Panasonic DMC GH1 12MP Four Thirds Interchangeable Lens Camera with 1080p HD Video
Panasonic DMC GH1 12MP Four Thirds Interchangeable Lens Camera with 1080p HD Video
12.1-megapixel effective recording * Four Thirds-type Live MOS image sensor (17.3 x 13.0 mm) * Lumix G Vario HD 14-140mm f4-5.8 Mega O.I.S. zoom lens (35mm equivalent focal length: 28-280mm) * high-def movie mode with stereo sound * 3″ tilt and swivel (460,000 dot) LCD screen with automatic brightness level adjustment * high-resolution (1,440,000 dot) electronic viewfinder with diopter adjustment * full-time live view mode for LCD screen and viewfinder lets you instantly see the effects of exposure and white balance settings * built-in dust reduction system to keep image sensor clean * 23-area autofocus for accurate, high-speed focusing * face detection autofocus with face recognition * built-in pop-up flash * in-camera image editing functions, including: cropping, image resizing, aspect conversion, and audio dubbing * high-definition AVCHD movie files with stereo sound *
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars My favorite camera yet.
I’m the guy who gets a new digital camera every year. I’ve owned Nikon, Canon, Panasonic, Leica, Olympus and Sony. At the end of the day when you compare all of the trade off’s; picture quality, HD video, size, usefullness and expandability, the GH1 is by far the best.
My first D-SLR was the Nikon D70. I loved the camera but decided that I missed a lot of shots because the camera was too big to carry and it was sitting at home. As a result, I has a string of smaller top end cameras including the Leica D-Lux 2 (a great camera). What was missing was the opportunity to shoot great video that rivals my digital camcorder and expandability.
My GH1 amswers all of these wishes. The GH1 takes incredible, well saturated photos but also takes among the best HD video i’ve seen, all in a very compact body. The best part is that you can change out the kit lens with a pancake lens from Panasonic or Olympus and have an (almost) pocketable, SLR-like, high end camera.
Don’t believe the things that you read about AVCHD being a subpar codec. If you use the right conversion software, like Cineform’s Neoscene ([...] your video will look spectacular. In fact, I also own the Sony EX1 which is a professional broadcast quality camera and I can tell you that the GH1 looks every bit as good in most situations.
The integration of the video into the camera is also exceptional. You can shoot in all the sames modes, with all the same buttons and functions that you are used to using to take photos in video mode as well. It’s a great design! I have really come to be a big fan of Panasonic digital cameras recently (including the Leica consumer cameras which they also produce). I like the rich and vibrant colors much better than other brands and truly enjoy shooting with the camera.
This is not to say that next year when something newer and better comes along that my GH1 won’t find it’s way to eBay, but for now it’s definitely found a home!
5 Stars Best camera ever…..
I was hesistant about dropping this much money on a camera…I backpack around the world a lot…and previously I had been using a Nikon D40 and a Canon HF100 Camcorder. I don’t need to tell you how annoying it is to have to carry two things when you are hosteling and travelling light. I sold both on ebay…because I knew I wanted to try something different.
After trying out the Canon T1i and the Olympus EP PEN and the Panasonic Lumix ZS3, I’ve decided on the GH1. This camera is amazing! I’ve never had an articulating LCD screen before…I don’t think I can ever go back to life without one. It makes shooting so easy. One of the reasons why I sent the T1i back was because I wasn’t happy with the HD video. I was beginning to think no all-in-one was going to meet my standards in terms of picture and video quality. The camcorders take crappy stills and the other DSLRs, sub $1500, took crappy, crippled or mono only video. The kit lens suits my needs perfectly…I’m just a regular person not an amateur or what not…but after buying the GH1 I think I might become one. The camera really makes it easy to get great shots and video. The Electronic View Finder is great too by the way! I don’t understand where the complaints are coming from.
Pros
Video is phenomenal!
Excellent image quality
Kit lens seems sufficient for everyday users
Compared to SLRs this thing is small!
Con
Not as fast as other entry DSLRs on frames per sec
Price
At the end of the day…the GH1s strength is because it blends video and picture quality into a small portable size. If size isn’t an issue for you or you don’t want camcorder-type video features there are other cheaper options for you!
2 Stars Image Quality Not Good
Everything about this camera spec-wise is very attractive. I really like the size, the range of the lens, the versatility of the video, etc., but when it came right down to it, the image quality and performance of the camera/lens combo for still images was pretty bad, especialy indoors. First, the lens is quite slow. Combine this with a very weak flash, and you have a lot of trouble getting a properly exposed picture indoors. Wehn you use auto ISO, the camera stubbornly keeps the ISO at 100. The camera always selects a slow shutter speed (1/30 or 1/40) instead of upping the ISO. If you are content to use all manual settings, it is posible to get a well-exposed indoor shot, but with the auto modes, forget about it. Outdoors the image quality is pretty good, but nowhere near the quality from a standard sized DSLR like a D90.
So after using the camera for a couple weeks, I sold it. Even thought the D90 is considerably bigger, the small size of the GH1 is not worth the trade-offs to me.
4 Stars Good stills… but not ready for prime-time 1080P
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.”
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 that are required for the 1080 HD format. There’s a little problem with aliasing on vertical or diagonal lines, but it’s not bad. Overall the color quality and ability to handle contrast and lighting extremes is very good.
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 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.
I wish that some excited reviewer had commented on these three video problems before I decided to purchase the camera. 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. Until that time they make great “home video” or “web video” recordings.
1 Star Camera Defective after 2 weeks of use, Panasonic no help
First, I will be fair to the GH1 camera. Coming from a 1DSMKIII and 5D, the little GH1 was easy to get used to design-wise, and I felt the quality of the pictures were very good at lower ISOs. The kit lens actually looks sharper at wider focal lengths then my Canon 24-70 2.8 L, though the tele side is pretty soft. You can carry this thing around and not even feel it. But it is not built like a professional camera, even a semi-pro one. I’ve owned mine for 1 day shy of two weeks and already the i-bolt (don’t know the real name) that is physically attached to cameras side where the camera strap is supposed to connect to popped off. This is a major problem as it happened while the camera was around my neck. Luckily I felt the camera slip and was able to catch it before it fell. Others might be less fortunate if this problem turns out to be a design or manufacturing defect because in addition to the potential for the camera to drop off your neck at any moment, the connector that attaches to the i-bolt inside the camera is now off floating around inside the body somewhere… if its metal and it connects with a circuit board this could get ugly.
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I hope this does not happen to anyone else.
