Panasonic Lumix GH3 Digital Camera Review

Chromatic Aberration

We found chromatic aberration to be a rare issue with the GH3 in our lab tests; the slanted squares of our sharpness chart show a little diffraction, but any chromatic issues are wiped clean by the camera. In field shooting, however, it was apparent that there are more issues with the lens than lab scored would suggest.

We caught a pretty nasty purple flare in several of our shots, similar to the purple flare iPhone 5 problem that has been dissected across the web. We're not chalking this up to anything other than good old lens flare, but it's something worth noting, and utilizing the provided lens hood for the 12-35mm lens is recommended as a result.

Otherwise we found the GH3 performed very well in most situations, even where extreme contrast was present. There's more CA visible in our test shots—even without the flare problem—but no more than we'd expect from any other camera's kit lens.

Distortion

The 12-35mm lens goes a little bit wider than the 14-42mm kit lens that most Micro Four Thirds cameras come with, though barrel distortion is kept in check by software processing. Micro Four Thirds cameras (specifically Panasonic ones) are generally pretty aggressive about correcting linear distortions, and the GH3 is no exception. The GH3 shows just a .6% barrel distortion in our lab tests, with that turning into a .32% pincushion distortion by the time you zoom into 26mm. There's less correction on the telephoto end, though, with a 1.19% pincushion distortion still visible as you zoom all the way in on your subject.