Flash Settings - Olympus XZ-1 Tips And Tricks Manual

XZ-1 Tips page 5 of 29
locked both focus and exposure on that spot. But what if you want to lock the focus on
the spot, but get the exposure somewhere else?
Here's how. Use the back-wheel left arrow to put the focus box in the center of the screen
(always best with spot focus). Then - you can put the XZ-1 on SCN > Underwater-Wide
and then press the down arrow on the back wheel, and it will lock the focus on whatever's
in the center of the screen. With the focus locked, you can move the camera and get an
exposure from somewhere else in the scene. The focus lock will hold until you turn off
the camera... or until you press the down arrow again to release the focus lock.
Flash -- in Shutter, Aperture, or Manual mode, you can adjust the flash power. Try 1/64
power to add a flick of light, of sparkle, to your portraits or closeups.
Image quality -- for almost all pictures, your XZ-1 takes images as good as any other
camera. There are a very few situations where much more expensive DSLRs are better.
But not often, and not worth the bother of carting one around. How to 'improve' a
picture? The old Life magazine adage -- crop, then crop it again. Your XZ-1's 10
megapixels gives you plenty of room to crop to the most visually strong image possible.

Flash settings

Very first thing: use the Menu button - Camera Menu > Flash settings > Sync > Sync 2.
The 'Sync 2' shoots off the flash at the end of an exposure, rather than at the start. So, on
a longish exposure, if your kid moves a bit, that movement will be 'overwritten' by the
bright sharp end-of-exposure flash image. Leave it on Sync 2 all the time; saves a lot of
pictures.
But, since the XZ-1 has a very 'bright' lens, you also have the luxury of choosing a nice
fast shutter speed. Put the XZ-1 in S Shutter mode, with the top dial.
On the right-side screen menu (press the back OK button to see it), make sure the ISO is
on 'Auto-ISO'. In the dark, the XZ-1 will go from ISO-100 to ISO-200... more light for
your picture, allowing an even faster shutter speed.