The PD170 has a menu item under CAMERA SET called "AUTO SHTR". What does this menu item actually do, and how is it different from the "Shutter" button on the back of the PD170?

According to the manual:
AUTO SHTR ON -- To automatically adjust the electronic shutter speed.
AUTO SHTR OFF -- To fix the electronic shutter speed.

The default is ON. But I don't see any effect to setting it to OFF.
In either setting, I can still change the shutter speed using the "Shutter" button.

I want to make sure that if I set a manual shutter speed it will be used.

Anyone know?

Take a look at www.alanbarker.com. His site explains a lot of the custom settings well.

Auto shutter on the 170 is like the AUTO shutter on a still camera. Most cameras today are Apature priority when in auto mode. By switching the AUTO Shutter ON the camera goes to a SHUTTER PRIORITY mode meaning it will change shutter speed BEFORE it changes the iris.

To make sure the camera holds the manual shutter speed when you set the camera to manual mode and you've set the shutter speed to whatever it will stay there until you change it.


HTHs

Don

The Auto Shutter, when set to ON, will "fight" the iris to find a happy medium point. It is best to place the shutter to OFF. The iris and AUTO shutter tend to "play-off" each other.

I can't agree with Don. He says: ''By switching the AUTO Shutter ON the camera goes to a SHUTTER PRIORITY mode meaning it will change shutter speed BEFORE it changes the iris.''

What happens is quite the reverse in fact. When auto shutter is 'on' the camera will automatically (and smoothly) up the shutter speed to counteract brighter lighting, assuming you ignore the silent scream for the two ND filters of course.

You can safely switch auto shutter to 'off' in the menu. Just obey the call for the ND filters and you'll be fine Pete. Upping shutter speeds brings all sorts of nasty stacatto jerkiness to your footage, as well as giving more CCD smear. Leave the camera in shutter priority mode (at 1/50th sec) and lock down the aperture. Use the NDs to avoid using f/8 and smaller.

tom.

Tom,
Thank you for the correction. I was in a hurry and didn't read what I had written. You wrote what I had meant to write but it didn't come out of my fingers that way.
(I'm slowing down)
Don