tlovegrove

NX1 and 30mm sold, 45mm and 85mm left

NX500 sold

I'm selling off my kit, so if anyone is interested let me know and I'll get you pics, etc. Lots of perfect feedback as tlovegrove on ebay, fredmiranda, mu-43, etc. Tim

With advice from some of you, I picked up a G6 recently for corporate video work (actually replaced my Canon 6D with the G6 to save money). I thought I was getting a GH3, but due to an inventory error by keh I ended up with no GH3, so I picked up a G6 off Craigslist. This is my first experience with Micro Four Thirds. FWIW, first impressions from my first weekend of shooting: Ah, the joy of a camera from a manufacturer who cares about video!! Now that I've seen how video-friendly Panasonic can make these things, I'm even more dumfounded that other manufacturers don't do the same thing (Dear Nikon, I would have bought a D5300 and been all-in with Nikon if you didn't have that ridiculously short video time limit). In less than 5 minutes I understood the menu system and had all of my key video settings ready to go. Very intuitive. Love all of the custom fn keys. Delighted by the battery life, no overheating issues, and no video time limits. First thing I did was set it up and just let it run - an hour and a half later, it was still recording just fine, and still had 2/3 battery life. My first touch screen, and I like it. The very light plastic is a shock coming from DSLR bodies, but overall I like it. That LCD hinge just scares me a little bit. It seems flimsy. Glad to have the electronic viewfinder for shooting video outdoors. The "record" button frustrates me some - it's indented so much into the camera body. If you're not looking at the LCD, it's not clear when you've depressed it and when you haven't. I love the little lenses. I got rid of my 6D partly because I just didn't carry it around because of size, and so many of the lenses were truly massive. I'm really excited about the deeper depth of field. I got the 6D partly because I wanted the super-shallow DOF. But for the kind of corporate stuff I do most of the time, I had to stop down to at least 4.5 just to get the nose in focus! So it's actually really cool to be able to shoot in the 1.4-3.5 range. Of course that also helps to offset the higher ISO noise issues. Video autofocus is surprisingly usable. I manual focus most of the time, but am pleasantly surprised to see that this will do the job if I really need it. The 2x crop factor is going to take some adjusting. I love using older manual focus lenses for video, and of course anything wider than 24mm costs a fortune. So I'll have to use MFT lenses to go wide. But gratefully I've discovered that one of the key focal lengths I need is the FF 100mm equivalent - which means the whole world of affordable 50mm lenses are available as options! Colors are really going to require some adjustment. Coming from Canon, I'm so used to pulling back the deep reds and rich colors. With the standard output from the Panasonic sensor, I can get a very natural look for skin tones if I do quite a bit of color correction. But overall I'm just surprised at how flat the image is, even when I crank up contrast and color. It seems to be really tailored toward film-look customizations in post processing. Again I'm not really concerned by this - I'll learn the PP that works best to get what I need. But it's a big shift from what I'm used to. Grateful for your advice that pointed me toward the G6, Tim

Yes - so it makes sense to stick with one brand of lenses when possible (at least one brand of non-native MF lenses) so that they would all work on the speedbooster (since most of us can't afford a speedbooster for each individual lens!).

You're definitely right that this is the biggest potential weakness of this lens choice. My hope is that we'll be OK, since we're not trying to follow a lot of action. Just need some focal length flexibility beyond primes. We shall see...

BTW, picked up Andrew's GH3 ebook and am reading it today... I also picked up the OM - MFT adapter so I can try out my OM 50 1.4 and other beautiful and tiny OM lenses. They'll fit the size of the GH3 a bit better than the Nikon. :)

FWIW, I ended up ordering a used GH3, plus a Nikon 35-70 f/2.8 zoom. I ended up leaning toward the GH3 over G6 for the battery life, ability to monitor live hdmi out, and the flexibility with lower compression settings. In terms of lenses, when I did some depth of field calculations I realized that I didn't need to go faster than 2.8. I also realized that a zoom was important for some of the work we do with speakers on a platform, etc. It's a hard setting for just primes. I couldn't come close to affording the Panasonic 2.8 zooms. There were lots of MF 3.5 zooms out there, but I really wanted the 2.8. Thankfully we don't need anything beyond the 35-70 range for our purposes, so I was able to afford the Nikon. No other 2.8 zooms were in that price range ($200-300). The size and weight of the zoom isn't a big factor since we're working off a tripod 95% of the time. Of course I can easily add some primes if I find a situation where we need to get faster than 2.8. So bottom line: excited to get to work with a GH3 and a 2.8 zoom for not much over $1000. Hopefully will arrive by the end of the week. Thanks so much for your help! Tim

The manual is not very clear (it talks about AC adapter but never names it), but the G6 is listed here: http://shop.panasonic.com/shop/model/DMW-AC8 so apparently it is supported. That's great news.

Very helpful! Somehow I missed the news that in USA the GH3 will record indefinitely. Also true of the G6, I assume/hope?? That would be such a huge help for us. One little concern and one big concern if I go with the G6 instead of the GH3: Little concern: G6 cannot be used with an external monitor (which we have and use) Big concern: am I understanding it right that G6 does not have an available AC adapter? tosvus, my lens budget is limited, and the more I think about, I think I could make do with 50mm primes instead of 40mm. So that shouldn't be a problem. Actually already have an OM 50 1.4 that could do the job. Matt, thank you for the very helpful pros/cons list. Andy, thank you for the great lens recommendations - there were some things there I had missed before. I'm new to Panasonic so not used to watching their pricing - do we really expect the GH4 to push down the Gh3/G6 prices? Or could it be in enough of its own category that they might hold them steady?

I do all video work manual focus, mostly with older MF lenses (have used Sony DSLR and mirrorless, Canon 6D and Eos-M). I need to spend up to $800 for a body to shoot corporate videos of two styles: lengthy presentations / speeches (depth of field doesn't matter; manual focus; sometimes need to use up to ISO 800) talking head or interviews - shallow depth of field is very important for the look we want; ISO 400-800 I only need two focal lengths, but pretty specific, for those two uses: a zoom in the range of 100-135 FF [60-85 APS-C; 50-70 MFT] a fast prime 80-85 FF [50 APS-C; 40 MFT] My other key requirements are no less than full 29:59 recording time, and ability to withstand the heat of recording for an hour straight. Options I can see right now: something like a Canon 6D + manual focus 50mm and 70-210 zooms does well, but is well out of the price range. I'm uninterested in something like the 70D, as video AF doesn't matter to me, and it's too expensive. I have an EOS-M, but I don't think that form factor will hold up to the heat of 60+ minutes of straight recording. Video menu options are pretty limiting. I started to get excited about Nikon D5200/D5300, especially with so little moire/aliasing, and very affordable 50mm fast MF primes, but if I'm understanding it right they have 10/20 minute recording limits!? That kills it for me. The G6 / GH2 / etc (I could even press the budget and get a GH3 body) could be options, but getting shallow enough depth of field is a big concern, and there aren't exactly a lot of fast affordable 40mm manual focus primes available! I would love your input, if you're willing.