hello I'm Graham and I hope everyone's having a great day welcome to this pilot
episode for what I hope it's gonna be a new video series here on YouTube
covering the FZ 300 or the FZ 330 from Panasonic for new users to that
camera. Now I've started this series because of a few feedback comments from
my latest book which is the users guide for the FZ 300 /330 and from some of
the later FZ300 tutorials that are running here on YouTube that the
technical content is a little bit too hard to follow for new users so this
particular series is going to be crafted without using any jargon and hopefully
you'll be able to assimilate the knowledge for the camera very very
easily and to assist this I've actually created a PDF file which is the content
of the video program now it's available as a PDF download and I'll put a link to
that in the video description below. So if you want to download it you can
follow along with the program as we go through the various setups for the
camera you can actually print it out - it's in high resolution format so you
can print it out as a document if you wanted to or keep it on your smartphone
or tablet as a reference. When you do get familiar with a camera I do encourage
you to have a look at my user's guide it's available on Amazon in color format
or if you buy the black and white version if you send me your order number
from Amazon I will forward you the color PDF for the book so you've got the black
and white material and you've got the PDF file which will give you all the
color pictures that are in that guide It's available also as a PDF only
download and again I'll put a link to that in my video description below so
you can have a look at that. okay let's now start the actual series in earnest.
I would have liked to have taken the camera out and shown you the setup and
shot some photographs with you but unfortunately it's the UK and this time
of year we get quite a bit of rain especially in the north of England so
some of the work I shot on Saturday when we're having a bit of sunshine - but I'm
going to show you how I set those shots up and the video and you should be able
to see how to do that. Now so everyone is on the same page on this tutorial and
I am asking ever want to follow along and reset the camera back
the factory default I'll then make some changes to the menu structures and then
you'll be able to follow along with me it means then if I make some changes to
the camera your camera will reflect that and you won't be wondering why you're
not achieving the same results so please do follow along reset the camera and
we'll all be able to follow the program correctly. ok let's start this program
rolling - we're going to assume that this camera has just been unboxed and I'm
going to show you how to charge up the battery install the battery in the
camera the choice of memory cards that you will
need to record your images and video on the camera and then we'll start the
setup of the camera in the fully automatic mode and I'll show you the
types of images and video you can get and why you should use the automatic
mode to narrow you to get familiar with the camera now the panasonic lumix fZ300/330
uses the BLC 12e battery. Now the one obviously you'll get with
the camera is the Panasonic original brand but i've been using the DSTE
brand for a number of years now and had no problems with those batteries
whatsoever and in fact in some cases they perform better than the Panasonic
brand. Now if you have any concerns about safety with these batteries risk of
explosion or fire within your camera I did a massive deconstruction of these
cells and there's a link to that in the video description below as well if you
wanted to look at the safety issues with OEM batteries versus third-party
batteries so check that out if you've got any concerns but I've been using
them without any issue they're about a third of the price of the Panasonic ones
and ideal for use in the camera. Now to charge it the original manufacturers
battery charger the A80 is a mains only operated device so you need to be near a mains source to charge the battery. You just
need to plug the battery into the charger and once a green light goes out
the battery is fully charged ideally you need to charge the battery when it's
cold don't just take it out of the battery when it's exhausted it might
still be warm and if you put it in the charger you won't get a full charge for
your next shoot but if you want to use the camera out in about
want to be able to charge your battery you can get these USB chargers. Now this
one is a very cheap version powered from my two thousand milliamp hour
battery bank and again the battery just plugs into the unit - turn on the power
bank and the battery will charge also with some of these devices you'll get a
lead that you can charge them in your car so it gives you a lot more
flexibility than the panasonic mains only device - I don't know why they haven't
actually produced chargers which you can actually use dual input voltage so you
can use them from mains operation or from your car 12 volts or in fact from
usb so I don't know why they haven't done that they're missing an opportunity
in the market they're already criticized for not having USB charging within the
cameras so it's something the ought to have a look at for the bridge camera range.
So having established that we need to charge the battery and how to charge
that it's inserted into the camera just in the base of the camera by opening the
camera door it will only fit one way around - place the battery in the slot push
it down and you'll hear it latch as it goes against the contacts.
Now need to look at a memory card to record your images and video on. Now I do
recommend that if you are going to shoot 4k video with a camera you get the u3
rated card. Now they are SD cards and if you look on the label there will be a
"U" with a number inside it. If you are shooting stills or 1080p video you can
come by the U1 rated card providing you've got a speed there which says 45
megabits per second or above it will perform adequately well. If you want to
shoot 4k video you've got to use the u3 rating which shows you the 90 megabits per
second that is needed for 4k video. If you want to save a little bit of money
can use the micro SD card in the SD adapter. Now the micro SD card is
electrically equivalent to the full size card but it's about a third of the price
so you can actually save some money and get the same functionality by using
those micro SD cards I use them exclusively now for all my needs I've
got all cards down to micro-sd in an adapter. Now
don't get carried away with the needs of speed with your card you probably find
advertised some cards which go really high write speeds but they may be the SDXC
version II card like this one and if you notice this the XC version II has got an
extra layer of contacts on the back. Now they're not compatible in the high-speed
mode with the camera if you put these cards in the FZ300 they will fall back
to the low speed operation so you've spent all that money for the high-speed
card but they'll only operate at the normal speed so you can save money by
not buying the SDXC version 2 card - in fact the only camera that will use them
at the moment in the Panasonic range is that GH5. So again the card goes into
the card slot in the camera which is in the battery compartment front face of the
card to the front of the camera - easy way to remember it press it down and it will
latch in place then close the battery door we're ready to start shooting.
Once the card is installed in the camera it's best to format the card within the
camera that will then clear off any other file structures that you may have
had in there you might have used that card in a different camera and you'll
find that you get problems if you're using it with a panasonic range so it's
better to format the card in the camera and then use it within that camera.
OK let's set up the camera let's go back to the factory reset condition so we're all
on the same page and then we'll look at how to set up the menus the way that I
do so you can get the best use out of the camera. So now we've got a fully
charged battery inserted into the camera we've got our memory card let's turn the
camera on well first of all reset this camera back to factory default so we're
all working with the same menu system and then I'll show you how we format the
card and then we'll set the camera up to give us the shooting conditions that
require for future use. Turning on the camera we'll just flick the switch on
the top to turn the camera on. Now to get into any of the menus in the camera
we use the menu set button on the back of the 4-way navigation dial - so pressing
menu set you'll see you bring up a set menus. Now the first one we want to do is
to go to the setup menu which is the spanner icon or the wrench as you call it in
the USA so we need is to use the left under navigation button to allow us to
go to the tabs on the left hand side then cursor down until we reach the setup
screen. Now if we cursor to the right it takes us into the actual menu itself and
we want to be on the last page so by using the zoom lever we can actually
quickly set step through the pages and I want to come down to reset which is on
page four - so when we scroll down to the reset page option when the reset is
highlighted press the menu set button that will ask you if do you want to
reset the drive mode and the record settings except for face recognition and
profile we're going to answer yes to the next three prompts that come up - so now
we reset the camera back to the camera default well now go through and format
the memory card and that is on the last screen page 5 or 5 so again highlight
the option for format press menu set. It will say it's going to delete all the
data from the memory card so if you've got images on there that you've not
saved it's worth saving them before you go to the yes operation press yes and
that has no formatted the cards taken all the old files off and recreated a
file structure that the camera can use. Then it comes back to the screen as you
can see now now I've got the camera set to the iA mode as you can see on the top
left hand side of the screen - to change to that mode you just turn the top
control dial until the iA symbol is opposite the white line on the flash
housing. So you can actually see that you have got iA selected by that iA symbol
so now we've formatted the memory card the cameras come back to the main
shooting screen now we are going to go into the menu and change a couple of the
options. Once you get confident in setting those options you may want to change
some of the default settings but initially if you just come along with me
and set the menu options that I have. If we go menu set that takes us into the
option again and I'm going to go over to the record setup screen so that is the
camera icon on the tabs on the left-hand side - if we scroll over to the right-hand
side the first one you see is the photo style
now in the intelligent auto and the intelligent auto plus mode we only have
a choice of standard or black-and-white so there's no changes we can make there so
we want to shoot in color so you will leave that as standard. The one you might
want to change is the aspect ratio. Now aspect ratio is the ratio of the height
to the width of the image and that will depend really on how you're going to use
the images - if you're going to use them for prints and you want them to be 4x6
or multiples of 4 by 6 then you would change the aspect ratio to 3 to 2 which
gives you that ratio. If you are going to use the camera for producing HD video or
pictures that you can use in HD video then you want to select a aspect ratio
which gives you that without having to look at the crop on the screen so for
example I shoot most of my work for HD video so I would select the 16:9 option
so by just pressing the menu set that locks in the aspect ratio to 16:9
Now the picture size is the number of pixels that were recorded with that particular
format - if you are in 4 to 3 then you'll see the largest option you get there is
a 12 megapixel which is the camera supports - so that is the number of pixels
that this camera has at its biggest aspect ratio - if you use anything more
than 4 to 3 then you'll notice that that value changes - so if I go to 16:9 you
notice that the number of pixels is 9 megapixel so we've cropped some of the
pixels off from the top and bottom. The next option to look at there is the
quality. In the quality mode you'll see to double rows of dots and they
signify that you're in the fine JPEG quality mode
I would suggest initially you leave it at fine JPEG
there is an option there to select what's called a RAW format but the raw format
does need specialist editing programs to allow you to get the best quality so
initially leave it in the double row fine JPEG option. If we scroll down you'll
see that on the next page there's option to set the focus mode and I was
suggested leave that on the AFS which is autofocus single. If we scroll down we can
see some other options that are available but one I would like you to
change is the self-timer mode self timer by default is set up for 10 seconds now
that's ideal if you want to have the camera mounted on a tripod and you want
to take selfies you press the shutter button run to the group pose, and then
the camera will take its picture 10 seconds later but for most operations
that's probably too long so I normally set that down to 2 seconds. Leave all the
other options as they are just for now. Now we want to look at some of the
customized options you can put on the camera to allow you to use the camera in
more creative modes - to get into those creative modes again we need to cursor
left so we highlight the tabbed icons select the wrench + C option and then
cursor right again to get into the menu structure and we want to look for
guideline and if you again use the zoom key you can actually cursor through to
the page that we want and the one we want is on page 4 right to the very
bottom of the screen you'll see guideline. Now the guideline enables you
to put on there the rule of thirds if you select the top option that is the
two vertical graticules two horizontal graticules which divides the screen up
to give you the rule of thirds which aids you in your composition of pictures and
I'll talk more of that when we look at taking photographs so set the option to
give you the rule of thirds. Another option I'd like to change is the
function button setup and function button it is on page 7 so again just
using the zoom key to scroll through until we get to page 7 go down to
function button set again press menu set to operate - it will ask if you do want to
set these settings in the record or in the playback mode and we want to
be in the record mode so I'm going to press menu asset and that takes me into
a pictorial view of all the buttons that you can actually customize on this
camera as you can see there are quite a few. I'd like you to change function
button 2 - so just cursor down until you see function button 2 - highlighted in
yellow - we're going to change its operation so
we can actually get to the focus area very quickly without having to go
through several menus to set it up in size and position. So with function
button 2 highlighted press menu set and that will now take you through to the
options for programming that button and the option we want to set up on there is
the focus area set and that's on page three so again using the zoom lever we can
go back one page and you see at the bottom there is focus area set so select
it and press menu set and you can now see that function button to has the
focus area set operation assigned to it once you're happy with that you can use
the function three button or the trashcan button to return back to the
shooting menu. So those are the options that we have initially set with the
camera and we can now start to have a look at shooting in the iA mode.
Well that's it for the pilot video I will carefully monitor your comments coming
back to make sure I am delivering what you require to learn the F Z300/330
It is a complex camera but it is capable of some
fantastic results once you understand its limitations and how to use it
check out my photographic blog again I'm gonna put a link to that in video
description below you'll find lots more content on the FZ300/330
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