GH2 Gh3 full specs now posted

Panasonic to temporarily close plants in China. This does not sound good. http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/...d-violent-anti-japan-protests?lite&ocid=msnhp


Canon did the same with their plants. Honda and Toyota are considering it too.

The Chinese are very vehement and adamant when it comes to nationalist issues, even though these islands are but tiny specs of dirt.


Are the GH3 and the new pro lenses being made in China? Does anyone know? I know that the GH2 and many other lenses are.

I believe that Panasonic is more heavily invested in China than Canon. So I think that they may suffer the worst, if this crisis should continue.

That would be simply awful and tragic, if it should actually come to pass.

120917-chinajapan-protest-stryflag-1a.photoblog600.jpg
 
Okay, I know it's common for people to say "I'll just stick with the old one, I'm disappointed in the new one" whenever any new product is released, but ... just dig in through those specs...

1. Sharpness, contrast, and color are now adjustable in 11 steps, instead of -2 to +2.
2. Slow-mo at 60p, and also at 50p, as well as 30p.
3. An OLED screen on the back instead of LCD. One that you can actually see even in broad daylight.
4. The viewfinder is almost native 1080p!
5. You can rack focus with an automatic lens now, by using touch autofocus on the display. Just point at where you want it focused, and the lens will automatically focus to that area of the screen. Could be very handy when dealing with long lenses where DOF is extremely shallow and touching the camera causes jiggles and bouncing in the image.
6. "Lightning" autofocus performance
7. A headphone jack(!)
8. Stills recorded even while shooting video.
9. Overrideable controls when in iA mode -- you can tell it to bias the white balance, the brightness, or the focus sharpness one way or the other even when in full-auto mode.
10. Almost looks like it has Scene Files... not sure what the "Scene Guide" is, but with the more extended controls, we'll probably have people making custom scene files for the GH3.
11. .MOV recording for easy editing, no more need for AVCHD file folder structures.
12. 1080/60p live recording
13. NTSC/PAL switchable
14. Custom-settable guidelines and moveable histogram
15. Vignetting shading compensation. How cool is this? If you have a c-mount lens or something that vignettes, the camera can automatically compensate that out so you get an even field of illumination...
16. SMPTE timecode
17. A 3.5" mic jack instead of the silly 2.5mm.
18. In-camera HDR, although I'm not sure if this works only in stills or in video too.
19. High-bitrate 50mbps codec already -- factory guaranteed, no need to hack
20. Alternative high-bitrate 72mbps all-intra codec built-in, factory guaranteed, again no need to hack
21. Weather-sealed to some degree
22. Intelligent noise reduction that vacuums up noise in the darks -- which will lead to better compression even at the same bitrate
23. Intelligent noise reduction that knows the difference between an edge and noise, so it will hopefully preserve edges better and result in overall sharper-looking, cleaner-looking footage
24. Lower ISO of 125 is possible, which may help with broad daylight exposures
25. WiFi for iPad/iPhone/Andriod apps, who even knows what potential this brings...
26. A battery grip for long-duration battery life
27. 7 customizable function buttons
28. Potentially better HDMI monitoring -- found one quote where they said it was suitable for professional use or something like that, but can't find that now.
29. You can trim and split clips right in-camera, so you can extract the "good stuff" and delete the wasted parts
30. Viewfinder/display lag is greatly reduced vs. the GH2
31. You can use the viewfinder and OLED flip-out screen simultaneously
32. A built-in level gauge (that was the one thing I missed from my old 7D, and now it looks like the GH3 has it)
33. Apparently you can execute a power-zoom from the LCD, dragging on the LCD to have the lens zoom. You can assign a zoom speed to a function button. Perhaps you could even control zoom through a wireless app.

And that's just from digging through the Panasonic site for five minutes. I'm sure there's lots and lots of things that I missed.

This looks like a HUGE upgrade from the GH2, in my opinion. Will the imaging hold up? Will it have more DR? Those are questions I don't know the answer to yet, but just based on how much effort they put into the rest of the camera, I sincerely doubt that they "forgot" to make the images look better.
 
Okay, I know it's common for people to say "I'll just stick with the old one, I'm disappointed in the new one" whenever any new product is released, but ... just dig in through those specs...

1. Sharpness, contrast, and color are now adjustable in 11 steps, instead of -2 to +2.
.

Perhaps this is why some people mentioned Bloom's piece looking a little soft. Maybe we can now dial the sharpness 100% off or at least very low compared to the GH2. The other sample recently posted on Vimeo seems to be sharper so the 11 steps of details setting may account for that. The GH3 could be worth the upgrade price alone just to be able to turn off all electronic sharpening.
 
Okay, I know it's common for people to say "I'll just stick with the old one, I'm disappointed in the new one" whenever any new product is released, but ... just dig in through those specs...

1. Sharpness, contrast, and color are now adjustable in 11 steps, instead of -2 to +2.
2. Slow-mo at 60p, and also at 50p, as well as 30p.
3. An OLED screen on the back instead of LCD. One that you can actually see even in broad daylight.
4. The viewfinder is almost native 1080p!
5. You can rack focus with an automatic lens now, by using touch autofocus on the display. Just point at where you want it focused, and the lens will automatically focus to that area of the screen. Could be very handy when dealing with long lenses where DOF is extremely shallow and touching the camera causes jiggles and bouncing in the image.
6. "Lightning" autofocus performance
7. A headphone jack(!)
8. Stills recorded even while shooting video.
9. Overrideable controls when in iA mode -- you can tell it to bias the white balance, the brightness, or the focus sharpness one way or the other even when in full-auto mode.
10. Almost looks like it has Scene Files... not sure what the "Scene Guide" is, but with the more extended controls, we'll probably have people making custom scene files for the GH3.
11. .MOV recording for easy editing, no more need for AVCHD file folder structures.
12. 1080/60p live recording
13. NTSC/PAL switchable
14. Custom-settable guidelines and moveable histogram
15. Vignetting shading compensation. How cool is this? If you have a c-mount lens or something that vignettes, the camera can automatically compensate that out so you get an even field of illumination...
16. SMPTE timecode
17. A 3.5" mic jack instead of the silly 2.5mm.
18. In-camera HDR, although I'm not sure if this works only in stills or in video too.
19. High-bitrate 50mbps codec already -- factory guaranteed, no need to hack
20. Alternative high-bitrate 72mbps all-intra codec built-in, factory guaranteed, again no need to hack
21. Weather-sealed to some degree
22. Intelligent noise reduction that vacuums up noise in the darks -- which will lead to better compression even at the same bitrate
23. Intelligent noise reduction that knows the difference between an edge and noise, so it will hopefully preserve edges better and result in overall sharper-looking, cleaner-looking footage
24. Lower ISO of 125 is possible, which may help with broad daylight exposures
25. WiFi for iPad/iPhone/Andriod apps, who even knows what potential this brings...
26. A battery grip for long-duration battery life
27. 7 customizable function buttons
28. Potentially better HDMI monitoring -- found one quote where they said it was suitable for professional use or something like that, but can't find that now.
29. You can trim and split clips right in-camera, so you can extract the "good stuff" and delete the wasted parts
30. Viewfinder/display lag is greatly reduced vs. the GH2
31. You can use the viewfinder and OLED flip-out screen simultaneously
32. A built-in level gauge (that was the one thing I missed from my old 7D, and now it looks like the GH3 has it)
33. Apparently you can execute a power-zoom from the LCD, dragging on the LCD to have the lens zoom. You can assign a zoom speed to a function button. Perhaps you could even control zoom through a wireless app.

And that's just from digging through the Panasonic site for five minutes. I'm sure there's lots and lots of things that I missed.

This looks like a HUGE upgrade from the GH2, in my opinion. Will the imaging hold up? Will it have more DR? Those are questions I don't know the answer to yet, but just based on how much effort they put into the rest of the camera, I sincerely doubt that they "forgot" to make the images look better.

THIS. Very excited for this camera.
 
11. .MOV recording for easy editing, no more need for AVCHD file folder structures.

I actually find that more than a little disappointing. The QuickTime API has more than it's share of flaws, especially when used on a 64 bit system. MXF OP1a or even MP4 would have been the preferable container for the All-I modes. It's long past time MOV got retired from this industry.
 
The GH3 could be worth the upgrade price alone just to be able to turn off all electronic sharpening.

That raises a question. At what setting would the electronic sharpening be 'off'. I'd expect that to be zero, with settings below that actually making it softer than natural (sort of built-in cheesecloth), and higher settings turning on the sharpening.

Does anyone know for sure?
 
Regarding the apps, the "Lumix Link" free app (which is what the official GH3 page refers to) is available right now on itunes (and I imagine Google Play as well, also mentioned on GH3 page), including screenshots and all. The description mentions other camera models instead of the GH3, so maybe they still need to update the app to make it compatible with it.
 
That raises a question. At what setting would the electronic sharpening be 'off'. I'd expect that to be zero, with settings below that actually making it softer than natural (sort of built-in cheesecloth), and higher settings turning on the sharpening.

Does anyone know for sure?

Almost all cameras use some form of electronic detail and typically the 0 mark is in the middle. A lot of video cameras you have to set it to the lowest setting to remove it completely. That is how image sensors work and they need a certain level of filtering so they don't alias all over the place. Cameras like Red keep the detail off so you can add it yourself in post but that is why raw red footage can look so soft at it's native resolution compared to a regular video camera.
 
I actually find that more than a little disappointing. The QuickTime API has more than it's share of flaws, especially when used on a 64 bit system. MXF OP1a or even MP4 would have been the preferable container for the All-I modes. It's long past time MOV got retired from this industry.
I would agree, I would have preferred MXF. But there's legions of Apple Users who will be enthralled to have native Quicktime support.
 
What? 35-100/2.8 and camera for 1499? That has to be a typo.

Edit: nevermind, that's definitely the price of just the lens. lol


What that page does confirm, though, is that the GH3 body itself is only $1,299.

So it will significantly undercut both the Nikon D600 and Canon 6D in cost.

The camera has got to be manufactured in China, for it to be coming in at such a low cost.
 
I don't think they undercut these two at all. They are very different beast from M43 to Full frame. I don't see someone considering full frame going nearly the opposite way to M43 unless they focus 100% on video.
 
What that page does confirm, though, is that the GH3 body itself is only $1,299.

So it will significantly undercut both the Nikon D600 and Canon 6D in cost.

The camera has got to be manufactured in China, for it to be coming in at such a low cost.

If I recall correctly wasn't that the body only price for the GH1 and GH2 when they first came out as well? These cameras never were expensive across the board.
 
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