Official Panasonic GH3 topic, series 2

Hallvalla

Wait, what are they saying here?

DE: Switching to high-speed video now, does the 240 frame-per-second mode require focus to be set at the beginning or is it able to track-focus at that frame rate?

Panasonic: It depends on the combination of body and lens. Right now, with current products, only the body can go 240 fps. But by the time sales start, we'll have a firmware update for the 12-35mm lens, which will make it fast enough to focus at 240 fps with the GH3.

driftwood

UK Pany GH3 stockists/dealers are attending a GH3 training day on 15th October. Word is for a UK release in Mid November.

Vitaliy_Kiselev

@driftwood

Good news. Hope that they'll have all items in enough supply.
I think OLED viewfinder is now most risky part (contrary to custom sensors in previous cameras).

endotoxic

@Vitaliy_Kiselev Seein it that way, I think mayor risk is in all the new design overall. Oled, body, sokets, termal apoach as was said in the interview is mayor concern. I didnt knew HDMI cable could handdle heat by its contact to soket. Its like ovious but...well. Also as they said, they picked a sensor that was available, all the camera now is more custom made, also sensor handle well heat, so we have beter iso handling.

I like when they said pro and consumer share some parts, but the rest is from the brand they work to. Really the sensor side is the lest "lets see what happens" part, body wise is kind of diferent.

lets see what happens.

Aria

Earlier I speculated that the GH3 Sensor was possibly the new AF200 sensor they were already developing but decided to just put everything into the GH3 rather than a new Pro Camera since the AF100 didn't do as well as hoped and the GH2 was so popular. I still think that this is likely what Pany did here.

I love the idea that they put a heatsink on the sensor. Less heat leads to less noise when the conditions get tough. If they haven't done some blocking trick to the firmware this thing could be the most hackable camera ever :) Seems like the entire architecture is much more robust than the GH2. I get the sense this camera can really be pushed much harder than they have it set to do in Stock firmware.

Ashun

It's quite astounding that Panasonic actually gave the full well capacity (approximately). This may be the first time a manufacturer has commented on something like that.

45,000 electrons is right up there with the D800, and if they can keep the read noise down (4 electrons or below), the GH3 should be much better than the GH2 for raw images.

From sensorgen.info, the D800 at 100 ISO has 44,972 e- saturation vs 2.7 e- read noise, giving: log(44972/2.7)/log(2) = 14.0 stops.

They have the GH2 at 10.9 stops.

Vitaliy_Kiselev

@Ashun

Yep, but here it is clearly said that it is theoretical capacity, and for D800 it is practical measurements.

balazer

1080/60p HDMI output is fabulous news, if true. I hope they weren't mistaken in saying that. The only other camera I know that does this is the Sony NEX-FS100.

It sounded like they were saying that rolling shutter is due solely to read-out speed. From my calculation based on 100 ms for the full sensor and 2x2 binning in 1080p, a 1080p video frame read-out will be about 1/60 s. I'm not sure how good that is, but I suppose it's very similar to every tube TV camera. ;)

The GH2's 1080p video uses funky binning, with every other output line being sourced from a different number of pixels. I already see that this is improved in the GH3, with the output being much more smooth and uniform, if slightly less sharp. 2x2 binning would mean the sensor read-out is 2304 x 1296, which they said is downsampled to 1920 x 1080.

I'd absolutely love to see a 2:1 ETC mode, with the same 2x2 binning, but a crop instead of scaling to get down to 1920 x 1080. The crop factor would be 1.2. Maybe it's so close to 1x that Panasonic would never bother with this, but it could yield a sharper picture and let a person use lenses more flexibly.

The part about continuous recording time and actual recording time did not make sense. An 8-GB limit would yield only 23 minutes at 50 Mbps. To get the 240 minutes listed in the spec, it would mean a bit rate of less than 5 Mbps.

karl

"The part about continuous recording time and actual recording time did not make sense." - yes, and also the editors comment that "most modern cameras" would be using a FAT32 filesystem and are therefore limited to 4GB files is bogus, in reality all SDXC cards are used with an exFAT filesytem (the camera manufacturer would violate the SD consortiums standard if it did not) and exFAT is not limited to 4GB per file.

Another section that did not make sense was: "The reason we couldn't include it (Focus Peaking) in the GH3 was just a matter of available engineering resources. Of course, we have to make priorities, and this is one of our top priorities." Obviously, if something is your top priority, then you would assign your resources to it, first.

I missed most of the "breaking news" phase on the GH3 while being on vacation, are there already raw sample videos taken with a GH3 available somewhere that allow to judge its qualities?

Vitaliy_Kiselev

@karl

Look at first post of the topic.
After this click on big link to wiki page, you'll find samples page on it :-)

bwhitz

I missed most of the "breaking news" phase on the GH3 while being on vacation, are there already raw sample videos taken with a GH3 available somewhere that allow to judge its qualities?

There are some if you search around. Although, right now, it looks like they were taken with an early firmware and/or picture profiles. To some of us, it looked like a NR and sharpening overkill, resulting in a mushy-crunched image with a substantial aliasing increase over the GH2. Although, it's seeming more and more like these were just the settings they gave (for whatever reason) out in the pre-release cameras. If I were you, I'd just wait to see some footage from the shipped final models. Allot of people (including me) had bad initial reactions to what may not be finalized footage. Just wait till they ship and save yourself the headache... :)

Vitaliy_Kiselev

exFAT is not limited to 4GB per file

While exFAT is not limited, implementation in camera is limited :-)

Obviously, if something is your top priority, then you would assign your resources to it, first.

Also lack of logic. This is most requested feature. Their top priority is finish all already existing or planned features and only after this assing people to implementing requests. This was the meaning.

Vitaliy_Kiselev

Allot of people (including me) had bad initial reactions to what may not be finalized footage.

Generally, it is almost exactly repeating figure with any camera :-)

duartix

If bandwidth was the sole limitation in readout speed, this camera should theoretically be able to achieve 720p @ 180fps.

Ralph_B

@ balazer

1080 60P HDMI output is indeed exciting, if true. But how would we test it? The only devices I know of is the Blackmagic DeckLink 4K Extreme, and maybe a Gemini recorder with an HDMI to SDI converter.

woodybrando

feature i'd like to see is hdr built into the sensor where every other pixel has a different iso say 160 and 800. pull the shadows from the 800 and the highlights from the 160. combined into one hdr video. is this anywhere near possible? or is pixel independent iso science fiction?

vicx

1080 60P HDMI output is indeed exciting, if true. But how would we test it?

I have a AJA Kona LHi that captures 1080p60.

Ralph_B

I have a AJA Kona LHi that captures 1080p60.

So, vicx, are you getting a GH3? :)

konjow

The only pre order on my side of ocean is in UK for 1550£ Im wonder if any one is ordering for that price?

matthere

By all accounts the US price of $1299 is equivilant to aprox £800!

I won't be paying £1550 for this! I'm pretty fed up of being treated like I have more money than sense..

thougts2uk

does the GH3 have the ISO bug?

tenjin

the price in Europe is a joke. Even ordering in US or Japan with shipping and customs taxes will be way cheaper. And we won't have this 30min limitation. But some on-line discounters in switzerland may have it for around 1300$ so I am waiting (also to check the videos of the final build in the hands of various users)