gh3... any typical problems?

[Bill Bruner]

I use a pistol grip with a trigger plugged into the camera's remote port, and the "double click" trick is required there as well. I rely on the big flashing red dot to tell me when I am recording (or not).

I don't think I've ever used the red "movie" button in 3 years of owning GH1/2/3 cameras. It's an artifact of a bygone era, as far as I am concerned.

[Chris Duczynski]

I agree about the display - you are left with a flashing record light and a timer - the screen is clear - beautiful.....except I would like the audio meters left up. During interviews in loud environments I find I am constantly triggering the display to check audio, but that's about it.

[Les Wilson]

You miss the shot when the thing you wanted to film is in the past because you were busy pressing the button twice. There are other scenarios that are similar such as you think you pressed the button before the displays turned off but you just missed it. It takes second for the camera to show the blinking red dot and after you wait to see it not blink, the moment is gone.

Recording should be a highly reliable and simple operation that does not require a lot of cognitive load on the brain. Ditto the displays turning off. You should be focussed on the creative aspect of what you are doing not on operating the display every 10 seconds so you can keep an eye on the settings for what's happening in front of the lens and as Chris pointed out, visually monitoring audio. The GH3 designers did poorly with these ergonomics. Panasonic won't fix if they feel users give them a pass and are selling cameras anyway. Public criticism holds their feet to the fire.

The shutter release button does not do everything as asserted here. The dedicated record button lets you start video recording when your camera is in one of the photo modes. It's one of the first features shooters wanted when DSLRs for video hit the scene.

[Noa Put]

Recording should be a highly reliable and simple operation that does not require a lot of cognitive load on the brain.

That's not the case here Les, I press the shutter button once and it records, I have a visual confirmation that it is recording whether the screen info dissapears or not, if I press the shutter button after the screen info dissapears to start or stop recording I also don't need to press twice and the red blinking dot tells me it is recording or if there is no red dot it's not recording, so here I don't follow your reasoning, if you use the dedicated record button, yes, you can have issues when you don't pay attention but that's not the case with the shutter button.
I use that shutterbutton to automatically focus before or during recording and to show all info on my screen, that's 3 different functions in one button easily available. It looks to me you only want to see negative things in the camera and while the technicians surely made some design mistakes there are other easy ways to deal with it. The only thing that does require constant monotoring is sound and that's the biggest design mistake, all the rest of the screen info I don't need during recording and if I do it's there in a split second.

[Chris Duczynski]

Ditto on that Noa

[Les Wilson]

Be nice. There's no need to attack me.

My post was answering your question of how shots are missed. Shots are missed due to the design flaw of the record button not the shutter button. Why have it if users have to use the shutter button? Why not fix it in firmware? The display timeout and the record button are justly criticized by experienced shooters. When you become an experienced shooter you will understand.

Panasonic marketing folks love fan boys like you who give them a pass for their mistakes and they use you to justify not investing in making firmware updates that fix these problems. You are also used when it comes to new products and whether to invest in features like peaking, zebras or false colors. They say you are ok with a camera that usability flaws and lack these features.

[Noa Put]

Shots are missed due to the design flaw of the record button not the shutter button.

When you become an experienced shooter you will understand.

I thought only inexperienced shooters miss shots ;)

I do agree with you that the button which should be used to record doesn't function like it should and that Panasonic needs to address it, but if you can use the shutterbutton instead which does work like it should, why insist on using a function on the camera that makes you miss critical shots, hasn't happened to me since I started using the shutterbutton.

Also the info on screen is only critical for constant monitoring audio and there I also agree with you that the disappearing screen info makes this a almost impossible task, but beside that pulling the info back on screen is also just a matter of pressing the shutter button slightly.

It doesn't mean we have to accepts these flaws and it should be addressed to Panasonic but we also shouldn't be blind for any usable workarounds that this camera provides.

[Chris Duczynski]

The record button is a DOG - don't use it. It makes the whole disappearing display scenario an even more complicated operation. The shutter button does do it all Les, except make me a cappuccino, which I hope is in the next firmware update.

[Noa Put]

The shutter button does do it all Les, except make me a cappuccino

Only a fanboy would believe that will happen, but if it does, let's hope it won't require pressing the button twice :)

Since all design mistakes appear to be because of people like me I wonder where one would best address this kind of flaws? All joking aside and seriously, we can complain about any typical problems in a thread like this but Les has a point that if you do nothing, nothing will change, let's say you want the screeninfo to remain on screen and only to disappear if you press a button (like with any other camera), how do you bring this message to Panasonic and how do you make them change their minds that this is important enough to develop a firmwareupdate? I"m sure that by now many users have complained about this in fora but that doesn't quite seem to do the trick, what does?

[Les Wilson]

I do use the shutter button. Started using it in the middle of a trip this past July the moment I figured out the record button defect. I hadn't read anything about it even though the camera had been selling since last November. Too many fan boys and not enough critical review. I've since read more complaints about these same issues on other forums. A thread named "GH3 ... any typical problems?" should be a safe place to render these flaws explicit.

There are scenarios when the shutter is the less convenient button of the two and it's a pity it's badly designed. The same is true for the overlay displays. Plenty of situations when you want them displayed longer. In fact that sums up the design pretty well. It has these design flaws that reflect a limited imagination by it's designers who are apparently inexperienced with shooting and are held captive by product marketing people who have lots of ammunition that users don't care about the flaws.

[Jim Snow]

If camera manufacturers would use professional videographers to do design reviews before designs are finalized, they could avoid a lot of design mistakes such as the record button 1-tap / 2-tap problem. I am talking about REAL professional videographers, not engineering technoids.

[William Hohauser]

How many camera manufacturers really ask working video pros what they need before designing? Maybe a couple but certainly not Panasonic. Their camera design for video has been terrible for years. It's known around the industry that Panasonic's SLR department doesn't communicate with the Pro Video department. They are designing from a still camera perspective and perhaps it's better with still photographers but I wouldn't know.

Ever since cameras no longer needed to be in large bodies that had to be perched on the shoulder for hand-held work, nothing has really been designed intellegently except to make everything smaller. Note that the Panasonic Pro DSLR cameras are actually getting bigger as photographers were complaining that a small size wasn't working for them. The JVC Pro video division does make an effort to get input but they have stayed in the ENG realm for the most part.

Look at how Blackmagic Designs designs their cameras. Technically impressive but even people who love the cameras say that the design is flawed for many reasons. Blackmagic is one of the best companies out there and even they didn't really ask before finalizing a product. This is very prevalent in industry, I worked with a hardware designer who was in the Microsoft X-Box division years ago. He quit as he was disgusted that the engineering people were forced to fit the hardware in a box designed before they had finished the hardware prototypes. The box was too small for the CPU's heat sinks but Microsoft execs refused to budge, the chassis design came first even if that meant replacing millions of X-Boxes due to the red circle of death.

[Noa Put]

So in other words, if you complain or not, nothing will ever change with an existing model? My Sony nex-ea50 is not able to quickly scroll through it's iso values, like you can with a dslr, everybody complaints about it and Sony brings out a new firmware but it only adds what nobody asked for. I see this trend in so many different camera's, why does teh g6 have peaking and the gh3 not, why can you select etc mode in the g6 in 50p mode and not with the gh3, the g6 is half the price of their flagship yet has more useful features, I"m sure it's just a matter of a firmware update. I thought Panasonic used to listen to their users, something that was proven with the dvx100 line of which I did own the last version, looks like some things changed along the way.

[William Hohauser]

Actually I found the DXV100 the start of Panasonic's trend away from making cameras with the user in mind. I was using Panasonic cameras for years before, the CLE200, CLE250, CLE700 because they were reasonably priced well designed cameras. The DXV series and HXV series went further and further into bad ergonomic design. These were not cameras for long days of hand-held work due to the brick like weight distribution. I switched over to Sony for a few cameras and then to JVC. Now I use JVC video cameras and Panasonic GH series. I like my GH cameras a lot but if I am to be in uncertain situations, the JVCs come out no question.

Years ago I was on a few focus groups and I could see how little the advice was being accepted. Frequently the designers are looking for confirmation that their work is good and if people say otherwise then it's a "bad group".

[Noa Put]

I always thought that with the "a" and "b" version the implemented new features where for a big part based on user requests? Then I must have been wrong informed.