Display and menus contd.
 |
 |
| The most basic display in playback mode shows the file number and image quality setting briefly for each frame. Pressing the DISP button adds further information; file size and exposure / white balance / ISO settings (as shown). |
Pressing the DISP button again changes the display to show a histogram. |
 |
 |
| The left zoom button switches to a thumbnail display. |
Unusually you can choose between 2x2, 3x3, 4x4 or 5x5 thumbnails. |
 |
 |
| You can also browse images by date using this 'calendar' view... not sure how useful this is unless you never empty your memory card. |
The right zoom button magnifies the image in seven steps, up to 10.0x. |
 |
 |
| The playback menu has four tabs - play, edit, card and 'album entry'. The four directional keys on the four-way controller are used to select each option. |
The edit menu has a range of sophisticated options that would put most much more expensive cameras to shame, including color conversions, brightness and saturation adjustments, cropping, red-eye removal, fancy frames, adding text and even the ability to produce multi-image layouts and calendar pages in-camera. Very impressive and great fun, if of limited value to more advanced users. |
 |
 |
| Something very rare in cameras of this type is the ability to edit the settings used in raw files after they've been saved, and save the result into a new JPEG file. You can change white balance, sharpness, contrast and saturation, and choose from any of the standard file size / quality settings. |
When editing raw data the result of the changes you make is reflected in the on-screen preview. Very neat. |
 |
 |
| The SP-500UZ offers a fairly sophisticated way of organizing the images on your xD card into 'albums', complete with natty ring-bound frame effects. How useful this is will depend on how long you intend to keep the images on the card I guess. |
|
