Watch the First Film Shot on the Panasonic GH3

While it's not set to be announced until Monday, a promotional video for the new Panasonic GH3 was accidentally released yesterday. The video has been taken down numerous times but thanks to various YouTube users it has been uploaded again each time. In that video there were a few shots of Philip Bloom and Bruce Logan, ASC (who was in charge of the recent Zacuto Shootout) making a film with the new camera. That film, Genesis, was written and directed by Bruce Logan and DP'ed by both Logan and Philip Bloom, and you can watch it below to get a brief glimpse of what this new Panasonic camera is capable of.

Here's a little from Philip about what they used for lenses on the project:

Lens wise we used all micro 4/3 or 4/3 glass…A lot on the great Voigtlander 25mm F0.95, used on almost all the low light stuff as well as the SLR Magic 12mm F1.4. The Olympus 14-35 F2 was out workhouse. Used this A LOT. Also the 35-100 F2. Great glass. Not ideal for movie shooting though with the loss of focus when zooming in and fiddly focus. Lots of lumix glass was used to especially the brand new lenses coming out soon!

For some reason I like what this looks like more than anything I've seen from the GH2 so far. I can't quite put my finger on it yet, but according to Bloom the file will be available to download at some point after the announcement on Monday. Rolling shutter is still there, of course. For those who are looking for that to be fixed in any future cameras, I wouldn't hold your breath. The C300 does a very good job, but it's very expensive to fix, and even cameras costing $40K and $50K still have it! The two easiest ways to combat it right now are a mechanical shutter or a global shutter. Global shutters greatly affect noise and dynamic range, so until their development improves, we'll be dealing with that for the foreseeable future. Personally I'd rather have excellent dynamic range than no rolling shutter.

I'm sure this went through a decent color grade, but I think it's a great display of what the new camera can do. It's hard to say how much dynamic range has been improved, especially without a side-by-side comparison. The GH2 was one of the cameras that needed a ton of fill light in the Zacuto Shootout to deal with the limited dynamic range, so it would have been interesting to see how much better this new camera would have fared. Either way we'll be finding out more on Monday when the camera is announced.

Would any of you still purchase this camera even if it costs around $2,000? Are the new features enough of an improvement? What about those who have never liked the image from the GH2 -- does this short change your mind?

Link: New short film “Genesis” shot on pre-production new “G” camera from Panasonic…more on Monday! -- Philip Bloom