A little disappointed...

Yesterday, me and my family went to Longwood Gardens for the day. We went to see the Christmas lights and everything, but i was a bit disappointed w/ some of results for my macro shots and the pictures i took in Tv and Av. I was using the wide angle lense most of the day, but i took it off once in a while if needed.
Ok, my first problem was that i tried both the macro and super macro modes on a variety of different flowers, and when i half pressed the shutter button, the little box showed up orange and it wouldn't focus at all. I tried taking off the lense to see what would happen but it was still doing the same thing.
Now the second problem. I'm starting to notice this more now that i use Tv and Av more frequently, that when i set Av or Tv to one of their selected units, when i half press the shutter button, the camera calculates what it's supposed to be and shoots using that, not what i wanted it to use. Like fo example, last night, i was trying to shoot fountains and was going for a different look, so i set Tv to 1/2000 sec, but when i half pressed the shutter, it read 15 secs, and it shot at 15, not 1/2000. And another example, i set Av at 2.0 for one shot, it calculated 2.8, and it shot at 2.8, not 2.0.
Am i doing something wrong, because i thought these were suppoed to be manual controls, not look likes. Can anyone please shed some light on this?

Usually you get the orange rectangle when your subject is not in the allowed distance range for Macro or Supermacro.
Check pg. 74 and 75 of the G6 user’s guide for correct distances.

Also check for allowed zoom range (wide angle – 86mm) for Supermacro mode.

You should change the menu setting for Safety Shift to OFF, otherwise the camera will change your setting to achieve a correctly exposed picture.
With Safety Shift OFF, the camera with alert you of wrong exposure with red figures for shutter speed or aperture, but there will be no automatic shift to safer values.
Check pg. 82 of the G6 user’s guide.

OK, thanks a bunch for clearing that part up for me. But does that also go for the macro modes too?

Sounds like the camera was just trying to protect you from yourself!

A night photo of a fountain shot at 1/2000 sec is going to be pure blackness. If it wanted to shoot at 15 seconds (! - not 1/15?) that should be a big clue that there's almost no light.

Depending on your zoom setting, the camera may have known that f/2 wasn't available to you. At the telephoto end of the range, 3.0 is the max aperature you'll get.

And Rpolitsr is probably correct about the orange signal on your macro shots... the macro and super macro modes work only within a limited "zoom" range and distances.

the only thing is, for the macro modes, i didn't have them zoomed at all, that's what really got me.

For each shutter speed when using Shutter priority, there will be a correct matching Aperture setting that results in the exposure setting you have selected. Remember, this is a matched pair. But what if you select a shutter speed for which the matching aperture setting does not exist on that camera? On the G6, it either sets the closest one it can and shows it red when you half press, or if you have safety shift turned on it sets the aperture to the closest setting available AND goes back and changes the shutter speed to be a matching pair to the aperture it had set.

I always leave safety shift on. If I want to do something "artsy", I change the exposure compensation.

If you look at the number of aperture settings available and the number of shutter speeds available, you will see that there are many more shutter speeds available. That is one reason why I use Av more than Tv. For any reasonable Av setting, there is much more likely to be a matching shutter speed than the other way around.

Another thing is that you can control shutter speed better with Av than with Tv. By that, I mean that usually you don't really want 1/500 of a second or 1 second. most of the time you want the fastest shutter speed that will be properly exposed (you shouldn't really care what the actual value is, you just want the fastest or slowest). To do that just select the widest aperture possible. When the processor picks the correct shutter speed, that will be the fastest one that will be properly exposed. On that shot, if you went to Tv mode and select a faster shutter speed, the processor would be looking for an aperture larger than the largest one available, and give an error message. Conversely, if you want the slowest shutter speed that is properly exposed, stop down the aperture as far as it will go (highest numerical value) Does that make sense?

Note that setting the most or least of anything involves compromises in other areas but that is a different discussion.

An interesting excersize is to put the camera in Program mode, then select "Program Shift". In Program shift, you half press and it gives a pair of Av and Tv values that are properly exposed. Then turn the adjuster wheel and half press again. Depending on which way you turn, it will select another set of matching values that will have either a wider aperture and faster shutter speed or vise versa, but still properly exposed. If you play with this awhile, you can see how the aperture affects the shutter speed and so on.