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R. Jones
Reviewed in the United States on May 5, 2015
Very little information exists about this mic and how it works with the GH3. Panasonic's manuals are pathetic and have virtually no information about how to properly use the mic/camera combination. Luckily a few generous and knowledgeable souls have posted to a few forums with a little info. First of all I was surprised (and a little disappointed) to discover that the audio system on the GH3 has AGC on all the time. In fact, it can not be turned off. What this means is that during quiet passages the camera will turn up the gain for you to try to capture as much sound as possible. THIS is likely the reason why people are complaining about the mic being noisy. How much gain the camera adds is a function of the mic level setting. At 1 the gain is + 3db. At 19 the gain is +20db. I found that leaving the level set to 1 was fine for a relatively loud indoor high school band concert. Noise wasn't bad and the loudest passages did not distort or "pump". After processing some of the footage, I should have boosted the level for the (quieter) orchestra performance by a few ticks. The directional mic did a great job ignoring a lot of the annoying coughing and chatter during performances. There was some noticeable compression when people clapped loudly close to my position in the back of the auditorium. The mic was also very sensitive to simple things like having my headphone cord drag on the leg of my lightweight carbon tripod. In other words, it is not very well isolated. I had some gaffer tape with me and solved the problem by taping the cord to the tripod leg. So here's the bottom line with this mic. It is good for its intended purpose of providing advanced sound with convenience and portability. If you want better sound then the built in mic but don't want to haul around a separate digital recorder like a Zoom H4, AND you don't want to fuss over your sound in post production AND you don't want to mess with wire adapters or extra batteries, this is for you. If you want total control and highest quality sound, you probably wouldn't be reading this and would already have a separate digital recorder anyway.
Lawrence D. Becker
Reviewed in the United States on January 17, 2015
I've had this a while and used it with the GH3 and now GH4. This mic mates well with those cameras. I like the internal options that the GH4 has with it - wider stereo field, zooming to match the focal length of the lens you're using, Shotgun, or Super Shotgun. It really does work well with the camera.Some have said they don't like the tone of the mic compared to a Rode, or that it's noisy. I have Rode mics, and I really can't see a significant difference. The "noisy" part might be on-camera noise from fiddling with the camera controls while this mic is mounted in the hot shoe (it does have some sound isolation through the mount. Reasonable care in shooting takes care of this.I find it a great mic for run and gun shooting, much less trouble than mounting a Rode or other shotgun mic on the GH4 (you need an isolation mount, a XLR to 3.5mm cable), and this comes with a dead cat, an extension cord and a nice padded case. If you need significantly better sound, you're going to go with an external recorder and XLR mics anyway... I really like this mic for quick, light rig shooting. That's what it's intended for. If I want GREAT Sound and can do a proper setup, I'd use my Sennheiser G3 lavs, maybe my AKG 414XLS, and maybe a AKG C451 on a boom... fed into an external audio recorder or my Atomos Shogun, but for just carrying the camera and a light kit - this is great... I'd buy it again.
dtk5
Reviewed in the United States on August 12, 2014
The mic is ok. The highlight is the great integration with the GH4. The sound quality is ok. Not stellar, just ok.
Danny Grizzle
Reviewed in the United States on January 27, 2014
If you don't know what mid-side stereo recording is, this review will be lost on you.My problem with this mic is not the mic itself, but the Japanese tendency to over engineer every aspect of a camera to the point there are millions of modes and no clarity. Obfuscation of fundamentals.The operating principles of mid-side recording are a synthetic stereo image created by matrixing the phase relationships of two microphones: a center channel cardioid or super cardioid, plus a figure 8 mic, with two lobes at right angles to the center channel.The huge advantage, and the reason that mid-side stereo is the preferred method of recording for motion pictures, is that the stereo field, the acoustic stage and apparent channel width and separation, can be varied in post productionThat's where the implementation of this mic falls apart. It preempts flexibility in post by doing a destructive edit in camera.This would be a superb solution, except Panasonic can't leave well enough alone so that the mid and side channels are recorded independently to the L and R channels. Instead, the mid side decoding occurs in the camera. There is minimal chance for adjustment in the field when using the GH3 for video, and because the M-S decode occurs prior to recording, there is no flexibility to manage the stereo audio image in post.Not only does this ruin the promise of this mic, but it also ruins the center channel directionality of the mic, something highly desirable on a camera mounted mic.Bottom line - almost a great solution, but ruined by over engineering camera automation.If someone knows different, please respond. This problem could be fixed by a firmware upgrade.Side note to Japanese camera engineers: if you want to throw the kitchen sink with every codec and bit rate and blinking light ever conceived by man into your designs, and we all know this is what you do, please consider that your advanced users understand these principles as well as you do, and you should not override their ability to take manual control of the camera.The lack of a mid-side solution in the Rode VideoMic line confirms the prosumer nature of their products. Messed up lack of self-restraint and feverish Japanese engineering do the same thing for Panasonic. If Panasonic, in their vast organization, would get better focus on protecting fundamentals, it would be much appreciated. As it is, Panasonic product design is leaning a bit too much in the direction of Bluetooth enabled automated self cleaning bidets with flashing multicolor LED light display. Cameras are not video games!
Franchot Barba
Reviewed in the United States on July 30, 2013
it picks up background noise like crazy, and the actually voice sound distant and not clear enough. extremely disappointed with this mic
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