First reactions to the GH1 vary wildly – D-Photo’s art director shoots with a conventional DSLR, so when he raised the Pana to his eye, he took one look at the electronic viewfinder (EVF) and blurted out “What the hell? That’s not a viewfinder”. One of the sales team thought it was ugly, while two others thought the size and looks were very cool.

The GH1 is a bit of a conundrum. It looks like a DSLR but it’s very definitely not. There’s no mirror system and no pentaprism, so no reflex action happening anywhere. It’s actually an interchangeable lens digital camera (an ILDC I suppose, although some would include “compact” in that description making it an ILCDC). The GH1 is very similar to the G1 that Harley Ogier rated very highly in D-Photo 28 but the new version shoots full HD video.

The GH1 is beautifully built, although the smooth plastic finish won’t be to everyone’s taste. The body is light, weighing in at a svelte 385 grams. Attach the 14-140mm (equivalent 24-280mm) MEGO OIS stabilized kit lens however and the scale swings to just over 900 grams and the balance becomes quite front heavy, handling almost like a standard DSLR with a chunky lens on and hanging a little awkwardly from the neck strap, which is way too narrow for almost a kilogram of camera – memo to Panasonic – wider straps please.

The body is really compact, my little finger hangs underneath the GH1 because I just can’t fit it on the grip. It’s still stable to use but the controls are small and close together– the rear cursor controls in particular are undersized because the big folding LCD screen takes up a huge whack of the available real estate. The left hand cursor button happens to be placed awkwardly alongside the folded screen, just where my thumb needs to be to operate it.

I’m making this sound worse than it is because I’ve got reasonably big hands (they’re not Sasquatch paws though) and I can still use the GH1 quite easily. Anyway, some of the best photographs ever were taken with small rangefinder and SLR cameras, so it’s not the end of the world. It just took a while to get used to the various functional eccentricities and once I did, I found it very easy to use. The advantage of the aforementioned small body and close controls is that you don’t have to reach too far to get to all the bits that count.

Then we come to the electronic viewfinder, which is a strange beast. I know it’s there because there’s no mirror and so an optical viewfinder isn’t possible but at first, I felt as if I was looking at a computer monitor from an inch away. It’s a tad pixilated and noisy especially at night and judders like a donkey cart on cobblestones when you move it too fast but after a day with it, I barely noticed that it wasn’t a standard viewfinder, the detail and contrast are excellent and it’s got a few features that absolutely rock.

Change the film mode to black and white or vibrant and you immediately see the effect in the EVF, just like on the LCD on a compact. You can also navigate both the quick and full menus in the EVF without dropping the camera down to look at the LCD and even better, because it’s an LCD, you can play back images immediately without changing your composition, which I really liked. How about a live histogram in the viewfinder in the position you choose or adjustable gridlines if that floats your boat? I pretty much kept the LCD folded away so I couldn’t see it and just ran the camera for the weekend on the EVF, after a while it becomes almost instinctive and being able to change ISO settings, white balance, focus settings etc with the camera to the eye is fantastic.

Set the GH1 into manual focus, touch the focus ring on the lens and the EVF automatically zooms in so you can set the focus as accurately as possible; you can control the level of magnification in this mode as well.
I love the way the single command dial operates both shutter speed and aperture, just push it in like the scroll wheel on a mouse to change from shutter to aperture, push again to change back.

So my first impressions of the GH1 after a weekend are quite positive, it’s certainly different and we’d better get used to this type of unit. Micro four thirds format cameras and lenses are here to stay and Samsung has its own range of hybrid interchangeable lens cameras coming – according to a March 09 issue of UK magazine Amateur Photographer, the Samsung NX series will use APS-C sensors with no mirror box or pentaprism and they’ll be released in late 2009, all going well.

To be continued….

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