Times are changing and so is the equipment, this time last year I would not have dreamt of using a Lumix GH3 for second camera to a Canon C300 in fact one of the camera manufacturers at IBC 2013 was surprised at my choice of camera…a DSLR rather than a video camcorder.

This is the first time I have had a chance to use both cameras in anger and once again the Panasonic GH3 has surpassed itself but more about that later.

For the first time in a while I used a RODE lavalier mic to pick up Alastair, the owner of Glidetrack, it almost let me down but I discovered the lead that screws into the mic was faulty but with some gentle persuasion I got the mic working again.

I was on a sennheiser shotgun mic, both mic’s were fed into the C300 while the GH3 had the Lumix gun mic as a sound sync for multicam.

All the incidental shots were filmed with the Panasonic GH3 as this is such a versatile camera to run about with, the Canon C300 with rails etc. needs to be tripod mounted as its far too cumbersome to hand hold.

I was going to give you the spiel about the C300 being so much better than the GH3 but I am not going to kid anyone the GH3 is holding its own against the C300, I do hope the GH4 has the XLR attachment as this will convince me to run with GH cameras for most of my shooting. “Why not get rid of the C300” because it still produces very good, quiet cinematic pictures and is built for purpose…XLR’s, HD SDI, easier to pull focus and is the top rented camera of 2013, with so many plus features and bought outright I would be mad to get rid of it. The GH3 is very capable but as a serious sound tool still needs a Tascam DR60D to make it happen and makes the camera tall and bouncy in use.

The new Glidetrack carriage literally in the door that day is unbelievable…three weeks ago Alastair gave me an updated carriage to test and I thought it was the best yet but that soon changed when I tried this new carriage…smooth is not the word…it feels like the camera is riding on a pocket of air its a vast improvement on three weeks ago.

I will let you see our documentary when its done, one last bit of techno info, all the pictures in this blog were produced by my latest Lumix camera the DMC-GM1 this is a cracking wee snap and grab camera.

The camera has a micro 4/3 sensor with interchangeable Lumix lenses, all the pics were taken with the kit lens a 12-32 f3.5-5.6…it also has a very fast shutter allowing you to photograph children and dogs with ease…fantastic. My thanks to Scott for taking the behind the scenes pictures with the GM1 which I may add he had never used till I handed it to him that morning.

Just to let you see the quality of the picture from the Lumix GM1…the pic above is a 100% enlargement.