Bottom line up front: this is a great stills and video camera. It is a freshly designed stills camera that gives DSLR performance with P+S ease and DSLR abilities. As a video camera it is the best implemented video system on a "stills" camera today.
This is an amazing camera but before I tell you why I would like to make a comment on the current situation of this camera. First it is disappointing that Panasonic has region coded the camera and that they are starving the US market. Check out the price difference between the US and Japan at Amazon JP. However, you cannot change the language from Japanese to English due to the region coding. Also, punish the companies that are overcharging (Big VALUE Inc. is/was charging a 1.67 price premium). I for one will never ever do business with a company that does that. If everyone boycotted these predator type companies, they would go out of business.
When people first look at the GH1 there is an initial sticker shock. Why would I pay so much more than the G1? The major reason the difference is warranted is because it has a far more expensive lens. The price difference of the 14-140mm lens and the 14-45mm that comes with the G1 accounts for 5/7 of the price difference of the cameras. On top of that the 14-140mm lens is specially designed for video as it has utterly silent focusing and aperture changes. Also, the aperture changes are step-less. This allows for very smooth lighting transitions. The remainder of the price difference can be attributed to the inclusion of the best seen-to-date video implementation in a "stills" camera and an upgraded sensor from the Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 12.1MP Digital Camera with Lumix G Vario 14-45 mm f/3.5-5.6 ASPH Mega OIS Lens (Blue). If you are not planning on working with movies then the GH1 is probably overkill and the Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 12.1MP Digital Camera with Lumix G Vario 14-45 mm f/3.5-5.6 ASPH Mega OIS Lens (Red) would be your best bet. Also, the GH1 functions very much like the G1 for stills so any of those reviews will apply to the GH1.
STILLS
Panasonic markets this camera as like a DSLR only SMLR. I think that is a cool bit of marketing and is right on the mark. This camera has the best contrast detection autofocus on the market. It is as fast if not faster than my Nikon D40 and is almost as fast as my D700. This is a great technological breakthrough and is what allows the camera to be smaller than a DSLR while giving nearly identical performance. With this camera you will not miss photos of your children or other fast moving subjects while you wait for your camera to focus. Bravo.
What is also nice about a great contrast detection autofocus is that Panasonic was able to start with a fresh design from the ground up. The live view is the best implementation that I have seen to date. I never use live view on my D700, but I will always be using it with the GH1. It flips out and rotates 270 degrees. This means you can see it from the back, the front (for self portraits), the top, the bottom, and on one side. In addition, to the great screen articulation, the speedy contrast focus is the last piece that makes this live view great rather than painfully slow like it is on other DSLRs.
On top of the great live view, this fresh design allows this camera to handle exceedingly well. In many ways it takes the best of the point-and-shoot (P+S) world and mixes it with the best of the DSLR world. It doesn't have as many dedicated buttons as my D700 but the Q Menu system works very well and allows for quick changes of most shooting parameters. There is a detailed menu system but I don't find myself using it very much while shooting. I feel that this setup allows photographers moving up from the P+S world to feel immediately comfortable on this camera while also giving experienced photographers the control they need to work their craft.
I don't know what kind of plastic Panasonic uses on this camera but I love the way it looks and feels. Also, I think having a red or gold camera is cool and makes it look more like a toy rather than a "professional" camera. With the photographer unfriendly laws proliferating the world, it is nice to have an incredibly capable camera that doesn't look like a professional camera.
This is a micro-4/3s camera system. That has some pros and cons. The chip is smaller than most DSLR chips. A full frame (FX in Nikon speak) sensor is ~860 sq mm, a Nikon DX sensor is ~370 sq mm, the 4/3 sensor is ~225 sq mm, and the typical sensor used in a point and shoot range between ~25-50 sq mm. However, a 2/3 sensor like many TV shows are shot with is ~60 sq mm and a 1/4 sensor like most home video recorders is only ~10 sq mm. What does all of these numbers mean? From a "stills" perspective the 4/3 format is relatively small when compared to DSLRs. That means that for the same megapixel rating, the 4/3 sensor will have smaller photoreceptors and that means more noise. However, the 4/3 sensor is roughly 60% of a DX chip so while this is a great physics discussion, in real life you will not be able to tell the noise difference based on sensor size even with a picture blown up to 100%. This is born out by the GH1's excellent noise control up to ISO800. You can also still use shots taken at ISO 1600 and 3200 but those low light shots are usually better turned into black and whites for that noire grainy look. That is the "downside" (not really much of a downside especially when compared to the up side) of the micro 4/3 system. The upside is that because you have a smaller area to cover, you can make lenses smaller (less weight and less cost). You also get a 2x multiplication factor on your lenses. So now that 200mm lens gives you 400mm of reach. Yea. However, on the wide side of lenses you need a 7mm lens to get a 14mm viewing angle and those can get pretty expensive. The point of all of this mumbo jumbo is that this camera takes great pictures and the lenses are smaller than DSLR lenses. Less weight and smaller size with no noticeable image quality compromise equals great camera.
One thing that some people list as a negative on this camera is that in low-light the electronic view finder(EVF) gets dark, grainy and jerky (slow refresh speed). However, I look at it as a positive because that is how your picture is going to look. Unlike a DSLR which shows your eyes what the world looks like through the lens, the EVF shows your eyes what the sensor sees through the lens; an important distinction. So if you look through the EVF and see a dark (low light), grainy (High ISO), and jerky (slow shutter speed) image then you know you better shoot really carefully, move the subjects to more light, or light the photo with the built in flash (not recommended but if its all you've got..) or use an external flash.
On thing that is a negative is the slow 1/160 flash sync speed. This will be very limiting for off camera flash during bright light. With such a slow sync it will be exceedingly difficult (impossible?) to get shallow depth of fields while lighting. Most people probably won't use this feature but for those that do it will be a bummer. (FP mode and ND filters can help with this though)
I also love the face recognition on this camera. When I am taking group photos, the faces that I really care about are my families'. Now I can register 6 peoples' faces and it will focus on them. Nice
VIDEO
In many ways, this camera lacks some of the features of a dedicated video recorder. So why would I want to use this camera? After all, you can get a G1 and HD video recorder for the same price as this camera. There are two main reasons. The first reason is Depth of Field (DOF). As I mentioned earlier the micro 4/3 sensor has 4 times more area than the 2/3 sensor used for many TV shows and is 22 times more area than many video recorders. Smaller sensors = larger DOF. This makes it harder to isolate your subject from the background by having the background out of focus. Pay attention to movies when you watch them and you will notice how they shift focus to "highlight" their subject. If you have wondered why you can't do that with a home video recorder, now you know. If you shoot with a F4 lens on a 4/3 system you will need a .8 aperture on a 1/4 system to get the same DOF (by the way there is no such home video recorder). The second major reason to use the GH1 is the ability to change lenses. Right now there are not many micro 4/3 lenses. However, the micro 4/3 format is so flexible that, with an adaptor you can use just about any camera lens you want (Nikon, Canon, Leica, etc). The trade off is that you lose autofocus and metering with most non-4/3 lenses. The ability to change lenses grants two major benefits. First, you can put all sorts of exotic lenses on. For example if you put on a 7mm lens, you would give your video a perspective not often seen in home footage. On a 1/4 sensor of a video recorder you would need a 1.4mm lens to get the same perspective as the 7mm on the 4/3 system. (Most camcorders are not going to go wider than 4mm which is roughly equivalent to a 20mm lens on a 4/3 system.) Secondly, you can put exceedingly "fast" (a fast lens is one with a low aperture number. A lower aperture number means more light hitting the sensor so you can run your shutter speed faster. Hence fast lens) lenses on to get shallow DOF. You could easily put a f1.4 lens on this camera. You would need a f0.3 lens to get the equivalent DOF on a 1/4 sensor.
Anyway, it is relatively easy to make beautiful videos with this camera; especially in the 720p/60 mode. This is the first "stills" camera that has the ability to autofocus and track while filming. Additionally, it has two built in microphones for stereo sound recording and these work surprisingly well. Finally, the lens is utterly silent so the focusing and aperture changes will not ruin the sound of any video you are shooting.
A negative that I have heard for this system is that it lacks a powered zoom ability that most camcorders have (you can manually zoom the lens). I again view this as another positive. One the best ways to make your footage look amateur is to zoom while filming (I do it too and it frustrates me when I see the footage). It is exceedingly rare that a camera is zoomed in a hollywood movie. When it does happen it is done for a reason. The lack of a motorized zoom may help people make better movies.
There are a couple of caveats that you need to be aware of when shooting movies with this camera especially in 1080p/24 mode. (For an in-depth discussion I would refer you to the Luminous Landscape GH1 review. I am just trying to make you aware that 1080p/24 mode is not a beginner mode on this camera.) The first is that you will need extra software to edit the 1080p/24 mode. The second is that you want to set the shutter speed to 1/50 for the 1080p/24 mode. Lastly, if you want to use the wider apertures to get the smaller depth of fields then you will need some neutral density filters to put over the lens in bright light (On a bright day at f2.8 you could easily need 1/6400, to properly expose at ISO200. 7 Stops of ND and you are down to 1/50!). These are some of the pitfalls that plague shooting video and in order to get the results you are looking for you will need to be aware of them.
OVERALL
This is a fantastic camera. It obviously has places in which it can improve. However, for the current state-of-the-art, this camera, for 95% of people, is head and shoulders above anything else out there. Panasonic's contrast detect autofocus has raised the bar and no more excuses can be made for this type of autofocus system. (It probably heralds the extinction of the DSLR) Based around this, Panasonic has reengineered the "DSLR" from scratch and has created an outstanding stills camera and an excellent video camera all-in-on. It's a great time to be a photographer!
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