gh3... any typical problems?

[William Hohauser]

Yes, absolutely. Those models were a response to the frustration to the user experience with the initial release of the 100. But they then went and released the HXV200 which was like holding a cinder block with your wrist. Did they hand a few prototype models to camera people and ask, "Do you want to hold this?". If they did they ignored it. Every workable pro hand-held camera is thinner in width and has been for decades and Panasonic knew this. Why was HVX so fat? Probably due to the internal components but what they should have done was shift the weight distribution but that required more development resources that they were not willing to spend. Sony made the same ergonomic error when they designed the EX1 and eventually listened to professionals and made the EX3 which is a great camera (and was more expensive). But later they released the clumsy NEX series which are now slowly coming to the usability level of their ENG style cameras. Good camera design is out there and has been for decades but the trend to smallness has required reimagining of how a camera interacts with the user and nobody really has it yet. JVC who has been very good for awhile recently released the HM600 which is smaller than their other ENG cameras and there are some odd decisions about how the shutter speed is changed versus their older models but otherwise it's an easy, easy camera to operate. It would be great to have a camera like the GH3 in the body of a HM600 (the AF100 doesn't count) but I wouldn't expect the price to be the same, it's just not possible.

My point is that many companies have a process and sometimes a corporate culture that doesn't allow outside input easily no matter how benevolent it is. The GH3 is the result of a huge and active community that saw the potential of the GH2 and became very outspoken especially with the firmware hacks. Panasonic saw this, learned and designed the very much improved GH3 but then threw in a couple of weird adjustments because... They didn't ask anybody! Who would have said, "Yes, I like pushing the record button twice unlike every other record button known to man"? Nobody, and I am confident in saying this. The designers at Panasonic, who have otherwise done a great job, and I thank them profusely, went and made a feature out of pure fantasy. Sometimes this works great, sometimes not. Conversely I'm sure a significant number of pros would react negatively to a radical new feature that in the long run would be a great improvement. Possibly I would be one of them. Let's see what the Panasonic design team has come up in the rumored GH4 although I rather have them make a firmware fix for this now and I'll consider newer models more favorably in the future.

[Nigel Barker]

Originally Posted by Noa Put

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,

The G6 did ship about 6 months after the GH3 so it's not surprising that it has features that are not in the older model.

BTW I am sure that it's probably pilot error but I cannot get peaking working on my G6. I have it switched on in the menu. I press F3 & PEAK appears on the LCD screen but I don't see any of the blue highlighting that I have seen on demo videos.

[Les Wilson]

Originally Posted by Noa Put

...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. ...

This has been discussed at length on dvxuser. Panasonic says it's not just a matter of firmware update. Specifically, they said the chip they chose for the GH3 cannot support peaking and the G6 uses a different chip that can. If one knows anything about image processing and firmware, this makes sense.

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by William Hohauser

Yes, absolutely. Those models were a response to the frustration to the user experience with the initial release of the 100.

I was actually only refering to the dvx100 models where there was a time they did listen to user input, the dvx100 was the filmmakers tool that where on a budget and it was very popular, just like the gh3 is, it only looks they have lost track along the way, too bad.

The G6 did ship about 6 months after the GH3 so it's not surprising that it has features that are not in the older model.

If it's a limitation of the older chip on the gh3 I can understand, but we never know if that is really the case because they can tell you whatever you want to believe, look at what the magic lantern team has been able to pull out the 5D3, I"m sure Canon would also say the chip was not able to handle raw footage or be able to add any new features if those geniuses at ML had not been able to prove otherwise.

[Nigel Barker]

Originally Posted by Nigel Barker

BTW I am sure that it's probably pilot error but I cannot get peaking working on my G6. I have it switched on in the menu. I press F3 & PEAK appears on the LCD screen but I don't see any of the blue highlighting that I have seen on demo videos.

It seems that it was pilot error. as peaking does work if I switch to MF.

What I would like to use is single shot AF (AF-S) then fine tune manually but even though I have AF+MF switched ON in the menus I don't seem to be able to adjust focus manually until I switch to MF. Piolt erro again I suspect.

[Les Wilson]

Originally Posted by Noa Put

...If it's a limitation of the older chip on the gh3 I can understand, but we never know if that is really the case because they can tell you whatever you want to believe, ...

Read and be informed: GH3 Why Does G6 have Focus Peaking but not the GH3?

[Noa Put]

I just went through the first few pages and see users that bought the camera explain why they think it's not possible, as if they actually designed the camera :) They can only base themselves on info they get from a manufacturer, there is even a panasonic announcment in there but like I said, you can believe whatever a manufacturer or a user tells you with the only proof that it is like that untill a talented team of hackers comes along and makes things appear, or maybe not. Since I saw what the ML team has been able to do I have become very skeptical about any limitation a camera has and often limitations are build in for a purpose, like to protect sales from a higher end camera's or to boost sales from lower end camera's by giving them features a higher end one doesn't have but cripple them just enough in functionality so it won't hurt sales of the higher end one.

You will never know what goes on behind the screens, only the guys that designs and build the camera do for sure and you can bet they won't let you in on any company secrets. So it might just be the case or it isn't, will never know for sure and just have to deal with the limitations a camera has.

[William Hohauser]

We certainly don't know what's going on in the GH3 chip architecture. Maybe the hackers who were able to get into the GH2 can tell us why they can't get into the GH3. I would certainly trade the resources used to send a signal out the HDMI port (which I discovered isn't always the same frame rate as the recording depending on the receiving HDMI device) and have the resources devoted to focus peaking. But probably that's not possible. Devices like the GH3, while using computer technology, are not computers. They are designed very specifically with the components usually unable to perform any task besides the intended ones. This keeps the costs down while optimizing the performance. The ML hack is impressive but look how long it took for it to be discovered and designed. It's even possible that Canon engineers didn't even know that their components could do it. Computers are open ended, waiting for programmers to design software to use the available resources. You would have to purchase a whole set of add-ons to get the average computer to do the tasks a GH3 performs in a 1/24th of a second over and over again. It's very possible that Panasonic was't ready with focus peaking in a DSLR yet but they had to release the camera anyway for financial/marketing reasons.

[Matt Harvey]

This is not quite true. Whilst there is hardware dedicated to specific functions within the camera, there is also hardware that can be assigned to a variety of tasks depending on need.
Limitations to adding focus peaking could be down to lack of processing power (the processors are already loaded running the current functions), lack of banwidth (the processors have enough resource, but there isn't enough bandwidth between components to move the required data), lack of a specific hardware component, or just lack of developer resources to create the code (the GH3 isn't under active development anymore and only pure bug fixes are worked on, which indicates a very small team will be working GH3 patches).
I imagine most dev effort is being put into new prodcuts, especially the new 4k stuff, and the reality of the development process is Panasonic have already sold most of the GH3s they are likely to, from a business point of view it makes a lot of sense to put dev resource into new products not one that already has made the majority of return it's ever likely to make.
Big thing to note, the engineers DO NOT decide what features are provided or added to a cameras feature list. This is a decision purely made by management.

[William Hohauser]

I agree with you completely. It's most likely that the team at Panasonic devoted to designing these cameras is onto the next set of projects.

[John De Rienzo]

Either way, they are not listening to the end user...US!

There are certain 'BUGS' in the GH3 that I believe could easily be rectified in a firmware update, but Panasonic have decided not to listen and put their energy into their next product, which we will probably buy, only to find other bugs etc. which will then again not be fixed based on our experiences.

What does this say about Panasonic?

They have had ample opportunity to fix the quirks but our cries have fallen on deaf ears.

For me, it is simple...I will vote with my feet.