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Displays

Lesson 8 from: Panasonic GH-3 Fast Start

John Greengo

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Lesson Info

8. Displays

Next Lesson: Rec Menu

Lesson Info

Displays

Well, let's dive right onto the menu system, so we're going to talking about in this section what's going on in the viewfinder and on the back of the camera. Obviously, you can switch back and forth between the two with the ice sensor that is on the back of the camera, it automatically detects whether your eyes really close or far away. You can manually switch it with the lvf, which stands for live view focusing on it. Now, if you do want to jump into the menu system, which we will be getting into it a little bit, you can turn that high sensor on and off. Now. The display button over on the right hand side of the camera will control the type of display that you see in the back of the camera and there's a number of options in here. So go ahead, grab your camera, put it in the regular live you mode, I guess, and just hit the display button and you'll be able to see a number of those different options that come up one of the ones that is the the tilt. Let me do a little live demo on the t...

ilt options, so let me get my camera turned around so that you guys can see it on camera, I'll hit the display button. A couple of times, and then we go to the second one, which just has the tilt option here. And so if I was to go into manual mode and oh, I probably don't have it set up quite the right way to say this, but in any case, you can see it tilting and so you can just match it up. When you get to the middle, you can see that it do you get it right here? There we go, got a nice green line across the whole line, locked the tripod and actually just moved ever so slightly but it's a great way to make sure that you get a level horizon. The reason that's important is that if you need to rotate images, once you're in photo shop or light room, you are losing pixels, so it just enables you to get the most image area possible. Now there are a number of customized options in this camera, and one is customizing this the display in the camera and here I have to tell you personally, I'm a little bit torrent between the two options option one is inside, which means all the information the shutter speed apertura aiso takes place with in inside the frame, so it's overlapping on the image and I don't like this because I can't see the image in its entirety, option number two is outside the image area, which I don't like because it makes the image smaller in size, and so it depends on what is more port to you, and I have found that I'm kind of critical about the framing of the edges of my frame, and I don't like those numbers and so forth cluttering up the edges because I can't see if something is really in the edge or over the edge, and so I kind of prefer the outside option when it comes to the monitor display style, we'll get into changing that as we make our way through the menu a little bit later on, but just be aware that's a change that we're going to be able to make in the camera, you're going to have your most important information right there along the bottom aperture, shutter, speed exposure and isil. The exposure meter, the light meter on this camera is a little bit awkward in the way it reads settings. And so for instance, it's not going to show you the full minus toe plus scale. It's only she's going to show you half of the scale at one time, so in this top example were three stops under exposed or in this next one, we're two stops over exposed. But the camera also works in third stop, so for instance, we're too thought two thirds of a stop under exposed in this case and you can see that zero is on one end. Three is on the other, but it depends on whether you're over exposed are underexposed. So just be aware that that meter reads out a little differently than a lot of other cameras on the market out there. Now, when you see a display that looks like this, it is called the monitor information display, and when you press the q button on your camera, it becomes an active, live quick menu it's a shortcut to some of the more common features that you would use on a camera on a regular basis. So let's just kind of walk her way through this reasonably quickly top row is obviously your basic exposure information, including your battery level. The next line is going to control your eyes so so you can actually tab over to that, using the controller on the back of the camera and enter in a different isil and just for a quick little live display little option, a little demo here, let's go ahead and do that, so in our camera, we're going to hit the actually, we're going to hit the display button until we get this screen here so there's all these different options on different screens and the one that is very good to leave on is this one here so that you use this view finder for your viewing of the image in composing use this for making setting changes so I'll hit the cue button and you'll see how we have something that turns yellow and I can navigate around up to the I s o and I can change my eyes so up in here in prescott the set but now I could also tapped this and work with the touch screen to make a different setting in here and then press the set button to kind of lock that in so I can work all of this in the touch menu or I can work with it with the touch pad and wheel on the back of the camera. So back to the keynote next one since we've already talked about I esso exposure compensation you know we've already talked about this is well there's a button up on the top of the camera for this but you can do it additionally, back here people, some people have a harder time seeing what's going on on the top button some people or we'll have the camera on a tripod and it's just easier to work with it on the back like this next up, we have our flash mode, we can jump in, and we've talked a little bit about flash changing some of the different flash modes. Normal flash, slow sink is all is kind of nice. I like that for a lot of situations. I don't like using red. I told you why? Because it delays the shutter release by a short period of time. All right, moving on down to the next line of information, we have the drive mode, and this will enable you to go in and kind of customize how you have the dial up on the top of your camera, which mainly controls your drive. No, this enables you to go in and control exactly how each of those different functions work. And we've already gone through that earlier in this class. There's a lot of things in here that we have seen before. For instance, the a f mode, there is a button on the back of the camera for this. Some people like to re program that button to do other functions, and so they will access it through the quick menu here. All right, this one's pretty important, and we haven't talked about it already. This is determining the quality of the still images on the camera. We have an option of recording jpeg images or raw images, raw images is the original data off the sensor, and when you record a raw image it's great to have because it's the original information and it never gets damaged, and it is a great system to have because you can create j pegs and multiple copies of it later on. Jay pigs are very convenient for email posting on websites and so forth, but they are compressed, and they have lost a bit of the original information in the compression size. So you want to be careful about choosing which one is right for you? I encourage most people, too, shoot raw or move to raw if they can. For some people, they don't have the right software system for doing that, and so you would want to shoot large j peg, maybe if you're just getting started and photography, I don't no too many good reasons why you're going to want to shoot small j peg for much of the time. If you needed really small file sizes, you could do that. One of the options that this camera and most cameras have is the ability to shoot both raw and j peg at exactly the same time, so in this case, when you take a single picture, you will get to files on the memory card one raw, one j pay. I don't recommend this except for special circumstances where you need both the reason is is that if you shoot raw and you have the right software, you can create j pegs in as much as you want later on if you have an immediate need for j pegs, that is the time where maybe you're going to shoot ross for later but you need a quick j paid to get out of the camera right now you could do that so that is the quality setting next up if you do choose j peg, you can choose different sizes of j pegs large, medium and small as well as an aspect ratio, so the aspect ratio of the sensor in the camera is four by three so if you want to get as much area as possible that the sensor can get capture, you want the four by three aspect ratio. If you were shooting specifically images for hdtv, for instance, you could set it at eight. Excuse me sixteen by nine if you were trying to shoot images that match the heightened with aspect ratio of larger full friend cameras, that would be three to two and if you like squares, well, they got a one to one option for you they're for most people, you're going to want to leave this in large and four by three so that you're getting as much information as possible there's a wifi setting here and this is the same as what the wifi button on the top of the camera but once again the wifi button on the top of the camera is also function number one, which some people will want to re program for for those people who don't use wifi very often the function button will allow you to jump in and re program some of the other buttons on the camera so let's go back to the live demo and take a look at the back of the camera and what I'm gonna do is I'm going to hit the q menu and I'm going to navigate my way up to the function button and I'm gonna press set because this gives you a little diagram of the camera in which buttons you can re program and what is currently programmed into those buttons right now unless so let's say we didn't use wifi we don't care about wifi we could go up to function number one will hit set to enter this and we confined another feature that we think is more valuable let's see what can I change this to al etc I kind of like that burst rate mode I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to select that so now when I press function button number one upon the top I'll be able to have a shortcut to go change the way that the burst to set in my camera so makes it very quick and easy to make that change so customize those buttons get your camera tailored perfectly for what you d'oh next up bottom line of information, the photo style and this is determining the color and look of your j peg images has nothing to do really with your raw images at all. And so for most, for the most part, I would just leave it it's standard, I like to do my image manipulation outside of my camera, where I have a much bigger and better quality screen and mohr tools to work with. You can adjust in camera if you want. This is, however, a bit more important for people who are shooting video because this camera does not shoot raw video and this does get kind of baked in you might say to the video that you are recording and so play around with these different setting, see which ones work well for you for a number of people who shoot video, they I don't want to have something to contrast, because if something is recorded in a contrast, he mode which would be, for instance, the visited or seen resetting it's very hard to pull up certain types of details, and so if you're shooting video. I would say that standard would be a safe, easy choice. You might try the portrait setting, or you could go into the custom and create your own little profile for it to work under. Next up is the white balance setting. Now, we did see this as a button on the top of the camera, and so it's kind of a secondary feature in here that we've already seen before, and we've already talked about, so we're going to keep moving on. Next up is something called I dynamic, and we have a number of options in here. High standard lohan off, probably easier to explain it with photos, so in I dynamic turned off it's, just straight photography. Ok, getting normal pictures in the eye dynamic in standard, what happens is the camera looks at the image, and it adjusts the contrast in the brightness of the image, according to what it thinks would make a good picture, and sometimes it's, right, and sometimes it's wrong. In this particular case, it is lightened the shadows, which is generally a pretty good thing in this particular shot. The reason I wouldn't want to leave it turned on all the time is that you don't always want to lighten the shadows, and this is something that, once again, you'll probably be a much better judge of later on, after the fact on a big screen with a computer and a program like light adobe light room that allows you to make those controls on the camera, so I tend to want to leave that turned off. Next up is our meat ary mode and so there's three different options multiple center waited in spot spots pretty easy to explain it's, a tiny little area right in the middle of the frame it's great for getting a detailed reading of the light reflected off of the subject center waited is basically a fat version of that spot it's how a lot of cameras had their metering systems before the event of auto focusing in modern digital cameras, but the mode that I like to use with this camera is the multiple mode. What it does is it looks at a very large area of the seen it compares and contrasts the bright in the dark areas and comes up with a nice, good average for your shutter speed in aperture, and it does a very, very good job, and I think most people will would be well served using the multiple and for those more advanced users, they'll want to jump into the spot from time to time, it would be my guess, and then, of course, you'll have the number of images left in the bottom right hand corner. Now, beyond looking at this data, you can also see images in the back screen of the camera and so let's talk about how you view some of this information when you have it turned on an image because when you hit the cuba button, the layout is a little different, but all the same stuff is there what they've done is they've kind of made the icons a little bit smaller, and they've grouped them up along either the top or the bottom, so we're not going to go through all these does he just kind of gone through them, and so you'll just notice them in a slightly different area. One of the great things about the camera is the customizable ability of all the buttons and dials on this camera, and so one of the things that you could do in the camera is enable the custom menu and what happens in here is you're going to hit the functioned button and you're going to have a list of five items down at the bottom and you can go into any one of these items and change him, but you khun, take him and move him out and add new items in there so you can create your own custom menu that has just the items that you use on a regular basis and the way that you're going to navigate through this is using that back dial to go back and forth and then going upward to select the different modes on it. If you want to enter the customization mode, you will go down. And then you will select from the different options to put in the tabs there. And so there's a lot of different options that you can kind of create. And it's. Nice toe. Really get the camera taylor the way you wanted to, so pay attention to the bottom of your screen, because it's going to give you information on how to enter and exit. You can use the touch screen on this, or you can use the wheel on the back to customize the tabs. But you'll end up with, I believe, fifteen different favorite options that you can get in and change.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Keynote

Ratings and Reviews

Birkeytique
 

For the time being, this may be the best way to learn more about other Panasonic models. There is very little good material on the FZ1000. This shows much of the dial and other functions. It is out of date as the current model is a DMC-GH4. I reviewed all the material available free; there are many features on my camera that are different. Johne Greengo is a phenomenal teacher! The best, clearest, most thorough and most motivating I have ever experienced. I am currently taking the Fundamentals of Photography, learned so much so far; bought the course. These "Fast Starts" are great and were mentioned in the class. Hope your camera is covered here.

Edris
 

waw, I could not ask for better explanation, nor better teacher in my hole life. Thank you john for your great class. I 'll say no more!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Joanne Catapano
 

John is a great ! I learn so much from his classes, he has away of communicating that makes you feel like you're sitting in class live with him. The classes are so informative that each time I review them I keep learning more. I have the Lumix FZ1000, there is little out there. I found this class very helpful. John you are the best, keep the classes coming.

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