Olympus XZ-1 Tips And Tricks Manual page 8

XZ-1 Tips page 8 of 29
In SCN > Underwater-wide or -macro modes, press the down button for focus lock (it
even labels the focus confirmation 'box')
A half-press on the shutter then gives exposure lock.
You can overide the white balance and some other settings from the scene mode defaults.
You appear to be stuck with Vivid.
But all these settings can be overriden or ignored if shooting RAW.
If nothing else, it shows what capability is hidden in the firmware.
SCN > Underwater Macro mode
If you set the XZ-1 to SCN > Underwater Macro mode, it will always start up with the
lens extended to full 112mm tele, with the aperture fixed at f/4, and the shutter at the
fastest-possible setting.
ISO remains at whatever you set; I use Auto ISO, since on the XZ-1 it won't ever go up
over 200. All flash power options are available.
This might be helpful to anyone doing snapshot press photography... "Quick! Here comes
Charlize Theron!"
An afterthought -- might be interesting for street photographers to see if shooting with the
lens at 112mm is better than at 28mm... or better than mid-range 50mm 'normal vision'
setting. That mild 112mm tele might just be better, what do you think?
Slight error! With it set to SCN > Underwater Macro, with the lens opening at startup to
112mm and the aperture locked at f/4, and the camera speed set by the XZ-1... using
Auto-ISO, the ISO will go over 200 but it has to be REALLY DARK to get the camera to
do that. In near-total darkness, it goes to ISO 400. In absolutely total darkness, it stops at
ISO 800.
In practice, in this mode, Auto-ISO works really well in combination with the XZ-1's
choice of shutter speed to get you a good picture... at low ISO, almost always below ISO
200.