Resetting default settings: VX2000
 

I've been fiddling quite a bit and would like to know what the default settings (or alternatively best settings as determined by all of you) to know where to put them back to get a great shot. When setting things like brightness/contrast/sharpeness and colour, I should look through the view finder and not the LCD screen, right?

Also, on the LCD screen, how bright do most people have it set in an indoor situation?

Thanks in advance! :)

I think you're mixing apples and oranges here a bit. The LCD brightness is set by the buttons on the screen. It only affects the LCD itself and doesn't change what's being recorded. Personally, I play some footage on my NTSC monitor and set the room lighting for something comparable to where I'll be shooting. Then I try to adjust the LCD to match the monitor as much as possible.

The LCD and viewfinder backlights are set via the LCD/VF SET menu and are mostly personal preference, although they would obviously affect the appearance and possibly battery life. The LCD color is also set there, see my comment above. Again, none of this affects what you record.

Now SHARPNESS, COLOR LVL and WB SHIFT are part of the custom preset menu and they do affect what you record. These come down to personal preference and depend on the look you're after. To reset them to the defaults use the RESET item in the menu. But really this just puts all the "sliders" back to the middle position. Now a "great shot" is a pretty subjective thing, don't you think? I doubt that we could all agree on what that is, and it would vary a lot depending on the overall effect we're striving for.

To understand the custom presets better I suggest you hook your camera up to an NTSC monitor, or at least a decent TV set and play with each setting a little while you observe the effect. In many, if not most, cases the LCD screen and viewfinder won't be accurate enough and don't have high enough resolution to make these judgements.

I recently did a little study of the sharpness settings on the VX-2000 in a detailed outdoor scene here: http://www.greenmist.com/dv/vxsharp