If it's called "cinema mode" it justs puts the black bars on the bottom and top- thats all. So basically you're shooting with less screen space.

Your answer is no. I know the panasonic gs lines. None of them shoot in true 16:9. I'm pretty sure that the "widescreen mode" you're talking about just makes it so that it "looks" widescreen on a a screen that is not in fact wide.

Does that makes sense? Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Yeah, that's how all of the consumer cameras that I have used work for widescreen. They basically just crop off the top and bottom of the 4:3 video. If you watch it on a widescreen TV, it will fill the screen with no distortion, and on a 4:3 TV it will be letterboxed. It should still be full quality, but you will be missing a section at the top and bottom of each frame.

Wait, it fills ALL of your widescreen TV with no distortion? Or is there room at the edges?

It should fill the entire widescreen TV; there wont be any room on the edges. As far as distortion, the image is not stretched to the sides or anything. At least in my experience, I have never found any quality loss by using the 16:9 features on a lower-end consumer camera, but the image is still not any wider than the original 4:3 footage.

Agree with most of above but wanted to mention I recently tried using an anamorpic lens (to give me "true" 16:9) but it actually gave me something like 18:9 and had so much distortion that I ended up using the built in "cinema mode" and had a far better, if less "technically" good, picture for it, my advice is go with what your eyes tell you until you get to a point where you're shooting commissioned/budgeted work, if this is a short for festivals go with your eyes.

Steve Piper
Coffee Films
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