@andersen123 Well done! Love the music, the shots look a tiny bit underexposed, but good control of the highlights and I enjoyed your shot composition. Did you use any filters?

@GlueFactoryBJJ ... Was just looking at some 4k from the GH4 on a full 4k monitor at NAB yesterday ... yea, why didn't they put all that in our GH3's? ( ha ... )

Still, dialed in with good post, the GH3 isn't anything to be embarrassed about ....

Love mine too ... with the little (or sometimes not so little) irritants that come with it. EVERY tool will have them. That's part of what makes having them fun, though, isn't it? I know mid-70's through late-90's Jag owners ... who love their cars ... constantly berating the original electrical harnesses shorting out every few weeks, and the way those Brit-designed/built vehicles could NOT take 90*-and up heat without blowing their cooling systems out ... on cars they'd nursed for 20 years! :)

Hello all. Just wanted to say thank you for your input, comments and advise since I started this thread a year ago last May.

I Sold my GH3 to be able to purchase the GH4 and made the purchase on line Friday. Hopefully the GH4 will arrive soon!

I've started the same thread topic for the GH4 for anyone wants to participate. http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/10255/gh4-best-video-settings#Item_5

@Draksider

A lot of the folks around here use the mov over the AVCHD, for noise reasons ... less with mov. And after first trying out everything at -5, the consensus has been more contrast -4 to -2, sharpness -5 to -3, saturation around -2, noise at -5.

This is using either "standard" or "neutral" profiles most often. DO get a nailed WB in-cam, and of course dead-on exposures. You don't have the latitude to get either wrong and get the best end-result.

Done right, over all it's a pretty nice rig.

Made my own music video to showcase one of my songs. It's electronic music aka melodic dubstep. Anyhow... made this with my GH2 and GH3. All details in the description. If you like the music better alone its available online on the major streaming sites. Enjoy.

@Vesku @rNeil

Thanks for answering me ! You are right, noise is much better in .mov ! Vesku, could you say me how i can change this "normal player settings" ? It looks weird for me to need to edit the player, for having the "real" camera results...

@Draksider

You can change video levels in your graphics card settings or maybe your player settings. If you want to see full range of GH3 mov video levels you must choose 16-235 in graphics card video color settings.

Windows media player has no color settings but many others has. I use Potplayer. I can change video levels whatever I want in Potplayer so I can make some kind of "grading" in real time. For example I has overexposed skiing videos which looks fine when I make color correction preset for them in Potplayer. In fact I has many color settings for different cameras and situations. All settings in Potplayer can be saved as presets including color corrections, sharpening, noise reduction and even zooming. It is funny to use smooth zooming during playback and see how sharp GH3 videos really are.

Potplayer is also handy because it shows videos seemingly without any black screen between files. It is like watching edited result.

No particular concept in this video, just trying to push as always gh3 in the extremes.

I loved my GH3 but the GH4 is a big step up. 4K downsampled to 1080 looks damn good. But, if you don't care for that.. the zebras, focus peaking and better OLED are really nice too.

So....

Been using the GH3 for a while now - probably the best part of a year. I've tried a few different settings, but still haven't really found any that blow me away - with skintones always a bit of a problem. I can get some decent looks - especially when I'm lighting and it's not a doc approach - but I'm working 'round the look, rather than having the look work for me.

Here's the latest thing I've shot - it's a teaser for the feature I'm making in August. I'm only going to use the GH3 as a B-cam, and for some slow-mo on the shoot, with a BMPCC as the A-Cam. It's a shame, but it just doesn't give me enough flexibility in the look...

​Hello, I have read all the 32 pages and I'm full of technical details. Thank you first of all because you have helped me with various information. I have done also many tests with the custom settings as all of you. I have read and tested various and various combinations. I believe it's no use to upload my test videos.

I have lenses leica 25mm f1.4 and I have got this camera most for indoor videos, especially for low light rooms, that's why I bought this lenses. From what I have seen from GH3, I'm very impressed.

Some things that I have noted:

1) In low light and using tripod or moving the camera, I'm using AVCHD (1080p-50p (PAL)) as the frame rate it's more smooth and not choppy and it's a bit brighter and with less noise as it is in MOV. If the video is static I can use MOV.

2) In good light (e.g. outdoor) I believe MOV FHD 50p is the best but I have not done many tests and I'm not sure.

3) I'm using AFS/AFF focus because the others I think have awkward focus

4) ISO 1600 because the other ISOs are not so good

5) Menu, Video, Exposure - set to P. I tested with M and some shutter speed combinations e.g. 1.x/30 or 1.x/50 but more or less is the same with P. For instance 1.6/30 is brighter but choppy, 2.0/100 is darker with lot of noise, so I believe it's fine with P.

6) I had taken as granted the -5 sharpness because everyone in this forum was referring to and also some youtube guides. I had also used many -5 in the settings as a flat image but the thing is that when you have flat video, you have to rely so much afterwards in post production and filtering / plugins, etc. Why!?! Why don't you just take a normal video with normal settings, eg 0 0 0 0 and then you do whatever you want if it's necessary? So, the -5 sharpness didn't work for me but +5 worked (!)

7) So the portrait with combination ONLY +5 sharpness (0,+5,0,0) had very good image to me !! And I have put in Sony Vegas and I just add brightness & more contrast (one setting only) and voila. It was just fine. No other settings.

8) Just for the record (I don't know if I will use these again in the future) in standard custom, the -5 -5 -2 -5 had a good brightness and the -5 -5 0 -5 had good colors. I haven't seen a lot of differences between AVCHD and MP4. Same bit rate, same file size and the quality in the video is more or less the same.

Starios I'm near to Athens and maybe we could go out some day for a chat (se kammia kafeteria pou exei gemisei o kosmos..).

In order of course in the menu it's contrast, sharpness, saturation, & noise reduction. So ... here goeth some advice.

First, this is NOT a Log or RAW camera. When we first got 'em a couple years back, like everyone else, I immediately jumped on the ALL-I bandwagon and set all the above options to -5 to get the flattest possible image. NOT wise, as it turned out. Not at all. After many experiments personally, and participating here and reading/viewing what others tried and were finding ... and some of the posts were rather critical of Panny & the GH3 in particular ... "we" found it wise to back off a bit. Take the camera as it is for what it does do, which ... it does really pretty decently at.

Second, you can shoot this thing both for direct-delivery with a wide range of settings in-cam, including the artsy modes, and many do. Or you can shoot it for best post/grading workflow, as I do. I've never played much with any of the artsy stuff, i-whatevers and all, but many have, and have done cool things with them. So understand my settings are for a post-processing workflow that includes PremierePro & Speedgrade.

Third ... ALL-I hasn't been as nifty as we'd hoped. Most of us don't use it, really, as it can be noisier at times, especially with sort of blocky noise. I find AVCHD a bit of a pain, and as the MOV seems to work great, it's simpler to work with afterwards. Also some found more noise in AVCHD than the MOV.

I shoot in Natural with the below settings on realistically everything. I know where I am & what I'm getting. Some have other preferences, of course. I tried "Portrait" and that just seems to make the skin tones worse.

Camera settings:

NAIL EXPOSURE IN-CAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There is no way to over-emphasize the above. You do NOT have the dynamic range to recover anything unless you are shooting in say a very flat-lit studio settings. STRONGLY suggested you learn to use an incident light meter and know where your highlights will fall. Shadows can be set to black to get rid of noise, but ... banded or blown highlights are forever!

CUSTOM WHITE-BALANCE!

Again, you don't have the data down-stream to "re-set" your white-balance the way I've been used to with say the RAW still files off my Nikon D3. Get your WB as close to 'normal' in-cam during exposure, then modify it in grading later.

Contrast: -3

You can set it anywhere ... but lower doesn't get you anymore detail recorded, it just "raises" the visible shadows with their accompanying noise, and higher contrast settings can lose some data occasionally.

Sharpness: -3

Doesn't "hurt" my footage here, doesn't "help" it either ... best possible world in in-cam sharpening. First caveat, of course, "do no harm", right?

Saturation: -1

Yea, I was LOW sat for a while ... but the colors sometimes would be ... a bit unique, perhaps? ... in totally relying on sat gains in post. Also remember, contrast and saturation are the two main parts of image information, realistically ... raising contrast affects saturation and vice-versa. Dropping both way down seems to limit the total information recorded ... not the right technical way of saying it, but in effect "true". Widest range of detail capture seems to be done by going low on contrast, low/middling on saturation.

Noise Reduction: -4

Ok, not the best part of the Panny design ... so most people set it pretty low. YMMV, of course.

With the above settings, I can go into PrPro & edit, then over to Sg to grade, and it ... works. And grades rather well. Other than a LUT I've made using LUT Buddy (and a similar "Look" in Sg) to sort of get past the dang skin tone thingie Panny did to this camera. A secondary on skin tones to slightly increase contrast in magenta/reds in the mids, and change magenta hue slightly to red (less blue), seems to make the skin a bit more "real".