The Dumb Green Button
 

I have been reading and shooting for about 18 months now, and I try and use all the manual controls just like you all told me to. I get some great video, and some not so great. I am learning and having fun.
I was shooting the Sr. Olympics game last week, and they had the torch brought in to light the flame. Well I got all set up, it was night time but they had several larger banks of lights for the event. I was in manual, just like you all told me, and had done several dry runs with my Cannon just to get a feel for the event.. The runner comes in and they turn out the lights!

I tried to turn the camera to night time,but went to far and went into GREEN BUTTON. Then they shot off fireworks behind the stage, then did the rest of the program with almost no light at all. The green button saved me. The film came out fine, much better than I could have done and much faster also. So sometimes I just might use the green button. Has anyone else been saved by the Green Button? What do other people do when the whole event goes nuts?

There's nothing wrong with using the Green Box mode, and hopefully there weren't that many people here telling you to use the full Manual mode, because in my opinion that's poor advice to give to a beginner (there's no faster way to screw things up than to shoot in full Manual if you don't really know what you're doing).

There are only two things you really need to watch out for when shooting Green Box. First, the AGC (Automatic Gain Control) is always on, even when the AGC switch is set to the off position. You'll get a gained up image in low light situations as a result. Second, note that OIS (Optical Image Stabilization) is always on, even when the menu setting is set to off. This will cause problems when shooting from a tripod -- see numerous other threads here which describe why. Therefore, you should use Green Box mode only when handheld, and definitely not on a tripod. You can still get a large degree of automatic control in the "A" mode, which is Program Autoexposure. Use this instead of Green Box when shooting from a tripod and / or when you want to disable AGC as previously mentioned . Hope this helps,