How to Optimize the Panasonic G1/GH1 for Copy Pictures

Learn how to Optimize the Panasonic G1/GH1 for copy pictures in this digital Photography tutorial from LBGuides.

This camera does not have a copy scene mode so there is no quick and easy way of changing the mode dial for example, in order to capture an image of text or a photograph for documentation purposes. What you want to do is first avoid using the flash. The flash is probably going to be much too bright when your subject is so close. So keep the flash turned off and since I’m assuming we’re in a low light situation such as a library, you can increase the ISO to compensate for the lack of light. The way you do that is just press the ISO button right here. It’s the up navigation button, and you use the right navigation button to just move over. You can choose 1600 or 800. It doesn’t really matter at this point. We’ll test what the right setting is in a second. So go ahead and press set. Now again, if you are indoors ion a library or you just have a standard desk lamp and what you want to do is set the white balance, click WB right here and change that to the tungsten or herogen setting. Go ahead and press set. Now the color is accurately set to indoors. If you are outdoors, you can just keep the white balance set to daylight or ISO is set to 1600 and what I want to do now is press my shutter button halfway to see if I have the ISO properly set. So, I’ll press the shutter button halfway and what’s important here is the shutter speed. You want to make sure that the shutter speed is fast enough so you can hand hold the shuts. Now, with the image stabilization active, I can hand hold the shut with the shutter speed of about 130th of a second. So in my case, I do have plenty of lights. I know this is fine. In your case, however, if yours is below 130th of a second, you may want to increase the ISO a little bit more. Now, this camera does not have a special macro function that you need to access for it to focus on close subjects. All you need to do is just press the shutter button halfway and the camera will focus as close as it can. If your subject is closer than about a foot or 30cm and this camera will probably not be able to focus on it. You can get some macro ring adaptors for the end of the lens that will help with that but for the most part, you have enough resolution with this camera and it’s really not necessary. If your subject is very, very small and your looking for the best close up possible, then what you want to do, is use the lens to zoom in as far as you can and take the picture this way. You can see now, I can still focus on my target and its much larger in the screen. This is unlike a lot of other cameras where the lens needs to be all the way in the zoomed out position. This camera can be in the zoomed in position and you actually end up with better closer results. Finally, just like with any other picture, remember always focus on your target. If you’re taking a picture of a book or a picture and your target does not have enough contrast in it and the camera will probably have a difficult time focusing. So all you need to do is just place the brackets over something with contrast, press the shutter button halfway and then recompose the image to center your subject in the frame before taking the picture. Finally, go ahead and press the shutter button the rest of the way to take the picture. To find out much more about digital photography and your digital camera go to LBguides.com.