Hi Walter
Well, that’s a good point: HDR. I simply don’t find anything called that. What I seem to have is a set of choices such as:
Landscape; Portraits; Night; Sports; Party/Indoor; Beach/Snow; Sunset; Dawn; Fall Colour; Firework; Text; Candlelight; Backlight.
Exposure value, from –2 to 2; Auto focus and Macro; Resolution 2560x1920 to 640x480; ISO Auto, 100, 200, 400; Auto contrast; Metering – Centre-weighted, Spot, Matrix. Image quality – Superfine, Fine, Normal.
Shooting Mode – Single Shot; Smile Shot; Continuous; Panorama.
Today I tried out the Beach/Snow setting hoping to cope with highlights à la burned out white boat hulls. I saw no difference. I also tried out the Backlight setting on a huge water reflection of the lowering sun: it was pretty damned good at holding detail within the burned area.
I’ve never moved ISO off Auto – as I have no way of knowing what the shutter or diaphragm are doing (if there is an iris!) where’s the advantage? If it’s Auto, I assume it’ll find ISO 400 when it needs it and ditto for 100.
As for the metering – I’m always on Matrix because that, as far as I understand, is using the whole area, but I have no idea what area the centre-weighted covers and even less the spot, and as I see no way of holding or changing what Spot might say, how does it fly?
Confusing, to say the least; could be that old pros just carry too much tech. baggage for these things.
Like you, I’d love to have a tripod hole on the thing, but even more than that, a simple button to press to fire it. Riaan tells me his Nokia used to have that. I have to hit the screen and that jolts everything, hence the tripod with use of the delay options supplied could be quite useful at times.
I did another test with the flash in the apartment today; what happens is that the light goes on, stays on for a while, and then the damned flash fires! How strange – I’d have tired arms doing that. Or great shots of my feet.
Rob C