Predefined Scene Modes Camera User

For a new camera user, the Intelligent Auto Mode is a convenient means to take pictures. But occasionally, it will fail to categorize a scene correctly, making the camera’s settings non-optimal. For example, a scene identified as a Macro picture can be either an indoor shot of a two-dimensional subject, such as a paper receipt, or an outdoor shot with three dimensions, such as a flower. The scenery shot might be a shot of the mountain peak or a picture of a building. The Intelligent Auto Mode will make its best guess based on the brightness, speed, and contrast, but you may find that it doesn’t take the picture you want because your subject is incorrectly identified. To remedy this, the Panasonic G2 camera allows you to provide scene identification. It has icons representing predefined scenes you match to your subject. Essentially, you match the subject to an icon that most closely mimics the conditions under which you are shooting.

Each of the six mode dial options operates the same way. They each act as a classification holding a specific group of scenes with one important distinction. Five mode dial options (Nightly Portrait, Close-up, Sports, Scenery, and Portrait) are each a general themed scene category and when selected, each mode provides a group of subcategories for the scene. For example, the Close-up mode dial option contains a group of four related scenes: Flower, Food, Objects, and Creative Close-up. Panasonic calls these five themed mode dial options advanced scene modes and will also refer to their subcategory scenes by the same term. You can see how this allows you to fine-tune the classification of your subject. The mode dial option marked with the letters SCN is the Scene Mode option, which contains a group of unrelated scene modes. The Scene Mode option could just as easily have been described as miscellaneous. To simplify things, we refer to all of the individual scenes as predefined scene modes. This covers their function exactly and, hopefully, removes some of the confusion in Panasonic’s rather arbitrary distinction between the Scene Mode and the advanced scene modes.

To use the predefined scene modes, you must disable the Intelligent Auto Mode, so make sure the iA button is not glowing blue. Move the mode dial to the desired predefined scene mode. Its associated scene menu will display automatically. Use the rear dial or directional arrow buttons to navigate and select the predefined scene that will best reflect the scene for the picture or video you are about to take. The camera will apply its settings based on the selected scene mode and the image’s characteristics.

One more tip to cover before we move on to describing each of the predefined scene modes. The Panasonic G2 camera has a Help function represented by a bold lowercase i . Press the DISPLAY button and a helpful explanation about the selected predefined scene mode appears. To exit, press the DISPLAY button again and you will be returned to the selected predefined scene mode screen.