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GH3 Loose Hot Shoe (pictures)
  • djhesslerdjhessler

    I know there is a topic on this already, but Vitally please leave a thread for this, it's very important. As everyone knows already, the hotshoe becomes loose on the GH3, the sad news is that the screws come completely off. This weekend on a trip to San Francisco my hot shoe became really loose I had 2 wireless transmitters on it, so this morning I decided to open my gh3, yes I know very stupid!!!!!!!! Do not do this!!!!! it's not easy to do this and parts can easy break. After opening the camera I discovered that taking out the viewfinder is not easy, one bolt is blocked by the board and taking out the board was a bit too much for me, so there is one particular bolt that stayed out, yes .... I did not put it back because it is too difficult to put it back in without pulling out the board, so back to the hot shoe, the hot shoe seems to be screwed by two bolts on each side, incredibly both bolts came off, and the sad news is that one is probably inside my camera moving around because I only found one :-( so what I did is that I used a bolt from the outside of the body and put back two bolts on the hot shoe, but another sad thing I discovered is that this part of the camera is really weak, I honestly cannot see that much metal around here so my advice to people is: Do not put anything too heavy on there. Another sad thing is that yes the bolts that hold the hotshoe do not have locktite so that is why they come off so easily, all these small screws are not tight too much because if tightened too much they give out. Honestly it's sad to see such expensive camera made so flimsy in the inside, I have 2 GH3 and I hope they last me a good time cause I paid premium for these cams. The first picture has a red circle around the area where both bolts came off.

    When pulling out the back plate, I broke a part of the chasis, I think I was suppose to take out the dial and take a screw out from there, so be aware if you simply pull the back as I did, you will brake this part too. The camera is back together and working, I tested it and all seems to be ok even though I did break some parts :-(

    So there you have it guys, these hot shoes will come loose eventually unless panny fixed the issued on a different batch, I bought mine in November of 2012.

    See pictures bellow.

  • 10 Replies sorted by
  • peternappeternap

    I think I'm gonna stick a monitor on mine so I can get it over with.

  • MRfannyMRfanny

    mine came loose and i got it fixed at a service centre within a week surprisingly. they loctited the bitch. worst hotshoe design ever. I now mount heavy stuff on a cage.

  • escapehatchescapehatch

    Also had this issue with an early issue GH3 (Rec'd first week of Dec 2012). I was mounting a top handle to a hot shoe adapter. Now I use a cavision cage. Also my first GH3 bricked in about 4 months. Service was 5-6 weeks. I now own a second body for surety.

  • dancerchrisdancerchris

    I've never understood the DSLR user that mounts stuff to the hot shoe. It is made for lightweight items that are mounted with little moment arm, i.e. like a flash (consumer flash for consumer products, pro flash for pro products. Things like monitors, top handles, microphones, equipment bars, lighting units add undue load to the lightweight interface. Things like top handles in particular are bad idea since they produce a lot of prying torque/moment that can loosen or destroy the mounting parts.

    My $0.02

  • driftwooddriftwood

    Both mine broke early on. Must remember to take em in for the service.

  • EnoEno

    My GH3 just lost it's hot she yesterday at the end of an event. I'm devastated, because in this part of the year we have events weakly. Panasonic mast acknowledge this problem and do something about it, not only in the next model, but how about for now, for the pour sols whom invested a lot of money in there Gh3 cameras. Very sad. I can use a bracket to use the lamp and microphone on it, but I'm afraid the screws will make some sort short-circuit in the camera. Honestly I do not not what to do now, and I'm extremely nervous about this problem.

  • Sph1nxsterSph1nxster

    When mine broke the screws inside would occasionaly make the screen shift to all sorts of weird colours. I got it repaired at the UK centre and it has been solid ever since. Only cost me £10 to send and it was repaired under warranty.

  • EnoEno

    I have no problem sending it on warranty for repair, but I need it next Friday, and the week after that etc. I'm afraid it will take weeks, if not a moth to come back.

  • MRfannyMRfanny

    the screw will cause you problems. mine came loose within 3 weeks of use, got it fixed under warranty within a week where I'm from. if its out of warranty just open it up.

    I opened mine up recently to tighten up the lcd screws. you should locktite that too while your at it also =)

  • arprussarpruss

    The repair isn't really that hard. Just carefully follow the service manual's (online) disassembly instructions for Rear Case Unit, Main PCB, and Heat Radiation Plate Unit. Once these are all out, look at the viewfinder assembly from below. There is a screw on each side (one a bit recessed, near two wires). Remove those carefully so as not to lose them. Then you'll see the hotshoe underside.

    My hotshoe had lost two screws and two were loose. I found one lost screw, but I never found the other. I hope it doesn't short things out. I replaced the missing screw, and loctited them all. Then reassembled and it works perfectly.

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