Where is your GH1 from?

M

MR Fanny

Veteran
Just curious as to what stamp everyones GH1 has, whether its from japan, china,etc. Might be jumping the gun but if there is a correlation to origin and camera faults/QC. Reason I ask is read something about getting a 5dmk2 from taiwan instead of china for some reason....or maybe the other way around.

so if your bored, post up your origin and if you have anything you don't like about it build wise, ie stiffer zoom, virtical lines, which country is getting what...yada yada yada.

whether this thread turns into some thing useful or dies in the ass..who knows.ha

cheers.
 
Canon have a big prescense in Taiwan and I think they have factories there as well. The 5D Mark II body is some £500 cheaper there than the best price online in the UK. The GH1 is not yet released in Taiwan but such is it's close links to Japan, that wholesalers are importing them from Panasonic, but they sell out quickly.

Most of the stuff in China is fine as well but they use the PAL standard, not NTSC like Japan and Taiwan. Hong Kong has the same cameras as hit the UK market.
 
would explain why my friend in taiwan can't find any instore for me. cant seem to dig up a release date there in google.

so are the gh1's all made in japan? or is manufacturing location specific to video standards like you pointed out..ie china=pal, japan=ntsc.

your darn right about the 5d's price, even malaysia and hk prices averaging about 2.8kAUD for body. When you see prices like that your very tempted to overlook the gh1 which is 3kAUD here, but after months of swinging back and forth the gh1 just appears to be the more versatile camera, ticking more boxes than the 5d at present. That and the fact that a friend in the industry says canon are very reluctant in processing warranty claims on items brought abroad.
 
Mine's made in China, but the lens is made in Japan. Shouldn't be a big deal, I think.
 
Indeed, Canon has a very good manufacturing site in southern part of Taiwan and the quality is very high, on par with that in Japan. In fact, because modern cameras are highly integrated with micro electronics, Taiwan has the best advantage for this kind of high precision optical devices. Of course, I might be biased since I am from Taiwan.

With that said, GH1 has been very scarce in Taiwan, like here in US. I first asked a friend to check if I can get one from there, no luck. Finally, I managed to get one from Japan and it is a bit cheaper. My camera and lens both say Made in Japan, so does the menu system. My stock lens is also a little tighter than I would like.
 
All the Taiwanese models are imports from Japan. I once spoke to a guy who worked in Panasonic's marketing department and they said that there were other markets (like US and Europe, even Hong Kong) which would have priority on the GH1 because it's a luxury item and not easy to make, especially not yet in great quantities. So they are still 'evaluating' the Taiwanese market for the official GH1 launch.

However I think Panasonic are being overly cautious because there are plenty of 'luxury' Canons and Nikons in the Taiwanese market and they sell very well indeed. In fact, they have cornered the market in Taiwan... which is maybe the real reason the GH1 isn't being pushed there against the likes of the 5D Mark II.

New products take time to gear up to mass market demand.

The US indie film making crowd has been pretty quick to catch on.

I bought mine in Taiwan and it came straight from the factory in Japan - body is made in Japan. I think maybe some of the PAL models are made in Chinese factories, maybe even US models and Hong Kong international versions. This is one advantage of buying the domestic Japanese model - it's made at Panasonic's native manufacturing plants under their full control.
 
Mine is Made in China as well. Lens is from Japan. Does anyone have Japanese GH1 model? I wonder if the Japanese ones are made in Japan or China?
 
Purchased in London, so PAL version. Camera made in China, lens made in Japan. This was part of the very first shipment to the UK in very early June - I happened to walk in to a camera store and they'd received their first unit 2 hours earlier and hadn't gotten around to calling the people on the waiting list yet.

I get some nasty banding on long-exposure shots, but haven't noticed any elsewhere (though I haven't exactly been pixel peeping) I haven't installed the new firmware.

Very, very slight amount of looseness on the lens mount - the lens will rotate ever so slightly even after it's clicked in to place.
 
dojomo...is yours a PAL model also?

Anyone with a US NTSC model care to post up their place of manufacture? my guess is it could possibly be from japan cause its ntsc. would be interesting to know.

do you guys think this might explain why pal countries have a "better" supply chain from china compared to ntsc countries or is it just coincidence?
 
I sincerely doubt that Panasonic manufactures the GH1 body in more than one factory regardless of region model - even if it's sold out for the moment we are not exactly talking about iPhone levels of demand here.
 
MR Fanny said:
dojomo...is yours a PAL model also?

Anyone with a US NTSC model care to post up their place of manufacture? my guess is it could possibly be from japan cause its ntsc. would be interesting to know.

do you guys think this might explain why pal countries have a "better" supply chain from china compared to ntsc countries or is it just coincidence?
Click to expand...

Nope. NTSC made in China. I was at Fry's Electronics and checked G1 body to see where it was made. Surprise surprise it was made in Japan. Panasonic is cheapening their product line with China stuff. Even my previous cheap FZ28 was made in Japan.
 
Oh come on that really is the wrong mentality to take. What is important is how the parent company controls QC at the offshore factories.
 
"Made in *" mostly means where the final assembly was done these days. For instance my brother's new Samsung LCD TV is "Made in Slovenia" for EU import tax reasons. Which in all likelihood means they mounted the screen and electronics into the casing there but those parts was manufactured in Korea / China / Taiwan.
 
My G1 is "Made in Japan", my GH1 is "Made in China".

Even if it is "Made on NorthPole" or "Made in Fireland" or "Made in Southern Beluchistan" it don't touch me - important: it works well!

The battery for € 80 ist "Made in China", the 3rd party battery for € 8 is also "Made in China" - perhaps with same machine :-)
 
US NTSC from Crutchfield

Body = China
Lens = Japan

I do believe that just means assembled in China. My wife is from Hong Kong and she said "Oh no... it was made in China?" I said "Sure what is wrong with that?" She said "They make bad electronics there. People prefer to buy from Japan" I said "Baby, this thing could be made from puppies for all I care but from what I have seen so far it is a very nice camera"

Oh and there is a little chip of rubber on the body already. I do recall reading that has happened with these cameras. I suspect they will deal with that on the GH2. She insists it is because it was made in China. meh *shrugs*
 
I had what I thought to be a chip in the rubber but I managed to scrub it off...something just got stuck to it I think lol.
 
well i too believe that company QC overrides the so called "made in china" syndrome. Was curious as to the ratio to meet order demands and if one could source a japanese or china made unit based on country.

so far its been proven wrong...ha. there's an old myth here in aus that you don't by a local car with a friday build date cause its the end of the week and everyone is in TGIF mode...lol. has yet to be proven though.
 
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