GH1 firmware settings wedding ceremony

[Greg Fiske]

Was wondering if anyone could recommend settings used for wedding ceremony documentary footage. This would be a camera on a stationary tripod filming for an hour. Either indoors in a church, or outdoors with some trees in the background. Plan on using ptools, but confused as to which firmware to use. Should I stick with just the reliable firmware? How much of a difference is there with the quality. Is MJPEG an option at this point?

[Corey Graham]

Originally Posted by Greg Fiske

Should I stick with just the reliable firmware? How much of a difference is there with the quality. Is MJPEG an option at this point?

I've just shot 2 weddings with the GH1 as a stationary camera, and it's performed wonderfully using the unhacked firmware. Formerly, I put the bitrate way up, but got some intermittent card write errors. Since I'm not monitoring the camera, I use the factory firmware for the sake of reliability.

MJPEG would probably perform fairly well with relatively stationary shots, but the file sizes are very large in comparison to AVCHD, and fitting an hour onto even a larger card may be difficult.

[Gordon Hoffman]

MJPEG would also have a file size limitation. It's around 9 minutes, give or take on an unhacked GH1.

Gordon

[Jeff Harper]

Forget the hack, IMO. I would concentrate on putting the best glass on the camera, and on learning the camera.

And on the day of the shoot, if all else fails, run in Manual Movie Mode, then set it to Program Mode using the quick menu using either set ISO or auto iso, and you can use the scroll wheel to adjust exposure as needed. Works great. Don't make the mistake of running in full Manual on your first shoot as a friend of mine did, unless you really know what you're doing.