Setting up the Canon G1X3 Part 2 The menus 12 December 2017

The G1X3 is a very good street camera. Unobtrusive with fast accurate AF and good picture quality.

The User Guide doesn’t work through the menus as they appear in the camera. There is plenty of guidance for selecting options but it can be difficult to find. Hence this post.

The Setting Menu (wrench 1-5) is well enough described on pages 170-178 of the User Guide.

Move from one top level menu tab to the next with the zoom lever.

The Shooting menu (camera 1-8).

I will run through the camera symbol menus with reference to details only where I think the nature of the options available requires some clarification. If I fail to mention an item assume I recommend the default setting.

Camera1

* Shooting information display. There are several submenus.

Under [Screen info/toggle settings]  and [VF info/toggle settings] I recommend checking all three of the display options available. You can then easily cycle between each of these with the Down/Info button when getting ready to make pictures.

* VF vertical display. See how the viewfinder looks with this On and Off. Take your pick. I prefer it Off which leaves the camera data on one side of the preview image with the camera in portrait orientation. I find the data easier to read this way than overlaid on the lower part of the image which happens when On is set.

* Expo. Simulation. Set [Enable] The preview image in monitor and EVF will change lightness with exposure compensation setting and with aperture, shutter speed and ISO setting adjustments in Manual exposure mode.

Set this Off in the perhaps unlikely event you are using the camera for a studio flash shoot when exposure will be determined by external flashes, separately metered.

* Reverse display.  Every menu system I have used in the last few years seems to have a few mystery items, this being one. I finally figured out what it does, no thanks to the User Guide. If you are making a selfie photo with the monitor swung out and facing the same way as the lens, Reverse display determines whether the preview image will be flipped horizontally or not.

Reverse display ON flips the preview image.

Reverse display OFF presents the image as the sensor sees it.

The resulting photo is the same in either case and the same as that given with Reverse display OFF.

* Display mode. This is another mystery item. It refers to the refresh rate of the display, presumably in this case the monitor although it is not clear if the EVF is also affected by this setting.

Faster refresh gives smoother panning but uses more power.

I find that for general photography there is no noticeable difference between the Power Saving and Smooth settings so I set Power Saving to eke out a bit more life from the tiny battery.

Camera2

* VF display format. This applies to the EVF not the monitor screen.

You have two options:

Display 1 gives a larger image area but camera settings icons encroach on the left side of the image preview.

Display 2 gives a smaller image area but only the level gauge and the AF frame are superimposed on the image area.

Take your pick.

* Image review. You can have this on just to check that your camera made a picture. But doing so markedly slows shot to shot times.

Those coming from the DSLR world habitually chimp their shots because you get so little feedback from a DSLR viewfinder about the appearance of the output image.

I set Image review Off. Don’t worry, the camera makes pictures just fine. There is no need to habitually check. If you do want to review a shot for focus or exposure just press the Playback button.

* I dealt with touch settings in the previous post.

* Function Assignment is dealt with in the next post.

* Quick setting Menu (Q Set) layout.    You can allocate any of 12 items to the Q Set menu for quick access. This works like the Q menu in a Panasonic camera or the Fn button on a Sony compact.

You can also select the order of listing.

You can limit the number of items if you are sure there are some you will not want to use in Prepare Phase of use.

Camera3  

* AF operation.  This would usually be accessed via the Q Set menu.

One shot is what it says, Servo is for when you want to follow focus on a moving subject.

* AF Method. The choices are Face detect/tracking, Smooth zone AF and 1 Point AF.

Face detect/tracking is no doubt designed to make the photographer’s life easier with a fairly automated type of AF function. If it does what you want then all is well. But the camera cannot read your mind so there is considerable opportunity for the focussing algorithms to lock onto  something other than that which you wanted or to fail to lock onto anything which you would interpret as the subject.

Smooth zone AF creates a very large AF frame which can be moved about,  then the camera decides where to focus within that frame.

I use and recommend 1 Point AF. This makes the photographer work a bit harder to specify the exact position of the AF frame but the reward is an extremely high level of accuracy and reliability.

As I write this I have made 1500 photos with the G1X3. For those pictures where the subject was reasonably static (in other words when I was not trying to follow focus on a moving subject) I used 1 Point AF.

The resulting pictures reveal a focus accuracy rate of 100% at the location of the AF frame.

That is the most consistently accurate single shot AF performance of any camera which I have ever used.

A side note on AF accuracy… For many years I used Canon DSLRs. I had the EOS20D, 40D,  450D and 60D. Before that I had several EOS film SLRs. Every one of them suffered from inconsistent and inaccurate autofocus. I gave up Canon DSLRs in disgust mainly because of this problem.

So it is a pleasant change to find a Canon camera which delivers reliably accurate autofocus.

It would appear that Canon has gotten their dual pixel AF system working well.

* AF Frame size. On any modern Panasonic camera even at the budget end of the price scale, you get a plethora of choices at about this point in the setup process, from pinpoint through multiple AF frame sizes to custom AF patterns.

But on the G1X3 you only get two choices small (which Canon calls Normal) and smaller (which Canon calls small).   Actually having used the Canon system for a while now I think that the two AF frame sizes is enough and the Panasonic approach is a bit of overkill.

Anyway, set Normal.

If you activate the AF frame (it goes orange) by pressing the AF Frame selector button you can toggle between the two  AF frame sizes with the lens ring.

* Continuous AF.  Disable this. When enabled the AF system constantly hunts for focus. This will exhaust the little battery real fast for no useful purpose.

* AF+MF.  When ON, you can half press and hold the shutter button to acquire focus then turn the lens ring which will jump the camera into manual focus so you can check on the focus manually. The camera will do this even if the lens ring is not set for MF in the Function Assignment submenu.

* AF–assist beam firing.  Set this OFF. The AF system focusses just fine without it and the light will irritate anybody facing the camera.

Camera4

* MF-Point Zoom. I set this to 5x but the amount is easily changed when in MF with the > (Flash) button with which you can toggle between nil, 5x and 10x.

* Peaking settings.  The G1X3 does have peaking but I am not yet sold on the benefits as implemented in this camera. I have seen much more “peaky” examples in other cameras. In the G1X3 I find it difficult to estimate the exact point of best focus.

Anyway I set the level to high and the color to blue. Take your pick.

* IS settings. You can have Off, Continuous or Shoot Only. On cameras with a long lens the Continuous setting is essential to keep the viewfinder preview steady. But that is not such an issue with this camera.

 I set Continuous out of habit but Shoot Only is probably fine.

Camera5

* Bracketing. I put this item on My Menu for ready access if required. You can have no bracketing, exposure bracketing or focus bracketing. With either focus or exposure bracketing you can set the EV step with the AF frame selector button (there is an on screen prompt).

* ISO Speed.  Access this via the Q Set button.

Scroll to the ISO Auto box and set either Auto (most often used for general hand held photography) or a set level (most useful for tripod work).

Then press the Menu button to bring up the next submenu.

Set a maximum ISO speed. I set 6400 as the level where luminance noise becomes objectionable to me. Some users have a much lower tolerance to noise than me so would set a lower maximum ISO speed.

Now we come to the mysterious “Rate of Change”. This option only appears in P and Av shooting modes, not Tv or M.

What exactly Rate of change is supposed to do remains unclear to me. It has been a feature of Canon Powershots for years. I never understood it way back then and I still don’t.

Here is what I have discovered:

If  rate of change is set at Fast the camera usually sets a shutter speed of 1/1000 even indoors requiring a very high ISO setting to compensate. The purpose of this eludes me.

If rate of change is set to Slow, the camera sometimes sets a shutter speed which is too slow for safe handholding.

If  rate of change is set to Standard, the camera often selects a shutter speed, aperture and ISO which appear appropriate for hand held photos in the current  conditions.

BUT rather more frequently than I like,  in P mode the ISO setting goes haywire. In successive shots of exactly the same scene the ISO can vary from 100 to 800 for no reason apparent to me. The firing solution (shutter speed/aperture/ISO combination) is not stable.

I am in the process of trying to understand what is going on here without much success. I have not encountered this strange auto ISO behaviour in any other (not Canon) camera and I have used a great many of them.  

At the moment I find that if I use P Mode which is my preference with other cameras I have to keep a very close eye on the  shutter speed and ISO to pick up when/if they go off piste so to speak.

An alternative might be to use Tv Mode more often. This at least appears to provide a more stable auto ISO firing solution.

Av Mode also provides a more predictable and stable firing solution.  If light levels permit then with [Rate of change] Standard, the camera aims for a shutter speed of 1/60 at the wide end and 1/160 at the long end of the zoom range.   The shutter speed is focal length responsive and the exposure algorithm usually sets a suitable level for general purpose hand held photography.

* Highlight tone priority. Watch out for this one. It can sometimes decide to set ISO 800 in bright sunlight presumably in the service of underexposing the highlights to protect them from blowing out.

But I find standard exposures are not especially prone to highlight blowout (unlike the G1X1 and G1X2) and a bit of judicious exposure compensation will suffice if subject brightness range is very high.

* Auto lighting optimiser. This is also aimed at preserving highlights while maintaining mid tone brightness. I set it to High which is giving me good looking JPGs in the often harsh light which prevails in Sydney and elsewhere in Australia.

* Metering Mode and ND filter are on the Q Set button. I always use Evaluative metering for highest reliability in a wide range of conditions.  The ND filter can be useful with video in bright light. For stills leave it off or you get some weird exposure settings in bright light.

* Flash Control.   The built in flash can be handy for fill flash outdoors (you can flash sync up to the fastest speed which is 1/2000 sec with the leaf shutter) and as an adjunct to available light indoors.

I set Flash Mode to Auto and Flash Exp. Comp to -1 stop and the red eye lamp to off to avoid annoying subjects.

Camera6

* White Balance.  Find this more easily on the Q Set button. There are many options well described on Pages 83-85 of the User Guide.

* Picture Style. This where you decide what settings to apply to JPG files. You can choose between the listed presets such as Auto, Standard, Portrait….etcetera. Or you can create a custom list of settings in each of the preset tabs. Press the AF Frame button to enter the submenu.

This is a work in progress for me but my initial findings with the default settings were that my JPGs lost fine detail especially in green foliage.

So here is a little table giving my current settings. By slightly increasing the Amount slider and reducing the Fineness and Threshold settings my pictures have regained fine foliage detail without apparent loss of quality in other aspects of the images.

	My current setting	Default	Maximum
Sharpness Amount	6	5	7
Sharpness Fineness	1	2	5
Sharpness Threshold	1	4	5
Contrast	0	0	+/- 4
Saturation	0	0	+/- 4
Color tone	0	0	+/- 4

* High ISO speed Noise Reduction.  I set this to the lowest level available. In my experience the default settings for most cameras including this one deliver excessively aggressive noise reduction in JPGs to the detriment of sharpness, resolution and overall picture quality.

* Setup for movie and Wi-Fi and wireless functions are well described in the User Guide.