Ex Tele Conv with Photos
 

I see that when I'm in Motion Picture mode, I can set the Ex Tele Conv On/Off for both Photos and Video. When in all other modes, the Ex Tele Conv is greyed out. So when I'm in Motion Picture mode, with ETC On, what does that do? Enable me to snap a photo zoomed in? How?

Re: Ex Tele Conv with Photos
 

Let me piggy back here with a question that relates to your question James. I haven't done the upgrade yet.

Is the ETC feature available when in Photo mode? If so James, I would likely prefer to shoot photos in photo mode anyway, not in movie mode.

Re: Ex Tele Conv with Photos
 

ETC in photo mode doesn't make any sense anyway. Why not just call it what it is? Digital zoom. With ETC in movie mode the central 1920x1080 portion of the sensor is used instead of downsampling the whole sensor so it is not a digital zoom but is like using a smaller sensor camcorder. Because there is no downsampling the ETC image has no aliasing or moire problems.

Re: Ex Tele Conv with Photos
 

Good point Nigel. I find the feature rarely useful, though it certainly has it's uses. I've played with it using long zooms and it was a lot of fun, and on one job I actually did use it for a single shot where it was brightly lit. I admit that shot did come out very nicely.

Re: Ex Tele Conv with Photos
 

ETC is useless for photo. The GH2 takes 16 megapixel stills. ETC crops that to 2 megapixels, greatly reducing resolution.

Re: Ex Tele Conv with Photos
 

Good info Patrick. That doesn't sound so great. I'm sure there could be an instance where it might come in handy, such as in surveillance situations, but overall for pro work, not so much.

Re: Ex Tele Conv with Photos
 

You have to remember that full raster HD video is only a 2 megapixel image. Professional photography is much more resolute. The reason being that it's a single frame, vs. a series of moving frames, and thus video quality has to be more forgiving in terms of resolution/quality.