17 Tips for Shooting with the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH1

17 simple rules to make a Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH1 look the best it can.

The Pansonic Lumix GH1 is a remarkable achievement for an inexpensive still/HD camera system (or HDSLR.) However, the GH1 is not without its faults. Over the past several weeks Hot Rod Cameras has compiled some simple rules to help make images shot on the GH1 look as good as possible. Give this blog a quick read, and remember when in doubt “test, test, test” any unusual scenario. As you shoot more with the camera you’ll start to learn instinctively what you can and can’t get away with (just like any other camera system).

1. Always shoot in “Creative Motion Picture Mode” (the little movie camera icon mode.) We could go on and on in regards to why, but trust us, it’s the only completely manual mode (use a manual lens to make everything manual)
2. Turn on the histogram function, and if you don’t know how to read it, test it until you do. You can turn it off instantly by pressing (Display).
3. Turn [I.EXPOSURE] (Intelligent exposure adjustment) to OFF, and be cautious if using it in low light situations. Even when turned off, some modes will automatically use the feature. The only one we’ve found that really keeps it “off” completely is “Creative Motion Picture Mode”.
4. All ISO settings listed in the camera are faster than stated. Consider each to be the most conservative “estimates” of your actual ISO. If you plan to show your project on a truly BIG screen, only work at ISO settings of 500 or below.
5. The AVCHD codec is highly compressed. Extra motion will not help your image quality, use a tripod, dolly, Steadicam™ or other rigid surface to prevent camera shake whenever possible.
6. Working at extreme telephoto focal lengths will make camera shake worse, use a tripod and avoid wild/random pans and tilts.
7. The camera like light, always have enough illumination for a proper base exposure.
8. When working with saturated “warm” colors, underexpose about ½ a stop. The red color channel has more artifacts that either the blue or green, underexposing will help any red/orange and yellow objects on camera appear cleaner (or artifact free), it’s easy to bring up base exposure level up in post ½ stop should you need to.
9. Use an IR/ND combination filtration rather than just ND whenever possible.
10. If highlights are important, keep the brightest parts of the frame underexposed (no clipping), add fill light to your shadows.
11. Light your shadows appropriately; you will not be able to pull up ‘black’ more than about ½ a stop (that’s not much!), the GH1’S AVCHD compression drops all the detail in “black.” So if you dig down too far, you’ll find nothing there but grey muck. You can preview this on the monitor live, or on an external monitor in playback.
12. The “FHD” 1920×1080/24p mode does NOT use a standard 3:2 pulldown. Make sure you remove the pulldown using a method that preserves the real 24p frames and not the interpolated frames. The interpolated frames are of particularly low quality.
13. Shooting with the GH1 is not like a RAW camera, bright highlights and dark, dark blacks are WYSIWYG. If you can’t get those levels to the correct point in-camera (on your monitor/histogram), you won’t be able to get them right in post. However, the GOOD news is that you get a decent amount of contrast with the image in some of the user selectable ‘film modes’ (including “Standard”) up to nearly 10-stops (about 2.5 over, and 7 down) if you can maintain your shadows to highlight contrast ratio- and keep skin tones more or less in the middle, you can keep a lot of detail/information, and then can confidently move those levels around in post.
14. Shooting in (SHD) 720p60 give you a slightly cleaner red channel, than (FHD).
15. Upconverting (SHD) from 720p to 1080p and adding a small amount of sharpening creates an image that will seamlessly intercut with GH1 material acquired at (FHD) 1920×1080.
16. ATW (Auto Tracking White) WB (White Balance) mode may make color correction of flesh tones more difficult.
17. If you have a scene with very high contrast you can lower contrast in the “My Film” mode. The “Smooth” film mode has the lowest starting contrast.

Following these steps does not guarantee that you will have no imaging problems, but it will certainly help you be aware of where things can go wrong. When treating the camera correctly it can produce sublime images that look like they come from cameras costing much, much more. Using proper lenses make getting the shot much easier.

As many people start playing with a GH1, they’ll eventually notice that a whip pan doesn’t look particularly good. However, a whip pan is a case of extreme motion and the camera recovers instantly as it slows down so it’s pretty easy to forgive such a minor fault. But that’s not what we do, we wanted to find a scenario that would really break the image, yet seem more or less “mundane.” Any camera can be brought to it’s knees in one respect or another, if you know how. If you would like to see the “worst case scenario” for the GH1 you should plan on doing the following STRESS TEST. Shoot a fast moving subject traveling quickly and repeatedly from screen left to screen right and vice-versa. If the subject is traveling fast enough particularly close to camera or at a focal length where the subject appears quite large in the frame (to smaller in the frame) it will further makes the picture quality deteriorate. Use the deepest focus (largest depth of field) possible. Watching this shot for an extended period of time, you begin to notice problems affecting motion, detail and color. You’ll then have an easier time spotting these problems in the future. After determining the weak spots of the camera we performed our own GH1 “torture test”.

The Hot Rod Cameras GH1 test: A fair skinned child wearing white/orange on a bright day, near trees with dark-black shadows. The child swings on a swing very SWIFTLY back and forth from a ‘medium shot’ to ‘medium close up’. The playground equipment and green trees in the background are near matches for primary colors (red, blue and green). This scenario pushes the dynamic range, compression codec and color space. We also added in a busy background (extra motion), moved the camera in swift pans/hand held and turned on ATW WB.

To clearly spot the problem areas we then viewed 1080/720p test images on an approximately 30’ Stewart 1.0 gain screen, projected by a Christie CP2000 2K projector, with color correction performed on a Quantel Pablo. 1080 pulldown removed, 720/60p converted to 24p.

What’s particularly interesting- those who only saw the test shots on the big screen for a few seconds; or on a large plasma monitor size screen didn’t notice any of these imaging problems. Those of us who watched closely and repeatedly could see them all.

In the next few weeks there’s going to be a lot more information posted about how to get the best possible images from such an inexpensive camera. Links to sample images, and details on productions using PL mount lenses on the GH1.

This is a fantastic way for micro/low-budget shows to get the best bang for the buck possible, and for bigger budget shows to add an extra/creative angle on a shot/scene for almost no additional cost to the production or manpower.

Some of the initial images I’ve seen from the GH1/Hot Rod PL are remarkably encouraging, I can’t wait to see the completed projects shooting right now.