either handheld or on a tripod.

    As a wedding shooter I should say that high iso handling would be on top of my list and I know my options are limited here where the 5DIII is king of the hill, together with the 6d in the lower 3000 euro price range. But the 5D is too pricey and the 6d is a moire hell which I would like to see an improvement in as well over my 550d's.

    I already know the gh3 is capable to produce stunningly sharp and colourful video but I"m desperately looking at some low light, high iso comparison videos between a gh3 and a t2i, t3i type of camera, even a 7d would be great as the videoperformance is the same. I am not expecting a world of difference but would be very happy when I get clean enough footage at 3200 iso, at that iso the video from the 550d looks horrible with very clear grain in shadow area's.

    It is actually only one part of a weddingday that gives me issues and it's the first dance, most of the time it is very dark and I have a f2.8 lens on the canon (don't want a faster lens on the steadicam as it would be virtually impossible to maintain focus, f2.8 is workable. In that case I use the technicolour cinestyle preset which makes a big difference and push up to 3200 iso just to get the shot. The problem is also that the 550d doesn't have a sharp image at high iso and if you then apply neatvideo to get rid of the grain too much fine detail is destroyed after processing the footage. I was hoping the gh3 would be much easier to use neatvideo on as you have much more resolution to start with.

    Is there anyone here that has access to a gh3 and a first gen canon dslr like the t2i? I"d like to know how much more usable 3200 iso is on the gh3 compared to the t2i. Thx

    Btw, this is a very informative thread, great that so many people share info.

  • @noa I use the gh3 for two wedding gigs so far. Coming from shooting 2 years on a 7D, 60D and 5DMK2. The Gh3 I have not had to worry about neatvideo so far. The images even at 3200 were more than acceptable to 1250 ISO from the 7D.

    Shooting on 12-35mm, 35-100mm Lumix F2.8 and SLR Magic 25mm 0.95. The SLR Magic is instant daylight for receptions.

  • Thx for the answer, I ordered the camera this morning, will see how it goes. :)