ALL: Headphone Delay one of three design "Features" which are a pain!!!

[Vaughan Wood]

1. On my 1st wedding shoot on Saturday during the ceremony, I was shocked to get a 1/2 sec. delay through my headphones, which as I was near a P.A. speaker which the celebrant was using, made monitoring my sound extremely difficult.

As we do a lot of event work and have concerts in noisy halls coming up, has anyone else discovered this wonderful "feature"?

2. Another major problem for me when using this camera is the "rec check" does NOT work with simultaneous record, which for me renders having two cards slots pretty redundant!

3. The camera does not remember whether the focus assist is turned on when the camera is powered down, and same with the face detect I was using on a user button, although it remembered the EVF Detail setting on another user button, so maybe that gets overridden by the setting of its own switch under the LCD?

The Headphone delay is a really BAD one, and hopefully can get fixed in a firmware upgrade if it is a general thing, but also the camera should be able to be powered down at a function, and then quickly turned on and ready to use straight away, as it IS a gun and gun camera. It onlyt takes 4 secs to turn on, which is great!

The good things I might leave for another post, as I would love some feedback on these "features" first.

Cheers,

Vaughan

 

[ransom]

Under "AV OUT SETUP" -> "HP MODE" was it set to "LIVE"?

 

[Mike Warren]

Under "AV OUT SETUP" -> "HP MODE" was it set to "LIVE"?

That's almost certainly the problem. From page 92 of the 160 manual.

[HP MODE] <CAMERA>
Selects the sound heard from the headphones.

[LIVE]: The sound input from the microphone is output as is. This
setting is selected when delays in the sound are annoying.

[RECORDING]: The sound in the status to be recorded (the sound
synchronized with the images) is output.

 

[Mike Warren]

2. Another major problem for me when using this camera is the "rec check" does NOT work with simultaneous record, which for me renders having two cards slots pretty redundant!

That seems silly. I can only think that there is a design complication preventing Panasonic from doing it.

3. The camera does not remember whether the focus assist is turned on when the camera is powered down, and same with the face detect I was using on a user button, although it remembered the EVF Detail setting on another user button, so maybe that gets overridden by the setting of its own switch under the LCD?

I detest equipment (and software) that refuses to obey (or overrides) my instructions. It might be preferable in terms of reducing support calls for consumer equipment to have this behaviour, but professional equipment should be capable of remembering every setting through power cycles. Maybe there is an option for remembering the camera state through power cycles. If not, I really hope this gets fixed. At least have it as an option.

 

[Vaughan Wood]

Under "AV OUT SETUP" -> "HP MODE" was it set to "LIVE"?

Aaah, Thanks Guys!

Owned many cameras over the years, but that one tricked me!

Found the other two in the manual, but agree with Mike Warren, every poor implementation. At least today, it will let me add Face Detection while recording, while at the wedding it wouldn't, so obviously I'm on a steep learning curve here.


For those interested, I found the Face Detection a really good feature during the reception, which was a luncheon inside an old "bluestone" building with heavy sunlight coming in from one side of the building, and very little internal lighting from the other side.


With my camera light on, when I was going around the guests for their congratulations, the Face Detection would skip from one face to the next, adjusting iris and focus so quickly I really didn't miss a beat.


When I look at the footage today, nearly all the faces are well exposed all the time during the reception in very difficult lighting conditions. I'm really quite excited by the results I got in that situation, and the camera handled the extreme lighting better than any camera I've used before. Here are two samples from each side of the room. No grading or colour correction. Note the backlight!!

Cheers,

Vaughan

 

[dhardjono]

vaughn i am glade you are happy with your camera i have not tried face detection , Have you had any focusing problem i have problems in wide angle like example- alter at the church yesterday it was dark but not that dark i just shoot wide and in went in and out of focus. any problem like this?

 

[Vaughan Wood]

H

Have you had any focusing problem i have problems in wide angle like example- alter at the church yesterday it was dark but not that dark i just shoot wide and in went in and out of focus. any problem like this?

Hi dhardjono, I tend to use manual for most weddings. Just trying out the face detect here. But the auto focus when I tested it did do a very good job as well, even when it was downstairs in a very dark cellar.

Vaughan