Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

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

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

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.

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

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. :)

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

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.

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

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.

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

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.

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

[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.

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

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.

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

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.

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

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 :)

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

I just realized that this particular thread, "gh3... any typical problems?" is 6 pages long, the longest thread on this front page of the lumix gf / gh series category.

For those of you who just arrived here:

THE GH3 IS AWESOME. SERIOUSLY. WE JUST LIKE TO RAMBLE A LOT.

Edit: great, my post just made it 7 pages now.

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

I agree, I use it 4 out 5 days for jobs and am really happy with mine. I find DSLR's in general more complicated to use than my XDcam and Z5, but it's "cinematic" advantages with quality lenses for the price are astounding.
And you know what's a really great thing about it....you can shoot broadcast quality footage around the world often without the hassle of a permit, which makes life a lot easier on shoots.
Great topic - I think there's a few more pages left in this thread yet.

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

This is going to sound incredibly amateurish, but... you need a permit? Wherever I go I just point and shoot and unless it's a museum or a private property, there should be no problems.

Also, why do you say a DSLR makes it easier? Because people are bothered more by video cameras than by (what they think are) still cameras?

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

A colleague of mine went to the racetrack with his nex ea50 just to shoot for fun but was stopped by the officials asking if he had a permit to film there, he didn't so they made him sign a paper that he wouldn't use any footage for commercial purpose and he had to stick a "press" sticker onto his camera.

If you would do the same carrying a gh3 no-one would ask any questions.

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

Good idea, I will consider this for my next event where videographers will not be welcome. I will also film with the flash popped up, so they'll think I'm really dumb and stay away from me.

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

I would never use that word to describe the GH3. This thread is long because it was hijacked to talk about stabilization

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

I just made a comparison between the gh3, 550d and nex-ea50 at iso 3200 and above, the gh3 was the cleanest of the lot, about the same sensitivity as my 550d but at 6400 iso the 550d is noisy as hell, same applies for the ea50, this one looks more sensitive at 5000 iso (highest I could go) but again a lot of ugly grain. It looks I will be shooting at 6400 iso with the gh3 when they kill all the light at the next wedding without having to worry that much about the noise.

the 50mbs mov codec is a little bit cleaner then avchd 50p (28mbs) but you have to pixel peep in a 300% blown up part of the image in photoshop to see it. All intra was more noisy and that was visible without magnifying the image, weird. So 50mbs mov would be the best codec to use as far as I can see.

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

I just love it when someone else does all this work that I try to motivate myself to do, although I know it's pretty important considering you have customers paying you to know what you are doing. All I can say is a big thank you for this, and I owe you a few beers if you ever decide to come visit Romania :)

PS: All I've filmed with the GH3 so far for paid events was in MOV 50p, so I was lucky!

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

If I had the time I would post a video with the results but I"m swamped with work and I need to get the gh3 under controll before Saturday, I"m off tomorrow shooting with the glidecam for an hour or so, just to test, that footage I will post, the camera is actually too light, even with the samyang 14mm lens on it but will see how it goes, will have to shoot with that combi this weekend so it has to work. I"ll keep that beer in mind. :)

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

This applied to the GH2, haven't tested it on the GH3, but supposedly the RED channel causes the majority of the noise. A workaround is to use tungsten white balance, to make everything blue - minimizes the information inside the red channel. Then you can get clean footage with high ISO. After which you color correct in post.

Again, I doubt the GH2 was able to get usable footage at ISO 6400, so that was probably very helpful for that particular camera. I've recorded at ISO 3200 and it still looks very usable. Haven't tried 6400 yet, though.

Your ISO 6400 footage, was it taken with the WB set to tungsten or something similar? Just curious! :D

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

The gh3 footage was noisy at 6400 iso but still much cleaner then both other camera's so usable for me in dark venues at weddings, but still need to see that this weekend when I can put it better to the test. Wil post a few shots next week.

I used a tungsten preset since I shot with indoor light.

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

Just testdrove my gh3 on the blackbird, the camera with a samyang 14mm (28mm equivalent on a full frame camera) is a bit too light, I have to extent the vertical rod all the way up and use the smallest weights which makes it more difficult to keep it from swaying to the left or right, I need to tweak the balance further to get it right but it's OK for use at the wedding I plan to use this on this Saturday. Need to get a wider lens asap, 14mm on this camera is too narrow.

I"ll get the battery grip later on which will make it easier to balance, my 550d had a battery grip and I had some more tilt and pan control on that combo as well, with the light gh3 it's very sensitive to the touch and it's always better to add some more weight to increase inertia in the pan or tilts you perform.

Here the test shot I did, I added some random shots I shot yesterday, I"m taking the camera with me every day now just incase I see something interesting to take it out and shoot, just to get better used to it and I like the output more and more, really nice camera. (there is no sound in the video)

I did notice something strange, I shot the steadicam shots in that 50mb mov codec but importing, editing and exporting was slower then just avchd 2.0, it almosdt looked like edius didn't like the mov file, think I"ll stay with 28mbs avchd in the meantime until I figure out why that is.

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

Wow... such smooth motion * _ * nicely done!

What wider lens are you considering?

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

I want about a 14mm equivalent on a 1.5 crop camera, so that means a 10 to 11mm lens that has f2.8, at first I thought about the Tokina 11-16 but I rather have a lens with a iris ring, samyang has a 8mm lens at f3.5 but I"m afraid it will be a stop too slow, 2.8 was barely enough and f3.5 might cause some issues. The Olympus 12mm is f2.0 but that's a risk when it's wide open to maintain focus, but you can use it at f2.8 as well ofcourse + it's not cheap. Then you also have the 12mm slr magic f1.6 but that one produces some ugly flare, so actually I don't know yet. :)

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

I completely feel your pain. I browsed through the entire 3 pages of Panasonic/Olympus MFT lenses on BH Photo, and the only lens that sparked somewhat of an interest was the 7-14mm f/4 Panasonic. But it's way too expensive. And it's f/4. So no thanks.

To me it feels like it's a battle between the Tokina and the Olympus. For some reason I don't trust the Tokina though. And I want to be able to use AF, the touch-AF feature produces beautiful focus pulls. Not that you will have a very shallow DoF on a 12mm lens, but still!

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

The 50mbs files will task your computer as it's a non-standard form of h.264 compression. Many computers and their video cards do not have the power to flawlessly play back 50mbs where the 72mbs intraframe files don't present a problem as each frame is there and not a complex calculation between GOP packets. My laptop plays the files OK until I start filming trees or water then it will choke up after a while. My tower computer mostly has no problems with 50mbs. The one thing to remember is that your finished edit will export flawlessly regardless of how choppy the live playback is in your computer.

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

Noa, I agree with Luc. Wow that footage looks great especially considering you aren't happy with your balance with the lighter weight yet.

I have a nice rig I like a lot to shoot with the GH3 and especially since I had a new Carry Speed VF-4 loupe arrive today. Everything I've ever read says it is very hard to get good with rigs like your Blackbird and they're definitely not cheap. So I always feel like I will never go there. Unitl I see how great the footage can look like yours and many others.

What kind of building was that, or was it an expensive old house going through renovation?

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

Do you know if they are much different from the mov files the canon 550d produces? They are also around 45mbs and I don"t have any issue with them, my pc is a recent one and the i7 processor is no slouch. I"ll perform some tests next weekend just to see how much slower the 50mb pana files are in post to export.

I won't be using the all intra as there is more noise in the footage which is a shame, even the 28mbs avchd footage looks looks better.

The balance was not exactly right as the camera was still leaning to the left a bit. I was also in a hurry and could not finetune the blackbird as I was trespassing since the building is closed for public. The building is a old Casino that is destined to be broken down. With the vertical rod pushed up all the way to the handle also gives very little room for tilt control in, there is a extra extension piece that can be mounted underneath the sled but I won't be experimenting with that and rather add some extra weight to the camera, in that way I can use the 550d this weekend as well when needed. (I still need to get a extra battery for my gh3)

I am still learning to control the blackbird better but must say that the very first time I used it I got some decent shots out of it, now after 2 years I"m much better in controlling pan and tilt motions but it is still not perfect and it takes a lot of practice and "feeling" to direct the steadicam where you want it to go in one fluid motion.

It has been discussed here as well that you are supposed to get the same results with some spareparts from home depot but that's nonsense, if someone can show me one video from such a rig with similar results I"m getting now (and I don't even consider myself as very experienced) I"d believe it but I"m sure they can't.

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

I sent some 50mbs B-Roll to a client that was shot on the GH3 and they had problems with the hand held footage on their i7 iMac. The tripod footage was OK. Once they converted the footage to an intra-frame format (ProRes) it worked fine. This is probably more an issue with the video card than the processor but I could be wrong. 45mbs might be just below the threshold for your computer. The choppy playback could also be a result of how the computer's software decompresses the footage and might be fixed with a software update if one is written. Anyway my finished work with the GH3 alway comes out fine.

And yes, 72mbs doesn't look good to me either.

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

Some weird thing going on what I"m sure must be a setting I have missed but I can't find it; when the lcd screen is open against the body and when I put on a hoodloupe, the screen turns black, when I flip the screen out and away from the body the image flips up side down as soon as I press the loupe against it. Anybody knows what exactly I need to change so the loupe doesn't create any unwanted behavior?

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

I was shooting hand-held with the loupe on the other day and the LCD went suddenly black. I immediately thought that I had hit the display button and while still recording was pushing it but nothing happened. I pulled away from the camera and saw that a leaf was hanging in front of the eyepiece sensor which had dutifully switched over to the EVF. You can go into the custom menu, page 7, and switch the auto eye sensor off. The upside down image, I don't know about. It never happens to me with a loupe.

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

Thx William for the tip, I checked and I allready had set the eye sensor to off but then I noticed something I didn't realize before. I have 2 older hoodloups here, one of them has a magnet where you have to glue a metal square onto the lcd screen and the houdloupe locks on to that with 4 small build in magets, worked fine on the 550d, the gh3 however reacts to those magnets and as soon they come near the screen it either turns black or flips upside down, weird :) I tested with a loupe without the magnets and that one did not have any effect on the screen.

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

Yes....another example of why would never use the word AWESOME to describe the GH3 but instead: FRUSTRATING.

I hit this in spades shooting discreetly from the chest and when holding the camera with my right hand (I use an Edelkrone Handstrap) and moving my hand across to push the record button or anything else on the right side. Basically, you have to stay about 6" away.

The setting that controls the behavior is not the Eye Sensor setting. You can only set that to High and Low. Setting the Eye Sensor to Low does not solve the problem. Rather, it is the second item buried inside the Eye Sensor Submenu. You have to set the very intuitive "LVF/Monitor Auto" setting to "Off". I know, I know, you feel stupid. It's so obvious. LOL

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

Same happened to me wearing a reflective safety vest, but not the upside down image - that's a new one. I think the reflectors triggered the sensor.

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

Got my varavon today, no weird lcd behavior with this one, my gh3 is almost ready for prime time :) There was also a sling follow focus strap included

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

Hi everyone. I have decided to upgrade my DSLR and the GH3 seems to be the best option for me for the price! My question is about editing the.Quicktime MOV H.264 at 50Mbit with FCP 7.

Currently when I use my Canon T3i, I import using iphoto, then I transcode the footage to apple pro Res and all is well..will this work flow also apply to the GH3 using the .MOV codec? I wont use AVCHD at all.

I would hate to spend more time transcoding than actually working.
thanks
E

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

That work flow will work fine. FCP7 will playback the files straight from the camera but your success depends on your computer.

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

Bugs or design oversights. Doesn't matter to me. Here's some more typical problems I hit on a recent week long adventure with the GH3.

As far as I can tell, storing settings in one of the 3 Custom Settings modes doesn't store aperture and shutter speed. Those values carry over from the last photo you took. So having one Custom Setting for video doesn't get you the fixed shutter speed you want. Even if you stored it in S mode. The shutter speed is still set to the last thing you did before going to a custom setting.

Auto ISO is not available in Video or M modes. This is a feature from Canon cameras you will miss with the GH3. It's a handy way to hold both shutter and aperture fixed while still getting some auto exposure help in fast run and gun situations.

On top of the other limitations of the GH3, I miss these features. YMMV. I do like having a flip out screen though... until the overlays turn off.... ;-)

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

Can one of the function buttons be set to activate Extended Telephoto "during" a video take? I set the function 3 button to Ext Tele and have tried to activate that mode during video takes, with the Extended Tele option in the main menu both On and Off. It does not seem to work. Both in manual still mode and in manual video mode.

Is that true..... you have to pause, and even then the function button doesn't seem to change it, only the main option in the menu. This would be one of the most handy things ever if you could switch it while recording, such as for back camera point of view and pick up shots during a wedding. I have the 35-100 Panny 2.8, and the 12-35 as well.


And did I read correctly above that the camera will NOT record video in any mode with Auto ISO set at a limiting level.... say 3200? If you just set shutter speed to say 1/50th to be near double 24 frames per sec with 24P, would the auto ISO then function, as well as adjusting the aperture? In either manual video mode or still mode when you hit the red button?

Re: gh3... any typical problems?
 

OK apparently you cannot switch to Ext Tele or off of it while recording, I have to be in pause. But in pause, should I not be able to toggle the Ext Tele on and off without having to spend more time going into the main menu? I chose that, Ext Tele, for the Fn3 button as it was offered. But even in pause, and whether I have Ext Tele turned On or Off in the main menu, hitting the Fn3 button makes no difference. Only going into the main menu seems to turn it on or off. What am I missing?

Help please?