The Panasonic Lumix GF1. Z-Finder fits on it very well!

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Got this on loan from Panasonic for a couple of weeks to play around with. I haven’t shot much with it yet but it’s really nice little camera and cheap! $899 with the lovely pancake 20mm F1.7

It is missing a few features of it’s big brother the GH1, no flip out screen, no electronic viewfinder and no Full HD. But the screen is nicer, you can add an electronic viewfinder to it and to be honest 720p on the GH1 is what I use anyway as I find the 1080p a little weak codec wise.

panasonic-lumix-gf1-digital-camera-1I haven’t shot much with it yet so no footage to show. But here are some stills shots taken with it at Re:Frame in San Francisco and also some shots of Steve Weiss (taken on the iphone) of the new Z-Finder V2 mounted on it. I have to say it feels really sweet on it and helps enormously. Better than the electronic viewfinder but of course much bigger but a hell of a lot lighter than a 7d/5dmkII!

Joe Simon shot of the GF1 during Kevin Shaninian's presentation at Re:Frame
Joe Simon shot of the GF1 during Kevin Shaninian's presentation at Re:Frame
Kevin Shaninian giving presentation.
Kevin Shaninian giving presentation.

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12 comments

  1. Had a brief play with one on Saturday. Felt a really chunky bit of kit. My friend at the dealers was having some second thoughts about the Pen he has been waiting for – although there is more than a touch of nostalgia attached to that purchase.

  2. In the shop, I can choose between these 2 lenses: G Vario 14-45/3,5-5,6 ASPH or G 20/1.7 ASPH Pancake.
    Which lense should I choose? I shoot much film, so it will be a lot of shooting with the camera also.

  3. Unfortunately it doesn’t have the full manual control of the Gh-1. Whilst you have SOME control over aperture, there is no control over shutter speed (pity, because otherwise it sounds ideal and it’s limitations in sound recording can be overcome with a Zoom et al)

  4. I have got one and seem to have found that although the video is 720 50p it outputs at 25fps and so when importing into FCP and converting to ProRes it gives you a 25fps movie and so the smooth slo-mo of the GH1 is not possible to achieve.

  5. Hello. I’m a young DOP from Melbourne, Australia. I’ve been playing around the GF1 for a short while and I’ve found that the hand-held shake you get while filming is rather bad. I tried holding the GF1 in many ways, but couldn’t get rid of the “vibration”. Have you had a play with it using one of Zacuto’s hand held rigs? Does it help? Maybe there’s a cheaper solution to keeping the GF1 steady during slower pans and such.

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