Shooting with the GH3...What a kick!

by Skip Cohen

Most of you know I'm not a professional photographer, my expertise is on the management/marketing side of the business. However, I've been fortunate to work with some of the finest artists in the world, going back to my days at Hasselblad and Rangefinder/WPPI.

I'm also not a Panasonic Luminary and this is Luminary Corner, but I'm so blown away by what this camera can do and wanted to share a few images.  A month ago we hit the road for a week, spending time with family and friends in Ohio. I took my GH3 and just one lens.  I simply had the best time I've had in years with a camera in my hand.

Besides it being light and so easy to travel with, I love working with the touch screen; the viewing capability in low light; my ability to switch back and forth from still images and video; and even some of the artistic presets. In fact, Bob Coates, one of the Luminaries, did a guest post on using the Illustrative Art Setting a few months ago.

There's a car show in my home town every Friday night in the town square. I love the detail and craftsmanship of virtually every car on display, especially the work that's been done on the engines.

The hit of the show, for me, was a 1937 Packard. The owner spent eight years looking for the parts. It took four cars to build one complete piece of perfection. It then took him five years to completely rebuild it, right down to doing his own paint job.

In terms of the GH3, while I'm not a big fan of in-camera manipulation there are a couple of sweet presets. These were all shot in the "Expressive" mode which just tweaks the saturation enough to make it perfect on a subject like this.

One of the highlights of the trip was spending a day and a half at Kalahari, a water park that's definitely made for kids with energy and not out of shape grandparents! Well, meet our grand-daughter Belle. I used the in-camera soft focus feature - again, I don't usually use in-camera presets, but love these two images with Grandma.

Meet, Maddie, granddaughter number two and a priceless moment just up from her nap, complete with sleep lines still on her face.

Everything I shot was jpeg with the GH3 body and the 12-35mm zoom. Because the camera is so light and easy to travel with, it's the only lens I even bothered to take. I also love the ability to set up wi-fi. Had I been posting images at the time, everything would have been going directly to my blog.

The quality and features Panasonic has put into the LUMIX family is pretty remarkable. For the first time in years there's a camera with me almost all the time!