Hello,

Having just bought the HC-X1 I've been struggling away at the on-line manual for the past few days. Lots of questions.

1) What the heck does SW stand for? It gets repeated everywhere (SW Setting, Auto SW) but so far I've found no place in the manual that says what it stands for.

2) I'm endlessly searching through the camera's menu to find and experiment with functions. Sometimes the manual is clear about what menu “page” to find them on, but other times it seems not. I'm wondering, therefore, if there is any place where one can find and print out the the camera menu, the whole “tree”. I think that could be greatly helpful.

3) While I'm at it... The manual is full of other letter abbreviations....WFM, AWB etc. I've figured most of these out by now but I'm wondering if there is an explanation of all these abbreviations available somewhere.

Thanks.

John

1) SW = Software. But it's not important to know what SW means, it’s just an acronym Panasonic has given to sub menu names "SW Settings", "Auto SW”
2) + 3) I don't care for the camera menu system or the manual but since I've used other cameras they all have similar settings just in different places.

WFM = Wave Form Monitor
AWB = Auto White Balance

Many of these acronyms are know by video professionals. You can google them. You also might want to watch Youtube videos on the camera that explain when and why you might want a setting.

Are you sure that "SW" doesn't stand for "switch"? As in "Auto SW" would be the menu setting that controls the customizable function of the external "Auto Switch" on the body of the camera?

Thanks for the replies. Guess I'll just have to do what I've done once before with another camera's menu, which is photograph each page and assemble these images and make my own tree and index. My only other disapointment with the camera so far is the LCD monitor. Wow is it reflective. I'd heard it was bad but I've never seen an LCD monitor this bad. Outside, even with a visor/hood wrapped around it, it was impossible. I have a GH4 and I thought that one was bad but it's nothing compared to this. Well, that's what the EVF is for, only I expect I'll always have to use the EVF unless shooting indoors. I have an old HDV Canon XH A1 and its monitor is amazing outside. I can only attribute this to the fact its screen is not a touch screen. I might be wrong but I'm assumng it's the touch screen technology with its needed endless touching of the screen that's resulted in these smooth reflective surfaces. If I'm right, oh that they'd give an option - a non-touch, non-reflecive monitor or the touch screen we have now. Me, I always prefer to use the camera buttons and scroller to go through the menu anyway.

Your choices for outside are: the view finder or high quality field monitor. I don’t find the touch screen feature that useful. Touching the LCD leaves fingerprints making it that much more difficult to see.

The menu is a bit convoluted, but after setting up the camera to suit your needs you’ll find that there should only be a few settings that you’ll need to go into the menu for. Write crib notes in those settings until you commit them to memory.

You're right about the manual. I had this same problem when I bought the GH4. That manual was even more obtuse, as it mixed instructions for both the cinema and still aspects of the camera. But after struggling with it for many days I was able to ferret out the five percent of information pertinent to my use and since then haven't looked back. So I'm sure it will be the same with this camera.

Bought this camera for field work so an external monitor is not practical for my use. Even so I did scour B&H looking to see if there was an external monitor without touch screen (premised on the my theory about the reflectiveness of touch screens) but saw none.

Did, by the way, figure out what “SW” stands for; it's “switch”. Realized that when I was looking at the manual's table of content under the heading Menu. There they use no abbreviations and say: “User Switch” and “Switch Setup” etc. The word “switch” seems kind of a strange choice to me; think we'd be more likely to say “settings”. Who knows, maybe something got lost in the translation from Japanese.

Anyway, thanks for your comments.