moive mode

I got my G2 yesterday evening and was quite excited. I tried the movie mode. The result was very disppointing. I realize there are two resolution settings (I used the factory default and not sure which one that is). I took two 30-second movie clips. In both the pictures look like out of focus. As a matter of fact, it looks like nothing is in focus in those two clips. Can any experienced G2 user offer some inputs on this?

Tiger

I find the movie use of the G2 to be more of a novelty item than a quality one. It is fun to play with and has some uses, but in general I think that it is something that Canon threw in for marketing brochures rather than a real feature.

I think that they had to reduce the resolution and image size so much to keep the input buffer from overflowing while maintaining a given fps speed that you lose most of the image quality and detail.

It looks too much like an old 8mm home movie for me.

What is it with people wanting the movie mode in their digital cameras? what's the point? I mean if you want to record movies, buy a camcorder.

I wish they didnt have these stupid modes on digital cameras.

I'm glad it's there. It's great for recording impromptu movies, and if you're so inclined you can also use it as a notetaker about your photos.

Why wish that a feature wasn't there??? It's doing no harm by being included and not used by you. I, personally have used it to great effect on occasion. I don't want 45 min of video, just the one off 30 sec grab.

Tiger, what resolution are you viewing the movie at? Fullscreen or original? If you view any low-res movie at fullscreen, it will appear "out of focus" (really, it's just doing the best it can to upsample a small amount of data 4-6 times).

Thanks to you guys for your replies. I have to say that I have never intended to use G2 to replace my sony DCR-TRV20. I got that digicamcorder 2 years ago and it still takes great video. What I want the movie mode on G2 is I want to take short movie clips for my kids and send them through internet.

I checked the resolution setting on movie mode. I acturally used the higher one. I viewed them in both original size and full screen. Both are not good. I can certainly tell who the person in the movie is, but that's about it. It seems that both the person's face and background are not in focus. The pictures are far away from smooth when the person moves. I am a little disappointed. Maybe my camera had a hard time to focus in low light? I'll take some clips tomorrow in the day time. My neighbor has a OLYMPUS C3040, I may go over and check his (I am not sure if C3040 has movie mode).

Do I need to pay attention to certain things when I use the movie mode? Hi, Mind Socket, what settings do you use to take your movie clip? I am not bashing G2 here. I just want to get the best out of it. BTW, the pictures I took are quite sharp.

Another thought, what software/hardware do you have? Maybe a dodgy decoder or slow CPU are causing a loss of quality on playback.

Having the G1 there are no problems with the sharpness or lightening in video mode.
Of course, the resolution is 320x240 and you can't expect very much on a full screen.
I made some movies on my homepage in WindowsMediaPlayer format. They are more compressed than the original avi-files, but maybe wanna watch them anyway:
http://www.claus.arndt​.hjem.wanadoo.dk/train​/train.htm
Greetings from Copenhagen
//Claus

Im pretty disappointeed that during the shoot of the movie mode, I couldnt use my optical zoom.
Is there anyway to enable zoom during filming ?

Nope