gh3... any typical problems?

[Les Wilson]

Panny chose the OLED. Maybe it's not fit for purpose. Other things are left on and will burn in so it's arbitrary. I think it's a marketing excuse for a product defect that people are swallowing. Even so, it's my screen and if I want to risk a burn in, I should have the option. It's a non-issue for a lightly used camera anyway.

[Duane Adam]

Originally Posted by Luc Spencer

Thanks Alex! You see how bad it is when I tried to run alongside her? The GH3 was on a Manfrotto monopod with those 3 little legs that you can extend, in my head I considered them to be weights! Of course, the end result was extremely poor, and all the running footage had to be warp stabilized.

Surprised you didn't mount the camera to a bicycle. Nice work, what slider did you use?

[Luc Spencer]

Duane, I thought about it. Well, I thought about getting on a bicycle and getting someone to pull it along the track, but this whole thing had to be done on very short notice. I don't have a bicycle mount, should look into getting one though.

The slider is a Konova K3 60cm.

[Duane Adam]

It looks smooth. Almost bought one and then found a used Kessler. Love it but not sure it looks any smoother than yours.

[Luc Spencer]

The Konova is not as smooth as you think. I did about 3 takes of each sliding shot to make sure I got a good looking one. A lot of the time I feel little imperfections causing small bumps and slowing down movement as I push it along. I'm not very happy with it, but it does get the job done eventually.

[Alex Anderson]

Quote-"Thanks Alex! You see how bad it is when I tried to run alongside her? The GH3 was on a Manfrotto monopod with those 3 little legs that you can extend, in my head I considered them to be weights! Of course, the end result was extremely poor, and all the running footage had to be warp stabilized. "

It sounds like the father of these two.

XCAM Mini vs Skyler MiniCam Handheld Stabilizers CheesyCam

:-)

Cheers,
Alex

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Luc Spencer

The Konova is not as smooth as you think

Have one as well and regret to have bought it, I have not been able to get smooth slider shots out of it. The supplier has agreed I can send the sled back and they are going to send me a replacement but I don't have high hopes for it + I have to pay for sending costs to Korea myself.... Here you definetely get what you pay for.

[Noa Put]

Just returned from some quick and dirty shoot nearby my place and used that cheap 14-42 f3.5/5.6 lens) , I need to get the camera under controll for the following weddings I"m going to use it on so plan to shoot a lot with it just for fun.

The dissapearing info on the screen is indeed annoying, also the fact that you have to press twice to record, that's even more annoying so have to watch out for that. I now know I urgently need a hoodloupe to judge exposure and focus, I thought I underexposed each shot a bit but when I saw the footage afterwards it was on the edge of overexposure. Not sure if this camera has some kind of zebra so need to dive into the manual tomorrow. The oled screen looks nice from a distance but when I hold my loupe against it (one from my 550d that doesn't fit this one, I can see individual pixels, bit dissapointing that they didn't supply a higher res screen.

First impression on image quality though is impressive, the image is sharp as a knive, has good dynamic range and gives nice color in the standard preset with just a bit of color correction in post. Will be collecting shots over the following weeks and post when I have something decent to show. Will see by then if there are more workarounds I need to consider, at this moment the few drawbacks I found are easily forgotten when I see what this small camera is able to output. Who needs a bmc pocket camera when you can get this and 50p :)

Here just some quick shots I did. The sun was setting so a few shots have some sunlight but others, as they where taken later not which explains why some look a bit more vibrant. One tip I can give when you go out to shoot, go very early or very late when it's the "golden hour", everything looks nicer then. :)

Vimeo

[Les Wilson]

Originally Posted by Noa Put

...The dissapearing info on the screen is indeed annoying, also the fact that you have to press twice to record, that's even more annoying so have to watch out for that. I now know I urgently need a hoodloupe to judge exposure and focus, I thought I underexposed each shot a bit but when I saw the footage afterwards it was on the edge of overexposure. Not sure if this camera has some kind of zebra so need to dive into the manual tomorrow. ...First impression on image quality though is impressive, the image is sharp as a knive, has good dynamic range and gives nice color in the standard preset with just a bit of color correction in post.

Use the shutter button to start and stop record as a work around to the bad video record design. No zebras. Only 100 blow out flashing areas. As much as you may like the image, if you can expose and focus then it's of little use.

[William Hohauser]

The overexposed area flashing warning is insanity making. Perhaps still photographers can work with it but not for video work. Don't use it. Perhaps it's a coincidence but now that I am using the loupe I find that I can make better judgements of exposure and the histogram is making better sense. The LCD is very good and isolating it from room or sun light improves it's clarity.

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Les Wilson

As much as you may like the image, if you can expose and focus then it's of little use.

Thx for the tips! I still need to go through the manual to see what I can/can't do but saw there is a histogrtam so that's a start, I also ordered the varavon loupe as well because that's crucial for me to see what I"m doing, my eyesight is not good enough to judge from a distance. Didn't know about the flashing area's when overexposed (looks like something ML had for the 550d and also never used that) but can imagine it"s very distracting, would be ok in controlled environments (like when shooting for fun in my case) but not so much at weddings.

[Chris Duczynski]

[QUOTE=Les Wilson;1808244]You need to learn the camera better. ./QUOTE]

I'm not the one who needs an LCD full of displays like you do. I just need to monitor audio, I know what my settings are before I press record. Could it've been designed better, yes, do I really care, no. It's a mild irritation for the price.

[Chris Duczynski]

Originally Posted by Les Wilson

that's why it smacks of designers that don't know much about shooting video. It should be fixable in a Firmware update.

Ha, yeah Les, you tell em. Maybe give them a font type and size for the display. The firmware update has been discussed ad nauseum, but it's good you bring it up again and again.

[Les Wilson]

I spent 30 years in product R&D. As a rule, unless the product is getting bad reviews and sales suffer, marketing's attitude is "Let them eat cake. Chris says he'll buy it anyway." then they say something about lemmings. So without market pressure, they won't release the money to fund development to develop a fix. In fact, they will cut development funding so fewer and fewer fixes or improvements are made and it takes longer and longer to develop updates.

[Luc Spencer]

While I agree that Panasonic themselves need to release a firmware update that solves this problem, I'm sure Mr. Driftwood will fix it himself sooner or later :)