the editman.com

I write about my ongoing journey

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

To make the GH1 more of a filmmakers tool?

You have seen those big cameras at the movie set. Big cameras, big lenses and big matte boxes. But what if you want to do something similar with the small GH1?

Here's what I did. First I went to dvcity.com and got the PROAIM v11 Matte box with rods. This is an affordable Matte box.
Not super high quality and not for big cameras. But it makes perfect match for the little GH1.
The advantage of a matte box is to control flares and light spill better. Filters are also easy to change with the PROAIMS 4x4 filter trays.

I use mainly Nikon lenses with the GH1 even thou the kit lens does auto focus fast primes are always fast primes and gives you a shallow depth of field.

One thing I wasn't sure how to solve was the donut between the lens and matte box. There are some universal versions but they are expensive.
The solution was to use the lens hoods and have them between lens and the flat donut of the PROAIM v11.
This works really well even on Nikon "D" primes that has a slight movement of the inner tub during focusing.
There are rubber hoods on ebay for most diameters and they flex enough to get a tight fit without being to stiff.

To be able to film even at low angles I have a Hoodman 3.0 attached to the swivel display.
It works out nice but I would like to see a softer and larger eye cup.

GH1 with PROAIM v11 and Hoodman

All in all it's a great rig for a good price and I like it!

GH1

Tuesday, September 29, 2009 12:03:57 AM (W. Europe Daylight Time, UTC+02:00)

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Monday, September 28, 2009

Panasonic DMC-GH1 a filmers dream?

What do you really want out of a camera... Is it to capture your children's sports? Is it to make documentation of special occasions? For me it's do all of the above but mostly to have a camera that does not set it's limits on what I want to capture. If there should be any limit it should be me.

Enter the DMC-GH1. What an interesting concept this is. A still camera, a video camera in one body. I like it! It does have cons like the weak encoding of video files, shortage of lenses in the micro 4/3 segment and it's not the best still camera you can get. But still very versatile if you want something lightweight and easy to use while at the same time getting excellent quality.

I've captured some really exiting footage and sometimes you fail with setting it up correctly so it's pretty much up to the DP.

Here are some of the first films I've done with it: