Another very cool feature along with the flip out LCD, which in itself has been a godsend (no more knelling in the dirt looking through a viewfinder) is that the display can do a DOF/Shutter speed preview.
So if you've got a 2 second exposure dialed in, it can show you want the resulting motion blur on the waves or waterfall etc is going to look like in real time, as your framing the subject.
Obviously we all can sort of envision what a longer exposure is going to look like, and its not a deal breaker with an optical viewfinder by any stretch, but I really do enjoy being able to see what the finished shot will look like while I'm actually composing it.
I picked up a chinese Gorillia Pod knock off for $10 and I'll tell you, the GH1 with the 7-14mm and the LCD flipped out for low level shooting sure is a blast. So quick and easy to compose some really unique angles that I'd always be too lazy to get down in the dirt to do with my D700
millsart wrote:
Another very cool feature along with the flip out LCD, which in itself has been a godsend (no more knelling in the dirt looking through a viewfinder) is that the display can do a DOF/Shutter speed preview.
So if you've got a 2 second exposure dialed in, it can show you want the resulting motion blur on the waves or waterfall etc is going to look like in real time, as your framing the subject.
The shutter speed also counts down on the LCD for exposures longer than 2 seconds. unfortunately it does not for the long exposure NR. Really nice feature even if I wish it would do both counts.
mawz wrote:
The GF1 is a pocket/light carry camera. The G1/GH1 is the way to go if you intend to be spending time on a tripod as it's simply more flexible due to the flip/twist LCD and larger, higher-resolution fixed EVF.
Interestingly, RRS and Kirk make L brackets for the GF1 but not the G1/GH1. I was leaning towards the G1/GH1 due to the better grip than on the GF1 and that I am a bit old school and like the EVF being there without being this obtrusive add on.
CPWarner wrote:
I really am not so sure about landscape with live-view, but will try it with the XSi. Again, coming from a Canon 1 Series, focus points are very usable around the frame. As to manual focus, and this being the Alt section , try a Zeiss lens for butter smooth focusing with great range of motion for very controlled focusing. The viewfinder of the 1 series with the right focusing screen is very usable to me. Rarely have issues with focus on landscape images.
The focus point on the cameras can be moved to any spot you want in the frame and is even more flexible than the pro dslr bodies because you can essentially move the focus point further to the edges of the frame than you can with full frame models like the D700 and A900 (the two I've used). Then you can magnify the area you are focussing on to fine tune the focus.
OT for landscape but....
Focusing a Leica Noctilux (f0.95) close in wide open is pretty simple with the G1 using the EVF, slightly more difficult handholding a GF1 with an EVF, and a little harder but still more accurate with a GF1 and no EVF than on a Leica M8.
CPWarner wrote:
Interestingly, RRS and Kirk make L brackets for the GF1 but not the G1/GH1. I was leaning towards the G1/GH1 due to the better grip than on the GF1 and that I am a bit old school and like the EVF being there without being this obtrusive add on.
Because the screen is hinged to tilt and swivel around, RRS said a plate was not possible. If you want to have the screen in a fixed position you could probably use a generic L plate.
CPWarner wrote:
I really am not so sure about landscape with live-view, but will try it with the XSi.
It is really the articulating LCD on a tripod that does it for the live view. And yeah, coming from a 1D series AF system, dreamy big OVF and Zeiss MF lenses I'm sure you'll be less enthralled with focus by wire and the EVF. You do (or at least I did) really have to try the articulating LCD in the field to fully appreciate how liberating it is - I honestly thought they were silly until I spent a week shooting with one.
Besides the obvious benefits of low angle or waist level work you can do a number of other things. That shot I posted earlier of the rock+shadow+trail is an overhead shot, note the strong sun angle and the fact there are no other shadows. I had to use my tripod as a boom to hold the camera about 6 feet above the playa and 6 feet from me while composing with the LCD pointed back at me and using a cable release to trigger the shutter. I played similar tricks shoving the camera into the heart of old mining rigs and mills while composing at a distance.
It is definitely worth considering how you interact with the scene though - some people seem to have a visceral connection with the view they see through their VF and explore with the camera and lens. I can imagine a nice big OVF being the best fit. For me I've never found a VF I really like and don't like the creative limits of whatever lens happens to be mounted to the camera. So I just walk around with a little black card with a rectangle cut in it to do most of my composing and then take out the camera, appropriate lens, tripod and setup at the chosen viewpoint. After that it is mostly fine tuning the composition, often with checks of the scene details with the naked eye as it usually has much more acuity than a VF. Because of these rapid shifts between checking composition through the lens and with the naked eye I find the LCD a fine tool to work with and conversely find that when an OVF is positioned inconveniently I tend to short cut the amount of time I should be spending behind the camera before clicking the shutter simply because some part of my body starts aching!
Anyway, it is certainly an interesting and fun system. It is definitely a system one should consider their use case carefully for though, it has great niches and a few glaring holes. I hope it grows and improves and I really hope some of the unique things it does right migrate to other systems.
TEBnewyork wrote:
Because the screen is hinged to tilt and swivel around, RRS said a plate was not possible. If you want to have the screen in a fixed position you could probably use a generic L plate.
You can actually take one of the generic L brackets and take it apart and redrill the vertical section so its moved forward about half an inch and it works pretty well though its not all that pretty and polished looking.
I was thinking of perhaps sending them some photos of mine
I have the new Acratech generic L bracket that I'm using for my G1. Works great. Let's you move the LCD however you want. Expensive is the only downside. Very easy to take on/off, so the relatively large size isn't a big deal. It's the best solution for an L bracket. Did I say expensive?
Well, that should have been obvious to me that the swivel screen would be a problem with the L bracket. The acratech plate for the G1/GH1 (not the L-bracket) looks good though.
Last question (for today ): One thing that turned me off to using my G9 more often was noise. The G9 is, in my opinion, unusable over ISO 200. I have been doing a lot of reading of test results on noise. I virtually always shoot RAW, so it seems that the GH1 and GF1 are good to ISO 800 without any significant compromise of noise versus detail. This is comparable to the XSi, with tradeoffs between noise in chroma vs blacks. The G1 seems to me slightly behind in noise, possibly one stop. Do any of the G1 shooters find noise to be a limitation? Remember that my basis for noise is a 1DsMK2.
I am not a video shooter, and am unlikely to get into that any time soon, and the 14-140 seems to be slightly behind in terms of sharpness to the 14-45. So I am leaning towards a G1 due to the built in viewfinder (I like the option) and the swivel screen. I am still tempted with the GF1 as the ultimate in portability, but the G1 is attractively priced with more features.
CPWarner wrote:
I have been doing a lot of reading of test results on noise. I virtually always shoot RAW, so it seems that the GH1 and GF1 are good to ISO 800 without any significant compromise of noise versus detail. This is comparable to the XSi, with tradeoffs between noise in chroma vs blacks. The G1 seems to me slightly behind in noise, possibly one stop. Do any of the G1 shooters find noise to be a limitation? Remember that my basis for noise is a 1DsMK2.
I know you're asking about a G1, but I find ISO 800 on my GF1 to be usable, but not really all that great. It is far more unforgiving from an exposure perspective that any of the recent Canon dslrs I've owned. I really like my GF1, and it's significantly better than any P&S, but higher ISOs still aren't what I'd call a strength.
CPWarner wrote:
Well, that should have been obvious to me that the swivel screen would be a problem with the L bracket. The acratech plate for the G1/GH1 (not the L-bracket) looks good though.
Last question (for today ): One thing that turned me off to using my G9 more often was noise. The G9 is, in my opinion, unusable over ISO 200. I have been doing a lot of reading of test results on noise. I virtually always shoot RAW, so it seems that the GH1 and GF1 are good to ISO 800 without any significant compromise of noise versus detail. This is comparable to the XSi, with tradeoffs between noise in chroma vs blacks. The G1 seems to me slightly behind in noise, possibly one stop. Do any of the G1 shooters find noise to be a limitation? Remember that my basis for noise is a 1DsMK2.
I am not a video shooter, and am unlikely to get into that any time soon, and the 14-140 seems to be slightly behind in terms of sharpness to the 14-45. So I am leaning towards a G1 due to the built in viewfinder (I like the option) and the swivel screen. I am still tempted with the GF1 as the ultimate in portability, but the G1 is attractively priced with more features. ...Show more →
Two comments on the noise.
1. The G1's limitation is about ISO 640 rather than 800 before visible noise becomes an issue, the GF1 is a bit better, the GH1 better yet. I regularly shoot all the way up to 3200 with the G1, but noise is a real problem over 2000. The G1 files play quite well with the NR in CaptureOne 5 though, ACR/LR is less useful and probably should be avoided for high-ISO work with the G series.
2. All the G series seem to have somewhat pessimistic ISO ratings. ISO 125 on the G1 seems to be more like ISO 200 in reality and ISO 3200 on the G1 is maybe 1/3 of a stop slower than ISO 6400 on the D300 (which is optimistic, more like ISO 5000 in reality).
I am an EP-1 user, and I have been able to generate usable images at ISO 1250 and lower. I think the noise performance of the EP-1 is slightly better than the G-series cameras. I do wish, however, that the EP-1 had an articulating live view LCD. The EVF now available for the EP-2 now performs some of the functions that my Angle Finder C used to perform, but alas it cannot be used on the EP-1.
mawz wrote:
The shutter speed also counts down on the LCD for exposures longer than 2 seconds. unfortunately it does not for the long exposure NR. Really nice feature even if I wish it would do both counts.
Hmm, it does count the time for the NR procedure on the LCD (and in the viewfinder). That's with the G1, I don't know the other options but you mention the flip-out screen so...
CPWarner wrote:
Last question (for today ): One thing that turned me off to using my G9 more often was noise. The G9 is, in my opinion, unusable over ISO 200. I have been doing a lot of reading of test results on noise. I virtually always shoot RAW, so it seems that the GH1 and GF1 are good to ISO 800 without any significant compromise of noise versus detail. This is comparable to the XSi, (...)
When comparing the G1 and the 5DMkII I think the noise difference is about 2.5 stops assuming Canon and Panasonic mean the same thing with their ISO values (?).
Why not download (imaging-resource, for example) some raw files and check for yourself? That way you can develop and print the imgae and get a good feeling for what it is like.
One thing to check for is the Panasonic sensor noise character. Personally I don't like it as it easily gets blotchy and patterned in an ugly way for my eyes. It works for me though as I seldom make big prints from high ISO images.
Jonas B wrote:
Hmm, it does count the time for the NR procedure on the LCD (and in the viewfinder). That's with the G1, I don't know the other options but you mention the flip-out screen so...
Just checked that and you're right, the G1 does count down for long-exposure NR now. It must have been added in one of the last two firmware updates as it did not do so the as of last June (the last time I did any long-exposure stuff on my G1).
mawz wrote:
Just checked that and you're right, the G1 does count down for long-exposure NR now. It must have been added in one of the last two firmware updates as it did not do so the as of last June (the last time I did any long-exposure stuff on my G1).
It is a menu option for long exposure noise reduction can be turned on of off
TEBnewyork wrote:
It is a menu option for long exposure noise reduction can be turned on of off
No, I was talking about the countdown timer for Long Exposure NR, not the NR itself. Originally there wasn't one, but there was a countdown timer for the long exposure itself. Panasonic fixed the oversight in one of the firmware updates.
, try a Zeiss lens for butter smooth focusing with great range of motion for very controlled focusing. The viewfinder of the 1 series with the right focusing screen is very usable to me. Rarely have issues with focus on landscape images. 
): One thing that turned me off to using my G9 more often was noise. The G9 is, in my opinion, unusable over ISO 200. I have been doing a lot of reading of test results on noise. I virtually always shoot RAW, so it seems that the GH1 and GF1 are good to ISO 800 without any significant compromise of noise versus detail. This is comparable to the XSi, with tradeoffs between noise in chroma vs blacks. The G1 seems to me slightly behind in noise, possibly one stop. Do any of the G1 shooters find noise to be a limitation? Remember that my basis for noise is a 1DsMK2.