Joe Shaw

A couple of months back I shot my first paying gig with the Panasonic GH1. The film was for the UK’s Premier Latin Music and Dance Festival in Southport called Salsa Kingdom. The make up of the film is a mixture of promotional shots and interview pieces.

I had already shot quite a bit on the GH1 and I knew what it was capable of and also knew about its limitations. There has been a lot written about the GH1 and the performance of its codec. In my experience, when shooting in 720/50 the camera performs very well and the codec is pretty robust. There is more of a problem with the 1080/25 setting. One of the situations which can cause issues is fast movement – either of the camera, or of the subject in front of the camera. This movement becomes too much for the camera to deal with and for small moment the codec breaks down and produces what people are referring to as ‘mud’. This mud is a slight blockiness or pixelation of the image. This occurs more readily in 1080/25.

The 1080/25 mode is still great – as long as you are aware of the limitation. My Thames Barrier film got a lot of views online and sparked a lot of interest in the camera and this was shot nearly all 1080/25. (The slo-mo stuff was 720/50).

Weighing everything up I decided the camera would be a good choice for the shoot. Although I knew I would be shooting fast motion, I wanted to shoot 720/50 as this would give me the option later to slow down any of the dancing footage.

Having made my decision, I thought I should explain my decision to the Producer of the event who had hired me. Shooting on DSLR’s is still very much in its infancy and there is a risk that people will wonder what the hell you have turned up with. I told him that I was going to try something a bit new but not to worry! He had seen my reel and hired me because of it, so to his credit he trusted me. I’ve seen a lot of people chatting online about this dilemma – the suggestion being that clients will take you more seriously with a bigger camera or wonder why they are paying you so much if you turn up with a little DSLR. It think there may be some truth in this – but if you manage there expectations up front I think there should be less of a problem – especially as DSLR’s gain more popularity and more importantly once people see the results.

Another factor in my choice of the GH1 was light. I knew I would be shooting in low light and this is where the DSLR’s are king. Combined with a set of old Canon FD primes I knew I would be able to cope with some very lowlight situations. Something that my other camera – a Panasonic HVX200 would have struggled with. I spent a long time in post on one production having to de-noise a ton of footage as it was shot run ‘n gun in very low light and the resulting image was very, very noisy. Not so these DSLR’s and for me that was the deciding factor.

Next up I had to sort out a working rig for the camera. I went to Redrock Micro and put together a rig from various bits of their DSLR support kit. I used a set of rails which had the camera on a raised baseplate with two front handles, then I used their cage pieces to go around the camera with a handle on top for easy carrying and low-mode shooting. I topped this off with the Genus mattebox. The end result was a pretty meaty looking rig that was stable enough to shoot handheld. Unlike the Canon DSLR’s the GH1 has an electronic viewfinder that I was able to use whilst shooting and this made the handheld rig pretty simple to use.

Redrock DSLR setup with Redrock Mattebox

Genus Basic Mattebox

During shooting there were very few issues with the camera at all. It worked perfectly throughout and I was even pleasantly surprised when shooting with the stock lens supplied with the camera. I had some footage I needed to get that was on the street and was completely run ‘n gun. For this, the stock lens’s ability to autofocus whilst shooting made a big difference. Not always perfect and not always quick enough – but good enough to get useable footage.

There were a lot of interviews for this film and for sound I went with the Zoom H4N. This is a little portable recorder that does a fantastic job. It records up to 4 tracks in high quality BWF (Broadcat Wave Format) and will provide phantom power for a boom mic. All of the audio was captured using the Zoom H4N.

A couple of gotchas. First, zooming whilst shooting with the stock lens is for me, generally a no no. It seems that the codec is working with so little overhead that even something as simple as zooming in can cause it to break down. I saw this happen, so my little punch zooms didn’t really work.

Second gotcha may not be a gotcha at all. The ‘mud’ situation. I cut the whole piece together and was very happy with the result. Only when I happened to pause on a particular frame did I notice that during some of the fast dancing, the codec was breaking up. My take on it is this: If the film is compelling enough, if it works and its telling a story, you don’t notice the shortcomings. If you go looking for them – you’ll find them

The client was very happy with the final film. We got some shots they had not been able to get before. We kept really mobile and were able to run around across the town grabbing footage on the fly. For this kind of job, the DSLR is near perfect.