The 560UZ has a
rich menu system that can be daunting when you initially encounter
it. Olympus has, however, built some shortcuts into the interface
to accelerate access to frequently used features. In shooting
mode, you can access some of those features by pressing the
OK/FUNC button in the center of the arrow pad. When you do
that, a vertical menu bar is displayed with four items.
· White balance. This
item's choices are auto, sunlight, cloudy day, tungsten light,
free fluorescent lamp settings--for home lighting, desk lamps
and office lighting, and a one-touch, or manual, setting.
With one-touch, you place a sheet of white paper in front
of the camera, press the OK/FUNC button and the unit will
lock in an appropriate white balance of the shot.
· ISO. This allows you to choose a light sensitivity
setting for the shot ranging from auto and high auto to 6400.
· Drive. A number of continuous shooting modes can
be chosen from this item. You can pick normal sequential shooting
mode, which is 1.2 frames per second or as high as seven frames
per second in HQ mode. There are also two high-speed settings--
one, Hi1, as fast as 23 frames per second in SQ1 quality and
another, Hi2, that tops out at 40 frames per second in SQ2.
In addition, in Hi2 there's a pre-capture setting that permits
you to store 10 picture frames by partially pressing the shutter
button. What's more, there's autofocus sequential shooting
in which the camera automatically focuses on your subject
before every shot. However, that slows down your shooting
speed to less than normal sequential shooting. Also from this
menu, the camera will bracket a shot for you--shoot up to
five frames at several exposure settings with customizable
exposure differential of ±0.3, 0.7 or 1.0.
· ESP. This lets you select one of the unit's light
metering modes.
The bar menu appears when the camera's mode dial is set to
P, A, S, M, My or movie. In My mode there's an extra choice
for plumping customized items saved in that mode. In movie,
your selections are limited to white balance and ESP. An advantage
of the bar menu is that you can see what you're shooting while
the menu is on the screen. What's more, as you change a setting
with the menu, you can see its impact on the shot immediately.
To enter
the main menu system, you press the menu button found above
the arrow pad at 11 o'clock. From within the system, that
button cam be used to back out of menus as well as entirely
leave the system. The top level choices in the system are
determined by whether the camera is in shooting or playback
mode.
In shooting mode, there
are five top picks arranged in a sort of solar system with camera
menu at the center surrounded by reset, image quality, setup,
silent and SCN (scene) modes. Access to the choices depends
on where you are on the camera's mode dial. For example, in
auto you don't have access to the camera and SCN menus. Moreover,
Guide and SCN modes have their own menu configurations and don't
use the top level shooting options at all.
The setup menu [interface3]
is used to customize the basic aspects of the camera. Here's
what's available from this menu:
· Format--for formatting the camera's internal memory
or an xD storage card.
· Backup--for moving images from internal memory to
an xD storage card.
· Language--for choosing what language the camera's
menus will appear in. Languages available are English, French,
Spanish and Portuguese.
· Startup--for customizing
the sound the camera makes when it starts up and the image that
will be displayed on its LCD. · Beep--for customizing
the sound, controlling its volume or turning it off. ·
Warning Sound--for controlling the volume of this aural alert
or turning it off. · Shutter Sound--for controlling
the volume and customizing the sound made by the camera when
the shutter is released. · Volume--for controlling
the camera's volume during playback mode. · Recorded
View--for displaying or not displaying an image on the LCD after
it has been captured. · Menu Display--for displaying
menus in the unit's electronic viewfinder as well as on its
LCD. · File Name--for setting naming conventions
for image files created by the camera. · Pixel Mapping--for
automatic adjusting of CCD and image processing functions.
· Monitor Brightness--for
increasing or decreasing the brightness of the camera's display.
· Time--for setting and formatting the unit's date and
time functions. · Dual Time--for setting and formatting
date and time in an alternative time zone. · Alarm
Clock-for creating daily or one-shot alarms. · Video
Out-for toggling between North American (NTSC) and overseas
(PAL) standards. · Frame Assist--for placing a grid
on the display to help improve framing pictures. ·
Histogram--for displaying in vertical bar graph form the tones
in a shot or image. · My Mode--for defining up to
four custom shooting modes. · M/ft--for setting the
unit of measurement used during manual focusing. ·
Custom--for redefining the function of the image stabilization
button.
The camera
menu gives you access to functions used when shooting
photographs. It includes some of the items found in the
quick menu displayed by pressing OK/FUNC. Here are the
items on the camera menu.
·
White balance.
· ISO.
· Drive (sequential shooting).
· Fine zoom (off/on).
· Digital zoom (off/on).
· Metering.
· AF mode (face, iESP, spot, area).
· Focus mode (auto or manual).
· Fulltime AF (off/on).
· AF predict (off/on).
· AF illuminator (off/on).
· Image stabilizer (off/on).
· Flash
compensation (±0-2.0). · Syncro (SYNC1,
SYNC2). · Flash (in or slave). ·
Sound (off/on). · Panorama. · White
balance compensation (blue/red). · Sharpness
(±5) · Contrast (±5) ·
Saturation (±5) · Noise reduction (on/off)
· Time lapse (pictures/1 minute intervals)
· Conversion lens auto focusing (on/off)
The image quality
menu allows you to select from among the many permutations--RAW,
SHQ and so forth--for the picture quality of images captured
with the camera. With the RAW item, you can choose to
have a JPEG file created at the same time you shoot a
RAW image.
If you want to restore
the camera's settings to its factory originals, you can do so
by choosing the reset menu.
There's
an icon labelled SCN, which is accessible only when
the mode dial is set to scene mode.
The Guide mode
uses a menu apart from the main shooting menu. It's similar
to scene mode in that it offers a way to lock in settings
for a variety of photographic situations. In fact, in
some items--"blur background," for instance--submenus
take you to a correspionding scene mode. In the case of
"blur background," the scene choice is portrait
mode. Here are the options for the Guide mode.
· Shoot at night
(night mode on scene menu). · Reduce blur (turns
on image stablization or lets you increase ISO sensitiviey).
· Shoot high speed sequential shots (turns on Hi2 setting).
· Don't miss a shot (turns on pre-capture feature).
· Reduce red-eye (turns on anti-red-eye mode). ·
Adjust image quality (uses plain English descriptions for various
resolutions, such as "large print quality" (SHQ 3264
x 2448) and "postcard quality" (SQ1 2048 x 1536).
· Preview effects. ·
Brighten subject. · Shoot backlit target. ·
Set lighting (white balance) · Blur background.
· Adjust area in focus (landscape mode on scene menu).
· Shoot moving target. · Use targeting assistance
(display grid on LCD). · Shoot close up (turns on
macro mode). · Shoot super close up (turns on super
macro mode).
The
silent menu turns off the camera's sound--something
that can be an asset in noise sensitive situations such
as a church wedding or some academic graduations.
In playback mode, the setup and silent options are
still displayed along with seven others.
There's
a playback menu for locking images so they won't be trashed
by mistake, rotating pictures and adding four seconds of audio
to a snapshot.
There's an erase menu for deleting selected
images or all of them in the camera.
There's a calendar option that lets you select and view pictures
by the day they were shot.
There's Perfect Fix menu for automtaically correcting lighting
and red-eye problems in a photo.
There's a slideshow feature for displaying photos in the
camera on its LCD in that format. You can choose transitions
for the show from nine options--normal (cut from pic to pic),
scroll, fader, slide, zoom up or down, checkerboard, blinds,
swivel and random--and use an airy tune packaged with the
camera as musical accompaniment for it.
With the edit menu, you can edit photos
in the unit. Edits are made in copies of the images
and the originals remain unchanged. Here are the options
available from the edit menu.
· RAW data edit.
This permits you to edit RAW files in the camera. You can modify
the quality of an image and its white balance, sharpness, contrast
and saturation. · Resize. With this option you can
create copies of photos in small sizes--640 x 480 or 320 x 240.
· Crop. This item allows you to save a portion of a picture
in a separate file. · Color. This lets you create
a copy of the picture in black and white, sepia or increase
its color saturation.
· Frame. Allows you to add
a graphic frame to an image. · Label. Adds a title
to a photo. · Calendar. Adds the current photo to
a calendar. · Layout. Changes format of a photo so
you can add comments to it. · Expression edit. Permits
you to alter a subject's facial expression.
Face focus. Will sharpen a face in a shot and blur the background
behind it.
The final
playback choice is the print menu. It's used to print images
directly from the camera to a PictBridge-compatible printer.
As with its cameras, Olympus includes its Master 2 software
with the 560UZ. The program, which works on both PCs and Macs,
contains both editing and organization features. The PC version
of the application also has a trial version of a slideshow
program by Muvee.
The program's interface has four panes.
One
lets you view your photos as either albums or folders. The folder
view reflects the files structure on your computer. The view is
similar to what you'd see in an Explorer window on a PC or a Finder
Window on a Mac. The album view lets you organize pictures based
on criteria like time stamps or similar file names. On my PC, my
images are stored in the My Pictures folder, and Master 2 took a
valiant stab at creating albums from infomation in that folder.
Most of the albums were based on time stamps. On the Mac, where
my photos are stored in iPhoto '08, no albums were created by the
software. It seems the PC version of the program is a little more
savvy than its Mac counterpart.
Beside
the album/folder area is a pane for displaying thumbnails of photos.
Next to that is a properties pane. It displays a histogram of the
currently selected image and information about it. There's basic
infomation organized into hardware, shooting, image and album info
and there's a complete run down of all the EXIF data associted with
the picture. The last pane is an RSS reader for keeping tabs on
news from the Internet.
Above the quartet of panes are the menu and tool bars.
From the file menu, you can transfer images into the
program from a camera, optical media or location on your system;
create and edit albums or groups of albums; add photos to an album;
find photos by filename, album name, shooting date, comments or
file type; and print photos.
The edit menu lets you open an editing or RAW development
window; copy, cut and paste images; rotate images; and edit shooting
dates and comments.
From the view menu, you can look at images as a slide
show; control what toolbars are visible; and set the size and sort
criteria for thumbnails.
The tools menu allows you to resize images or convert
them to other files formats; create panoramas; open the Muvee slideshow
application (PC only); and access the program's options.
From the camera menu, you can obtain information about
a camera connected to your computer.
Then there's a help menu for tapping into online help.
The
tool bar beneath the menu bar gives you quick access to common functions
such as transferring photos, running slide shows, printing photos,
editing RAW files and creating panoramas.
The software is a robust program--especially for Mac
users used to using iPhoto--and is a cut above a lot of software
tossed in with digital cameras these days.
Compare Prices for Olympus Corporation SP-560 UZ 8.0 MP Digital Camera
Interface & Software
