Top of camera controls

On the left side of the camera top are buttons for flash, drive and metering modes, on the G5 these used to be on the top left and rear of the camera. On the right side of the camera top is the shutter release / zoom control (now more flush to the top and angled forward), behind this the command dial which can be turned and pressed to change / confirm settings. This new arrangement works far better than that of the G3 / G5 where the command dial was in front of the shutter release.

On the back right corner is the spring loaded power / mode dial, flick to the left for record mode or to the right for play mode. Press the 'Off' button to power the camera off. Note that the G6 is a shooting priority camera, this means that in play mode you can simply half-press the shutter release to return to record mode.

Power Switch

	Record (shooting) mode Immediately switches to shooting mode, lens extends (if it is not already) zoom resets to the last used position and camera prepares to shoot (depending on exposure mode - below).
	Power Off Switches the camera off, lens retracts. If there are any images still in the cameras buffer it will continue to write them out to the storage card before fully powering off.
	Play mode Displays the last image shot (or the last image on the storage card). All controls revert to their play mode function. Remote control is automatically enabled. Half-press the shutter release to return to record mode.

Zoom Controller (Record mode)

	Zoom telephoto Zooms the camera's lens towards the telephoto setting, maximum optical zoom of 140 mm (35 mm equiv.). A full zoom from wide to tele takes 2.0 seconds. If the camera is already at maximum optical zoom and digital zoom is enabled the camera will apply increasing levels of digital zoom.
	Zoom wide angle Zooms the camera's lens towards the wide angle setting of 35 mm (35 mm equiv.). A full zoom from tele to wide takes 2.0 seconds.

Settings buttons

	Flash Mode  • Auto Flash  • Flash On / Fill Flash  • Flash Off Control of red-eye reduction and slow-sync flash is via the record menu.
	Drive Mode  • Single shot  • Continuous (either normal or high speed - menu option)  • Self-timer (with remote control enabled, 10 or 2 sec)
	Metering Mode  • Evaluative  • Center-weighted Average  • Spot

Play mode controls

	Image magnify (in) Magnifies the displayed image, there are ten steps up to 10x magnification. Magnifying is very fast, if you hold the zoom controller in the tele position you can be at 10x zoom in around one second.
	Image magnify (out) If the displayed image is magnified pressing the zoom lever towards wide zooms out of the magnification.
	Jump Enters a special display mode which allows you to jump through playback images by 10 frames forward or backward. Can also be used to jump between sections in the camera's menu.