Panasonic G2 Modes & Menus

Panasonic DMC-G2 Modes and Menus

Capture Modes: When powered on, the Panasonic G2 defaults to Record mode. The Exposure Mode dial on top of the camera sets the main shooting mode, with the following options:

•  Program AE (with Shift): This mode places the camera in control of both aperture and shutter speed, while the user has access to all other menu functions. Once the camera's exposure system has been activated by half-pressing the shutter button, the user can shift the aperture value and shutter speed by rotating the rear dial. (The overall exposure remains the same, but you can bias the camera towards using a larger or smaller aperture with a correspondingly faster/slower shutter speed.) When shooting movies, most functions are available, but the aperture and shutter speed both remain under automatic control.
•  Aperture Priority: Lets the user control the aperture setting while the camera selects the best shutter speed. (The aperture range varies with the lens in use.) When shooting movies, most functions are available, but the aperture and shutter speed both remain under automatic control.
•  Shutter Priority: The opposite of Aperture Priority, allows the user to set the shutter speed, from 1/4,000 to 60 seconds, while the camera selects the most appropriate aperture setting. When the flash is activated, the fastest shutter speed drops to 1/160th second. When shooting movies, most functions are available, but the aperture and shutter speed both remain under automatic control.
•  Manual: Provides complete user control over the exposure, including both aperture and shutter speed settings. A Bulb shutter setting also becomes available in this mode, allowing variable length exposures for as long as you hold down the shutter button, to a maximum exposure time of four minutes. When shooting movies, most functions are available, but the aperture and shutter speed both remain under automatic control.
• Custom: Up to three sets of shooting modes and settings can be stored, and are accessed quickly in this mode.
• Motion Picture P: The DMC-G2 allows shooting of movie clips in all its various Record modes, but only the Motion Picture P mode allows control of aperture and exposure compensation used for movie capture. The aperture range varies with the lens in use, and the precise shutter speed remains under automatic control although it can be tweaked in the desired direction using exposure compensation. ISO sensitivity is controlled automatically in this mode.
• Scene Mode: Adjusts camera settings (color rendering, flash mode, etc.) to optimize for different subject types: Sunset, Party, Babies (including keeping track of birthdays for two different children, so the Panasonic software can display the child's age along with the photo), Pet, and Peripheral Defocus (uses wider apertures to blur backgrounds).
•  Night Portrait: Allows slower shutter speeds to be used with flash. Balances the foreground subject illuminated by flash with the ambient light of the background. Sub-options include Night Portrait, Night Scenery, Illuminations (outdoor lighting at night), and Creative Night Scenery, which allows changes in the aperture value for special effects.
•  Close-Up: This mode is for macro pictures of small objects, enhancing color in flowers, etc. Sub-options include Flower, Food, Objects and Creative.
•  Sports: Adjusts ISO and controls shutter speed to freeze fast-moving subjects. Sub-options include Normal Sports (intelligent ISO control & high shutter speeds), Outdoor Sports (the same, but lower ISOs for shooting in good lighting), Indoor Sports (favors higher ISO speeds for indoor lighting), and Creative Sports (allows direct control of shutter speed).
•  Scenery: Optimizes settings to produce sharp, colorful landscapes. Sub-options include Normal, Nature, Architecture and Creative, the latter allowing control of the shutter speed. (Perhaps for deliberately blurring motion of waterfalls, fountains, etc.)
•  Portrait: Optimizes camera settings to reproduce warm, soft skin tones against a slightly blurred background. Sub-options include Normal Portrait (large aperture and soft skin tones), Soft Skin (introducing additional color-based blurring of skin areas by the camera's processor), Outdoor Portrait (compensates for backlighting), Indoor Portrait (intelligent ISO control to prevent blurring) and Creative Portrait (allows direct control of aperture setting).

• My Color Mode: Lets you adjust color, brightness, or saturation of the image on-screen. (That is, the preview image shown on the LCD or electronic viewfinder will reflect the color adjustments you've selected.) Here, the "Color" adjustment shifts the overall hue of the image from red at one extreme to blue at the other. The adjustment can either be made automatically via a number of presets, or manually via the "Custom" setting. Presets include Expressive, Retro, Pure, Elegant, Monochrome, Dynamic Art, and Silhouette.

Intelligent Auto Button: Panasonic's Intelligent Auto (iA)mode has moved from the Mode dial to a dedicated button in the G2. Pressing the iA button toggles between activating iAuto mode, and returning to the operating mode selected on the Mode dial. An LED in the center of the iA button illuminates when the G2 is in iAuto mode, at which point the options selected on both the Mode and AF Mode dials are overridden. There is one exception to this, in that the Motion P position on the Mode dial does still configure the camera for movie recording, although the iAuto functions appropriate to movie recording are now enabled.

iAuto mode places the camera entirely in control of most exposure variables, and when using autofocus, requires a focus lock before the shutter can be triggered. The camera automatically detects a subset of seven common scene types (or four types when recording movies), or falls back to a standard iAuto mode if an appropriate scene type isn't detected. In all cases, automatically adjusts settings appropriately. Other functions that are automatically enabled in iAuto mode include face detection autofocus, red-eye removal, intelligent ISO sensitivity control, intelligent exposure, long-shutter noise reduction, quick AF, backlight compensation, and intelligent resolution.

The user can still access the self timer, adjust the exposure compensation, enable or disable the flash, select between single / continuous autofocus or manual focus modes, enable or disable autofocus tracking, enable or disable image stabilization (modes 1 or 2 only, except for movies, which are fixed to mode 1), and enable or disable face recognition. It is also possible to switch between standard color or standard black & white film modes, enable or disable guide lines and information overlays on the LCD display, change the aspect ratio, and select the still image quality and dimensions. When shooting movies, you can specify the quality, dimensions and compression (except for the 16:9 WVGA Motion JPEG mode), and disable or set the strength of the wind cut function.

Movie Record Button: Pressing this dedicated movie record button will start and stop movie recording. Movies will be recorded using whatever mode is currently selected. This button can be enabled or disabled in some modes via a Custom Settings Menu setting. Confusingly, the Intelligent Auto mode provides only limited options on the Custom Settings menu, and the Movie button will retain whatever setting it had when it was last set. So users might find themselves in iA mode unable to trigger a movie when they want to, and also unable to find the option on the Custom Settings menu that would let them do so. (In fact, the camera will tell you to check the setting for the Movie Record button if you press it and it's disabled, but in iA mode, there's no way to turn it back on again.)

Playback Mode: The Playback button on the rear panel accesses Playback mode, where you can review captured images. The left and right arrow keys, as well as the up and down keys, scroll through the images on the card, or you can also scroll between images by dragging your finger horizontally across the surface of the touch-screen display. You can enlarge captured images or display them in index or calendar formats for quick viewing by rotating the rear dial.

Panasonic G2 Menus

DONE TO HERE Pressing the Menu button provides access to the camera's full menu system. The following options are available in most camera modes as menu tabs down the left side of the display. (Full auto mode greatly reduces the available options, to simplify camera operation.)  

Panasonic G2 Record Menu:

Panasonic G2 Motion Picture Menu:

Panasonic G2 Custom Menu:

Panasonic G2 Setup Menu:

Note that our setup menu screen shots and descriptions are based on a Panasonic G2 intended for the North American market. Panasonic doesn't include a switchable video output mode in North American cameras, but those intended for sale in other markets allow a choice of either NTSC or PAL video encoding. This is accomplished courtesy of a Video Out setting in the Setup menu, but we don't know precisely which page this item would be located on. (Based on the order in which the user manual is arranged, it would probably be on either page 2 or 3 of the menu.) We also don't know if it replaces another option, or simply shifts all the subsequent items down by one position, resulting in some options being located on different pages of the menu for non-North American cameras. We do know that the option only appears when the AV or HDMI cable is connected.

Panasonic G2 My Menu:

The Panasonic DMC-G2's My Menu shows the five most recently-used menu options, handy for accessing frequently-used controls quickly. Unlike some My Menu features, you can't explicitly assign controls to this menu, rather, the most-recently used ones appear here automatically.

Panasonic G2 Playback Menu: