After deciding on the Panasonic GH1 the next step was to learn my way around the camera. It is always good to learn a little bit about your camera before hitting the road. Unfortunately I did not heed my own advice. Packing and organizing my life just took up too much time. So as I sit here in India I am trying to learn my way around a new camera system on the fly. Not recommended.

Panasonic GH1

I was able to identify one problem before I left though.

I had ordered an extra battery off of Amazon.com and after receiving it, charged it up and threw it in the camera. Nothing! Except a little note on the screen that said, “ This battery is not compatible with this camera.” So after a little digging on the internet I found out that Panasonic had made 3rd party batteries non compatible with the GH1. In fact, they were working this into all the firmware on their new camera’s. So all of you looking to buy a new camera just a heads up, you can’t use third party batteries with the GH1.  You will have to pay full price for the Panasonic batteries.

After arriving in India I was eager to take some photo’s on the first day. So off we trundled down to the beach in Varkala. It is beautiful here so it was not hard to grab a few nice shots.

Varkala Beach

I will say that working with a new system poses it’s challenges. I didn’t know how to adjust exposure on the fly, and I didn’t know which settings to start out with. To complicate matters more, the awkwardness of using a camera that is unfamiliar to you makes concentrating on all the other things (like composition) more difficult.

I suppose I never realized that using the same camera for years had allowed me to devote my full concentration to the artistic part of the photograph rather than the technical side. I Guess I better get my butt in gear and learn the GH1. It is quite different from my old Canon system.

Despite the few technical challenges I was able to snap a few photo’s of the beach and life around Varkala that I was happy with. So it was back to our guesthouse to catalogue and upload to the blog.

Cliff Walkways

My workflow is simple. I use Lightroom to catalogue and batch process my images and then I do any touch ups that are needed in Photoshop.

No problem.

Until I discovered that the GH1 records RAW format as rw2, which is a format that is not recognized in Photoshop CS4. Great. Yet another thing I probably should have tried out before leaving. I guess my research wasn’t as thorough as I thought.

Luckily, after scouring the internet, I found the fix by downloading the latest version of Camera Raw from the Adobe website. This fixed the problem and allowed me to get on with my workflow. So make sure you do your research. This probably could have been avoided.

After completing my first day of shooting and first workflow with the Panasonic GH1, I am happy to report that after overcoming these few hurdles I am loving the camera.

Hopefully others can learn from my mistakes. My advice to all of you travel photographers out there is to make sure you take your camera for an extensive test drive before leaving. Not just the hardware but the software as well.
Make sure you are familiar and proficient at using you camera’s functions and know most of its little quirks. These may seem like no brainers but it will make your life easier on the road and allow you concentrate more on the art of Travel Photography instead of the technical side.

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