Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

With the GH1, Panasonic has succeeded in creating a digital "SLR" for people with tiny hands. The camera looks and feels in perfect proportion if you're a third grader or a very, very tiny adult. As a 6' 2" male, with average sized hands, it's very hard to pick-up or handle the GH1 without inadvertently pressing a button. As a director/cinematographer who primarily works in TV, I purchased the GH1 to shoot inconspicuous "B-Roll". We use larger cameras and multi-person crews to shoot in controlled situations, such as studios or planned locations. However, it's not unusual to need quick, available-light cutaways. For example, actors crossing a busy street with lots of out-of-focus pedestrians walking by. On a recent shoot in Washington DC, I needed to grab a 1080P cutaway of our actors walking near the steps of the US Capitol building. A quick and easy shot with the GH1, a very paperwork intensive and costly cutaway though normal channels. My comments that follow relate to my personal GH1 camera, serial # WE9HB0014xx The camera takes very good quality stills, but my comments relate to the camera's ability to shoot 24P 1080 HD video. Here's what I like about the GH1's video capabilities... The Panasonic's Micro 4-3 is an excellent sized imager. It yields a depth-of-field that's almost like academy aperture 35mm motion picture film (with the top & bottom cut off to yield a 16 x 9 image.) It's a good, practical size compromise and more than twice as big as 2/3". The 14mm-140mm lens that's included with the camera is very sharp, but it's only an F4 (wide) to F5.6 (telephoto.) If you're shooting quality indoor or low-light cinematography, you'll want "bigger glass." NOTE: I have noticed that the GH1's 1080P AVCHD encoded picture seems to look better with fixed (non-Panasonic) lenses. The GH1 has sophisticated digital signal processing to help correct optical short falls in Panasonic lenses. Based on focus and zoom settings, the camera modifies the image to minimize pincushioning and barrel distortion. Several people on the web theorized that all these complicated, processor intensive corrections use up much of the camera's processor capability and the video encoding suffers. At first I thought the argument was impossible, but now I think there maybe something to this. What's great about the physical size of the sensor & mount is that almost any lens can be easily adapted to the GH1. Without the space normally occupied by a mirror box, the flange distance between the lens mount and imager is shorter than any other 35mm SLR or 35mm movie camera. Ebay has many vendors who sell inexpensive adapters to allow Nikon, Canon, Arriflex, Minolta, Olympus... virtually any lens, including some C-mount models, to be adapted to the GH1 without any loss in image quality or F-stop. Remember that adapted lenses need to have manual iris and manual focus control. As far as I know, this camera is the only one of its kind to incorporate a very high quality electronic viewfinder in addition to a good quality, articulating LCD screen. On all the Nikon and Canon D-SLR models, once you switch to the "liveview" or movie mode, the mirror flips up and only the LCD on the rear of the camera is usable. LCD's are hard to see in bright daylight, especially for critical focusing. No matter what you've read in other reviews, the electronic viewfinder in the GH1 is very good and very sharp. Battery life on the GH1 is amazing. I've walked all over Pittsburgh shooting scenes and never had to change the battery. The manual indicates less than 3 watts of power usage with the LCD active. The GH1 does a pretty decent job of down-scaling the 12 MP imager to the 2.2 MP required for the 1080 HD format. There's a tiny problem with aliasing on vertical or diagonal lines, but it's not bad or very noticeable. Overall the color quality and ability to handle contrast and lighting extremes is very good. The GH1 does an excellent job of rolling over exposed areas smoothly into clipped white with minimal color contamination. Three things I hate about the GH1's HD video capabilities: 1. The camera has a very, very poor implementation of the AVCHD codec. Panasonic in one of the owners of AVCHD, so there's no excuse for this. The camera inserts an "I" frame or key frame into the encoded video stream every 15 frames. If you have a locked down shot, you will see a slight change in the video twice every second. Static things like grass or other fine detail areas will appear to slightly twitch. It's visible but not as apparent in hand-held or scenes with action or camera motion. 2. The VBR (variable bit rate) encoding simply cannot deal with rapid motion. A quick pan such as following a passing car will yield very digitized looking motion with tons of artifacts. To overcome items #1 & #2, you literally have to compose shots that have some motion, but not too much motion. 3. Panasonic has elected to incorporate some form of digital noise reduction into the video signal path to minimize or eliminate grain or noise before encoding. Another huge problem... If you're shooting a scene with areas of minimal contrast or detail, the camera will simply blur that area together to form a continuous blur of color. This reduces the work load of the encoder, but yields a very "consumer quality" video signal. This effect only happens in low-contrast areas. A static scene of a forrest with reveal that the dark brown or gray of tree trunks have little or no detail. Similarly colored dark bricks on a building will be just a big soft patch of dark red. Imagine having low resolution in certain areas of your scene. You can not turn this noise reduction "blending" effect off. (see addendum update below) Hopefully, Panasonic is working to fix or minimize the problems with the AVCHD codec and video noise reduction as a future firmware update. Some blogs are organizing email campaigns to plead with Panasonic to address the pathetic AVCHD encoding and other video problems. Please note that I am very familiar with the AVCHD encoding used in Canon's older HF-10, HF-11 and newer HF-S10 and other inexpensive cameras. At the same 17mb/s data rate, I've never seen the problems indicated above. Possibly the Panasonic AVCHD encoder was jeopardized by having to encode in multiple formats. Also, the AVCHD format allows for 23.976fps video, not just 29.97fps. It's a lot easier and cleaner to encode true 24P (23.976) than a 29.97 interlaced signal with 3-2 pulldown. Other video related "things" that I wish I knew before purchase... I was surprised to find out that autofocus only works with Panasonic brand lenses. I purchased the expensive, extremely sharp, Olympus Zuiko 14mm-35mm F2 lens and Panasonic's DMW-MA1 4/3 to micro 4/3 adapter. The camera can control this $2,000 lens' iris, but despite all the gold contacts in the adapter, no autofocus. One slight plus is that the GH1 will digitally zoom into the imager for easy manual focus whenever you turn the lens focus ring. (This focus assist effect does not happen when you're recording.) The stereo mic connector, which doubles as the remote control jack, is 3/32" of an inch, not the usual 1/8". Like the other DSLR's there is no method to monitor your audio recording in any way. No headphone jack and no LCD audio level indication. When using an external mic, always check any important shot for audio before you move on to another scene. I was pleasantly surprised that the GH1 does a respectable job of controlling audio levels from an external mic without pumping or other audible compression effects. It's acceptable audio for B-Roll cutaway footage. The GH1 will not output a signal on the HDMI connector or analog component connector while recording or setting up a shot. The GH1 adjusts its iris in 1/3 f-stop steps. If you're using auto iris when shooting video, a pan from light to dark will yield distinct steps in brightness as the lens opens. When shooting video on the GH1, I manually set my desired ASA (ISO) speed setting and set the shutter to 1/50. There is a button to the immediate left of the video record button that locks the iris until the button is pressed again. This is great when shooting rapid fire cutaways in changing light situations. The addition of HD video is what creates the huge demand and back log for cameras like the GH1, Canon 7D and others. If only manufacturers would wake up and concentrate on a camera's video and audio capabilities and quality instead of thinking of video as secondary to still photography. Addendum: After shooting numerous, available light cutaways with the GH1, I've found certain settings that work very well in the movie mode, much better than Panasonic's default settings. By using the "Smooth" setting, combined with contrast at -2, sharpness at 0, color at 0, and NR (noise reduction) at -2 the 1080P video quality is much better. I've been using the camera with Nikon AF-D and Canon FD series lenses and simple, non-optical, lens mount adapters. Although you still have codec problems with rapid pans, I don't seem to notice much of the "mudding" effects that myself and other users of this camera have mentioned in low-light areas. I didn't really appreciate the GH1 until I briefly owned a Canon 7D. When compared to the 7D, the GH1's 1080P video is visibly sharper with more fine detail. It's also free of moiré patterns and most aliasing artifacts that occur when you're shooting video scenes that include sharp horizontal lines. Examples of problem scenes for the 7D include patterns of bricks on a building or the grill of an automobile. (In fairness to Canon, the 7D is a much better still camera and its imager appears to be about one F-stop more sensitive to light)