Olympus XZ-1 Tips And Tricks Manual page 4

XZ-1 Tips page 4 of 29
when panning with a moving car or runner.
Confused about all this? Use Program mode, with the ISO at 100. Pictures in the dark,
without flash? You can go up to ISO 640, maybe ISO 800, but not more, or you will get
blotchy pictures (chroma noise). With the lens at f/2 and ISO 640, you'll be amazed at
how you can get almost any nighttime image.
Use spot exposure. Meter for the highlights, or close to them... like the sky to the left or
right of the sun at sunset.
Spot exposure note -- opinion from Ken Sills, Dpreview -- "I set my XZ-1 per your set-up
guidelines and then went on a vacation trip. The spot exposure caused me lots of
problems with landscape photos that had uneven lighting. I was constantly under or over-
exposed. I went back to center-weighted and the problem went away."
So -- maybe, for fast-moving action where you don't have time to meter carefully, leave it
on Program... Ctr-Weight instead of Spot.
Convenience -- keep the XZ-1 in your left shirt pocket. Keep a charged spare battery and
52mm polarizing filter in your right shirt pocket (you can hold it over the lens to knock
out reflections. For bright days, when its hard to see the screen, you also carry a small
older Pen VF-1 optical viewfinder that works OK with the lens at the startup 28mm
setting. And carry a beanbag in a pants pocket to put the camera on at night, and use the
self timer at 12 sec to take the picture, like for a nightscape without too much subject
movement.
Post-processing ('developing') -- Corel After Shot Pro is a very good inexpensive
program with enough features to keep you busy for a long time.
RAW vs JPG -- the XZ-1 JPGs are very good. But every now and then, like in some
weird flourescent light or mixed-light situation, switch it from LF (best JPGs) to LF +
RAW. You can learn about RAW in your Olympus software, or in After Shot Pro.
Secret -- focus lock: normally, you hold the shutter button halfway down and wait til you
see the little green box and then take the picture. The green box means that the XZ-1 has