New GH2 owner......first question

[Tim Akin]

Got the GH2 in yesterday.......played around with it last night.......woke up this morning with a headache......I'm not kidding.

I have the 20mm pancake lens.

I know nothing about still cameras and just a little about video cameras, I have two Sony FX1000's.

I guess what I would like to know the most is: what's the difference between motion picture mode on the dial and the other setting on the dial like "m,s,a,p"? I know what each of the letters mean but not how they differ from motion picture.

I know from playing around the motion picture setting is darker than say "m". With aperture at 1.7, shutter 60. iso 200, switching between motion picture and "m" there's a huge difference in the amount of light input. Looks like "m" is adding gain because there seems to be a lot of noise looking through the LVF. To get the same brightness I have to turn the iso to 3200 in motion picture. Don't understand this.

Thanks
Tim

[Patrick Janka]

Motion Picture is what you want for shooting video. The other settings are for still pictures. You can still shoot video in still mode, but it shoots in motion JPEG format as opposed to the AVCHD codec. Motion JPEG shoots in fully automatic, so the brightness you're seeing is an automatically pumped up ISO. I suggest you shoot video only in Motion Picture. If you're shooting in 24p I'd stick with a shutter speed of 50 for normal looking motion. M = Manual, S = Shutter Priority, A = Aperture Priority, P = Program. You can shoot in S, A, or P within Motion Picture. Go to the menu and the 2nd one down on the left, look on the right and you will see Exposure Mode. Hope that helps, and good luck!

[Corey Graham]

Welcome to the world of GHx's! It's extremely rewarding if you understand some photographic principles. Since it looks like you have a ways to go in that regard, I'll give a quick rundown of the modes you were asking about.

M - manual
S - shutter priority
A - aperture priority
P - program

For video, always shoot in Motion Picture mode. The aforementioned modes are most used for still photography, although video can be accessed through them too. In Motion Picture mode, you're able to shoot in M, S, A and P within Motion Picture mode. Am I making sense? It's hard to go into a lot of detail on a forum.

In Manual Mode, you set both aperture and shutter speed yourself. The camera does not determine either.

In Shutter Priority, you choose the shutter speed, and the camera determines which aperture setting you should be at. Aperture Priority is the opposite of this.

In Program Mode, the camera selects both the shutter speed and aperture for you. You can usually override one or the other, and the camera will compensate with the other.

Hope this helps. You can get some more detail on Wikipedia . . . List of digital camera modes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Tim Akin]

Thanks Corey and Patrick....perfect answers. Now the experimenting will begin.