I had my first opportunity to test the GH1 out recently and took the camera out to the Thames Barrier Park in London. The park has 22 acres of lawns, trees and a fantastic formal garden that echoes the unique architecture of the Barrier.

The first enjoyment of using this rig for me was the sheer portability of it. I’m used to lugging a Panasonic HVX200 around and with a 35mm lens adapter attached plus heavy duty tripod, it starts to get a bit tough… And since this was the hottest day of the year so far, I felt a sense of relief everytime I looked at my single lightweight backpack.

Another benefit of shooting this way was that it allows you to be more inconspicuous. The whole setup is so compact that people pay you little attention. This allowed me to capture some nice candid moments of people relaxing in the sunshine.

The camera itself was great to use. The viewfinder is bright and detailed and has a dioptric adjustment for glasses wearers such as myself. On my list of future accessories is a shade/hood for the LCD screen. Under normal conditions, the screen is very good – I particularly like the fact that it can articulate into different positions, allowing you to see the screen clearly whilst shooting at all sorts of angles. But in bright sunlight it is hard to see properly. So I will be trying out a Hoodman shade or possibly even the Hoodloupe soon.

Another consideration in the bright light was getting a decent exposure. I wanted to test out the shallow depth of field possibilities of the camera and in order to do that you need to open up the aperture. However, as the camera does not have any ND (Neutral Density) filters built into it – as a video camera might – there is no way of restricting the light coming into the camera.

I used the Cokin P filter system to get around this limitation. Suddenly transported back to my days of stills photography, I bought the Cokin P series mount which holds up to 4 filters.

I had a mount for the stock lens and as the stock lens is quite slow, in combination with a Cokin ND filter, I was able to get some shallow depth of field shots. I have already invested in some more ND – an ND8 – as the camera is extremely sensitive to light. In addition I was using some Canon FD lenses on the camera which were much faster than the stock lens and will need plenty of ND on if I want to shoot with shallow DOF.

Working with the Canon FD lenses was great. I’ve picked up a few primes on Ebay – 28mm 2.8, 50mm 1.4, 100mm 2.8. I originally got these for use with my SGPro 35mm adapter, but one of the beauties of the GH1 camera is how adaptable it is. There are a large number of adapters available online to allow you to mount lenses from different camera systems to the body of the GH1. I used the Jinfinance. This is a well made adapter that screws neatly and simply onto the lens and then onto the GH1 body. The GH1 informs you that there is no lens attached but it helpfully has a menu function that allows you to shoot ‘without a lens attached’. In this mode you can use any manual lens you can find an adapter for.

One thing to bear in mind is that the Panasonic uses the micro Four Thirds system, which means that when you mount a 35mm still lens on the camera it will have an equivalent focal length of 2x. This means that a 50mm lens will have the look of a 100mm lens in 35mm terms.

I shot most of the Thames Barrier Park film in FHD mode – this is the camera’s full HD 1080/25 AVCHD mode. There has been a lot written about the quality of the codec in this mode. I would say best on my breif experimentation so far that the codec in this mode is not that robust. The picture can break up if you move the camera too quickly – but this can be planned for and avoided. However, I did notice some artifacting even in static shots.

That said, the camera does have a fantastic 720/50 mode. All of the slow motion shots in the film were done in this mode. The codec appears to be much more robust in 720 and anything fast moving or that required quick camera movement should be shot in this mode for best results. As a bonus, since it is 720/50 – dropping the footage onto a 25p timeline allows for very simple and effective slow motion. This is achieved differently in various NLE’s, but in Edius – my editing setup – I simply dropped the footage onto a 25p timeline and changed the speed to 50%.

I’m already looking forward to my next outing with the camera and can see this being an extremely useful part of my kit. For lowlight work, or where I need to be compact and portable, the camera is perfect. Using a DSLR to shoot video also has the added benefit of being able to deliver high quality to stills to clients as well – all from the same unit.

For more information on the GH1 visit http://www.panasonic.co.uk/html/en_GB/2129937/index.html

Watch my film, shot with the GH1 here http://www.joe-shaw.co.uk/?p=341