Anyone had any issues with their hot shoe coming loose? The hot shoe on top of my gh3 has come loose on the left side, so anything that goes on top wobbles. Sounds like a screw has come loose.

@vicharris

I got my hands wet on a copy just last week and I saw the issue with the LVF. I guess the issue could be best described as if there were some kind of smearing on the corners / rim of the glass, much akin to the kind of effect a convex lens would produce.

I can commiserate with @Davidz, cos i would be as equally frustrated having shelled out good money for a new camera. I was a whisker away from making my purchase, the LVF was the deal breaker.

@crowbar: You may want to try recording in MOV format, it records uncompressed audio so there should be no reduction in quality / no compression artefacts.

you have to be in creative mode… for video. Not the photo PASM modes.

When using outboard mics with the GH3 such as a Rode set to +20 dB , you must be careful - even with the GH3's mic preamp input levels set to minimum, you may be overloading the GH3 and it's limiter may be working constantly. Solution - set Rode to 0 dB and then bring up GH3 level if need be.

Did you sharpen in post, or is this straight out of the camera?

@cindy6 yeah i agree its not that sharp. what codec were you shooting at? were any shots in etc mode? im guessing so because i dont think the 100mm has that much reach in some of your climbing shots.

@griplimited

wow, that was quick. tkx! most of it was f/5. it's more shallow up front, which is why the flowers are out of focus. by sharp, i was thinking this sharp:

and even this is sharper than mine. and it's shot in berlin winter as well. so weather is not an excuse:

Please help me out with some image quality issue.

So, this is a video that I recently made:

It's shot with GH3, Lumix 12-35, 35-100. Except for the beginning (forgot my slider), all shots on the ground were on tripod while those mid-air were hand held. I think the IQ really isn't that great. By that, I mean not sharp enough. What did I do wrong? Wrong setting? In need of a polarizer? Do I need better stablizer? Better weather? Thanks!

@guzak @manstok

This is wrong topic for your talks, read title again, please.

@guzak

as far as i know:

1: Monaural Type, NTSC / PAL, NTSC only for North America * Check the website of the Panasonic sales company in your country or region for details on the products that are available in your market.

2: HDMI is 8bit 4:2:0 only, reported not much difference when recording to external recorder

3: HDMI Monitor-Through The HDMI terminal on the DMC-GH3 connects easily to a large-screen monitor for real-time image checking. The HDMI output also enables external recording, with simultaneous recording to the SD card.

4: gh3 battery is different

5: don't know..

I would like to post this on the GH3 User Reviews and Opinions, but given my very limited experience on this site, I assume that it would be either deleted or subject to censure.

I see that crowbar has already stated above exactly what my complaints are. In any event, here is the opinion I recently stated (and which has now been published) on the site of a dealer from whom I recently purchased the GH3, and from whom I purchase the majority of my equipment:

"The Emporer Has No Clothes!

Before you read ANY of the following, you should know that I have only "played" with this camera, and have never gotten as far as shooting with it. I use this and the GH2 for video, and selcom for stills. My overwhelmingly negative initial impression (which is all that is stated here) has precluded my further use of it thus far, and led to the title above.

My negative reaction to this camera is based upon its relatively useless LVF (what Panasonic refers to as "Live View Finder") as a way of seeing what I am taking. For over the last year I have been an avid, over the top enthusiast with a hacked Panasonic GH2, backing up my very long line of Sony Cameras, particularly the EX-1. Therefore, and particularly in view of a number of very positive technical reviews of the GH3, I was expecting a significant improvement in the GH3. Well, for starters, which is all the further I have gone, I have found a couple of horrible steps backward.

I purchased the camera because of its reported, out of the box, un-hacked superb performance at 50 Mbps GOP MOV setting, at which it could shoot a full 1080 60p (without the unpredictable crashing of the hacked GH2 when faced with scenes involving a lot of fine, moving detail). This ability, accompanied by the myriad of other well publicized, documented positive features sold me! And in particular, its ability to wrap in MOV versus the GH2s sole AVCHD, was extremely attractive concerning the horrendous rendering time AVCHD (even on some of my very powerful workstations) required when heavy color grading, etc., was required. I do a lot of run and gun shooting in poorly lit venues, so the first thing I did was to start a series of set ups involving such scenes. And here is where I ran in to a brick wall with this camera, compared to the GH2. I use all of my Sonys only with set ups permitting manual prefocus. With the hacked GH2 I found that I could shoot light or very dark using the camera's auto focus, and I could depend upon it for an immediate, reliable focus, even in the darkest of scenes.

Ah ha, you can see where I'm heading. In dark scenes, in contrast to the GH2's uncanny abilities, the GH3's auto focus is hunt and seek or total failure. Now if I could even manually focus, that would be another matter. BUT I CAN'T. And further, and this is the almost total knockout for me for this camera, I cannot reliably focus manually with this camera under any circumstances, BECAUSE I CANNOT SEE WHAT I AM SHOOTING, with the LVF.

Now those of you who use the fold out screen may find this a non-issue, but with the GH series I have always used the electronic view finder, and intend to continue to do so. In the GH2, the EVF is LCD (basically black and white with color "artificially" added), and is always comparatively razor sharp, presenting a highly reliable view of the scene being shot. In contrast, the LVF in the GH3 is OLED: it has the definite advantages of showing greater and more accurate contrast, less color fringing, and greater speed, with less smearing of fast moving objects. BUT THE VIEW THE LVF PRESENTS IS MUSH, compared to any other camera I have used.

If this could be fixed with a firmware update, fine, but it can't. If the camera's features could be improved with a peaking function, fine, but evidently the nature of the image processor does not permit this. So, for the moment, I continue to shoot with current projects entirely with my Sony Camcorders and the GH2. I always use the GH2 now for dark run and gun. And where I have time for a fixed focus set up, I invariably depend upon the Sony EX-1 for not only the greatest fidelity and low noise, but its relatively superb audio recording. If pressed, I have yet to find a darkly lit scene shot with the GH2 where the noise cannot be successfully removed in post - of course with a substantial diminution of detail and loss of color fidelity - in a word, pretty awful!

I intend eventually to attempt to use the GH3 only in brightly lit scenes - my assumption, based upon other user reports, is that under relatively bright venues the auto focus, whether momentary or continuous, will be accurate and reliable, no matter that I cannot see what I am taking, other than for framing, and viewing the on screen histogram.

I hope and trust that some of the really stupid additional downgrades of the GH3 from the GH2 will be fixed by Panasonic in its first firmware upgrade; these include in particular the newly introduced non-defeatable auto turn off of important screen indicators after a few seconds, the audio pre-peaking distortion and non-defeatable audio limiter, and the substandard performance of all I-Frame set ups. Otherwise, I would have immediately returned this camera as totally unacceptable.

What a terrible shame it is what Panasonic has now rendered, in view of some of the really outstandingly great improvements the camera otherwise offers. ......."

So, sports fans, that's what I had to say in the dealer provided review area, after spending four hours in comparing the dark venue viewing of the GH3 compared to the GH2. And by the way, I failed to mention that the REALLY superb video performance that I'm getting with the Sony EX-1 is with the on-camera data collection at 100 Mbps provided by the nanoFlash. And along with so many of you, I look forward hopefully to the hacks that may eventually improve the great positive features of this camera even more!

there is no way to do that... for now!