| Cost Benefit: |
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5 |
| Durability: |
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5 |
| Features: |
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5 |
| Finish: |
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5 |
| Fit: |
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5 |
| Overall: |
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4 |
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Janet W. from Wynantskill, NY: |
| I moved to M43 from a Nikon system two years ago, and have been using the GH2 for the past year and a half as my primary camera. I use it solely for stills, not video, and was going to wait to see how the GH3 was reviewed before I bought one. However, after seeing some GH3 photos from people whose work I am familiar with (and who also had been using the GH2), I was extremely impressed with the image quality, so I decided to get the GH3 sooner rather than later.
After taking the GH3 out this week for a workout, in all my usual haunts, I have to say I am extraordinarily impressed by both the IQ and the useability of this camera. It is a beautifully engineered camera that sits well in hand, has everything you need at your fingertips (and you can conrtol what and where your most used features are located), has a phenomenally good rear display, and is just a joy to use. It exudes quality, solidity, and confidence, and is really a benchmark for the M43 format.
Ergonomics aside, the proof is in the pudding so to speak, so even the best designed bit of gear would be useless if its output did not live up to expectations. No worries there....The images I came back with from my comparison outing were markedly better in multiple areas than those from the GH2 (and from an EPL5 that I had also given a try on the same subjects).
One of the things Panasonic has always done very well with its M43s cameras is to preserve fine tonal and shadow gradation in their image files, and the GH3 is no exception. The dimensionality of the images due to this capture and preservation of image information, is just remarkable. On viewing one of the photos I had taken, a family member said "it's like you could reach in and be in the scene".....Dynamic range is clearly better than on prior models, and the color is just spot-on, which means that you can even use JPGs if you happen to want to.
High ISO performance is also improved significantly. I've worked with ISOs up to 3200 so far with it, and I have gotten saturated images with excellent detail. This is QUITE an improvement over the GH2 high ISO performance. In addition, if you want to do NR in post processing, the GH3 has a nice fine grained noise pattern in both chroma and luminance noise, enabling excellent results with a minimal amount of work in post.
Overall, my impression so far is that this is a professional quality camera that has been remarkably well thought out and has robust controllability and great IQ. I would not hesitate for one second to recommend this to either stills or video shooters who want an excellent, versatile, and robust camera, and who want it all in a small form factor. This is a winner of a camera. |
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