Hi Windfire and Robert,
Glad you are enjoying your GX3 cameras. I am still plugging away with mine and I am still very pleased with it. It has, like most cameras good and bad points, I feel for my type of photography and the way I use a camera, its plus points outweigh its negative points.
There are two main issues that most people ask about.
1. No EVF - The camera as standard has no eyepiece. All framing is achieved via the LCD screen on the back of the camera. I have no problem with this. I had a bridge camera prior to this camera, a Canon SX50. it had an EVF that a rarely used, preferring the LCD screen. I must admit, it makes it a challenge to focus on a moving object, but that is not really something bridge cameras excel at anyway.
2. The RAW continuous shutter speed is very, very slow! Again, I just don't shoot in RAW, so this is not an issue for me. I find the HQ JPEG is just fine for what I do.
I find the image stabilization good even at the extreme of the zoom. I occasionally go into digital zoom 100X to just get a poor record shot of a distant bird. I can do this hand held. I do at times use a tripod, but 90% of my shots are hand held.
I have found what works bet for me is to shoot in shutter priority. I set the shutter speed to around 125 in lower light. Aperture is set by the camera and I set ISO to auto. Obviously, in better light conditions I up the shutter speed.
Most focusing is done with the standard small square setting. I have learnt though, that for shooting through branches or any other pictures that have lots of clutter the auto focus can lock onto rather than the actual subject the best results come from using the cameras manual focus.
I just press the MF button on the lens and turn the focus ring to ensure what I want is in focus and not a blade of grass in front of it. The camera zooms automatically on the subject to help in achieving focus.
A recent example of a hand held picture take pointing the camera upwards almost vertically. The Peregrine was high up on the Cathedral and the camera pictures were better than those I took with my digiscoping equipment.
Hope some of this is of use to you.
Regards
Moocher