Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

As a very happy GH4 owner, I preordered this when I heard it had the same 4K video technology, and boy does it every delivery amazing 4K footage! I'm someone who takes hours of video footage for every still photo taken, and even though this camera takes gorgeous video, I've been rather disappointed in some of video-related issues this camera has. 1. The microphones are very sensitive, and thus pick up every sound the camera makes. The mics pick up the focusing engine, the Stabilization engine, and the lens zoom. If you turn of IS, turn off auto focus, and don't zoom... it still picks up some clicks. I don't know what is still happening inside the camera when all those other things are off, but it's extremely loud in the audio track. And there's no external mic input, so you're pretty much out of luck with audio on this device. 2. This lens, while crisp & beautiful, has the strongest lens artifacts of any camera I've seen in my 30 years as a photo/video guy. I'm not that averse to lens flares, but when photographing towards the sun (I love sunrise & sunset shots) this camera produces absolutely HUGE lens flares, bright purple streaks with bright green coronas. It's unimaginably bad, especially when zoomed in! I mean, they're pretty lens flares, and very unusual, but I don't want flares this bright or colorful in all of my landscape sunset shots. I'll attach some images so you can see what's happening. 3. There is a fair amount of rolling shutter effect when shooting 4K video, so if you pan left or right your architecture will tilt rather dramatically. Slow pans won't be bad, but if you pan quickly, you'll notice it. That's not that uncommon in digital cameras, but it stood out in a few shots so I felt I should mention it. 4. The arbitrary 15 minute recording limit for video is just annoying. I've heard people claim that they limited the camera for heat reasons. That's silly. You can record for 15 minutes, and then just hit the record button and it'll go on and on like that. So why limit us? Politics. Plain and simple. And it's a real set-back for people who use this for video. That being said, getting 4K video this pristine for under $1k in a NEARLY pocket size format is just insanely cool! If they had been more careful with the audio, or at least provided a microphone input jack, and used some better lens coatings to avoid lens artifacts, this would be a perfect camera.