Panasonic Lumix GH3 Digital Camera Review

Dynamic Range

It's tough to compare the GH3's dynamic range results to other cameras yet, because there simply isn't the capability of developing the RAW photos the way that we'd like (release candidates are out, but we're still withholding judgement there). Looking at just the JPEGs is one answer, but it doesn't tell the whole story, as there's a significant amount of noise reduction being applied to keep the noise floor to a minimum.

Still, it's plain to see in our test shots using a transmissive 21-stop Xyla chart, we found the GH3 was able to replicate around 10 stops of dynamic range at its lowest ISO settings in JPEG. There's obviously a fair amount of correction going on, however, as well as gamma correction dropping some of the darker levels down a bit. Still, our testing program picks up around 10 discernible stops at ISO 125, a number that falls to around 7 stops at the maximum ISO of 25600. You get significantly lower quality out of those stops at 25600, though, as even by ISO 1600 you are beginning to see noise pollute lighter areas of the image. More on how we test dynamic range.