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Cameras

Field Review: Panasonic GF-1 (Day 4)

Chris Gampat
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09/27/2010
3 Mins read
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Last Updated on 07/29/2011 by Chris Gampat

This posting was supposed to be about video quality and performance. But everything went awry. You see, Premium Compact Specialist Will Greenwald and I ventured over to Ketchum’s offices to shoot some video for his site, Aggrogate.com. The video was of Gran Turismo 5 and Little Big Planet 2. We shot some pretty darned good video, and then Sony told us that we couldn’t use it. Because of this, the video will not be shown. However, one can go onto Youtube, type in GF-1and find lots of videos shot with the wonderful camera. What you don’t hear about, though, is the problems that you encounter while filming.

At first, we were shooting the gameplay off-screen very easily. The camera is light, compact and easy to operate in terms of changing settings when necessary. One peeve with the camera was the less than stellar microphone. It picked up a reasonable amount of sound, but not as much as it should have vs other DSLR and EVIL cameras that shoot video. What I really wished was if the Rode Shotgun mic would’ve been able to connect to it via a port of some sort, but that is not possible.

The camera tended to try to focus in and out with the slightest movements. The good thing about this though was that the focusing motors weren’t picked up very well by the on-board microphone. The problem, however, was that it focused in and out very slowly. Think of molasses being poured out of a jar.

Turning on manual focus, prefocusing, and stopping down the aperture quelled the problem of autofocusing. It all still wasn’t perfect though. We know that all DSLRs that record video shut off after some time because of the sensor and processor working too hard. The GF-1indeed stopped shooting after about eight minutes each segment.

At one point, the camera became so hot that I took off the lens and let the sensor cool off a bit. After cleaning the sensor, I put the lens back on and went back to shooting. The camera sensor became hot again after another eight minutes of recording.

The camera was passed back and forth between Will and I. Usually what I do is shoot short segments at a time so that it is easier to edit. Because we saw some alpha builds of the games and some really good stuff, I figured that I should just let the cameras roll.

Then the problem I had recording concert footage with the D3scame back to me. However, it wasn’t that bad this time. The LCD of the D3s melted a business card onto my wallet when resting against my side. The GF-1didn’t get quite so hot, so I was able to shoot stills with it a little while afterwards very quickly.

Though this may all sound very standard, just keep it in mind when shooting video with the GF-1.

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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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