Top of camera controls

Top of the camera is the main power slider, it doubles as a "device mode" switch, pushing it to the left (AUDIO) turns the camera into an MP3 player, all camera controls and buttons are disabled and the main LCD is not powered, control must now be carried out using the supplied remote control. Pushing the power slider to the right powers the camera on or off. Also on top of the camera is the flash mode button (Auto, Anti Red-Eye, Forced On, Forced Off, Slow Sync). Oh, and the big button on the left is the shutter release, but I didn't really need to tell you that.

Rear of camera controls

Rear of the camera is laid out logically, the main command wheel switches between various camera function modes either still image record, playback or movie. Next to this is the zoom controller / 4-way direction controller, this multifunction set of controls provides digital zoom in record mode and also a 4-way movement controller in menus and zoomed playback. The DISP button changes display modes, in Manual Record you must press DISP to get a live LCD view. BACK and MENU/OK are used to enter and navigate menus / confirm selections etc.

Record mode display

The 40i has two main still image recording modes, Auto and Manual. The only difference between the two is that Manual gives you access to more camera features (exposure compensation, self-timer, white balance mode etc.) other than that they operate in the same manner (you can leave the camera in Manual mode and still shoot fully automatically).

Auto record mode, as indicated here we're in AUTO mode, flash disabled, macro enabled, frame no. 69, 2400 x 1800 image size with Normal JPEG compression. The small hand icon indicates low light and without a flash the shot may suffer from blur if handheld.	Manual record mode, as described above, we now have a readout/menu of selectable "manual options", most notably exposure compensation (set to +0.3 EV in this shot) and white balance mode.
Frame guideline, a feature which we first saw on the MX-2900Z is the option in Auto record mode to display framing guidelines to help frame the shot correctly. There are three frame guidelines available (Scene, Group shot, Portrait) which are accessed by pressing the DISP button.	Digital Zoom, as the 40i doesn't have any optical zoom (it's a fixed focal length lens), it has a partial substitution in a digital zoom mode which is only accessible in 1280 x 960 (up to 1.88 x) and 640 x 480 (up to 3.75 x) modes.
Movie mode, switching the camera into movie record mode allows you to record short (80 seconds max) video clips with audio (there's a small microphone on the front of the camera and a speaker on the left side for playback). Press the shutter release to start / stop recording. Macro mode is not available but you can digitally zoom whilst recording.

Play mode display

Default Play display, shows the foldername and filename (suffix), date and time. Pressing DISP removes this overlaid information. The left and right arrow buttons scroll through images.	Fast forward review, holding left or right buttons down for more than a few seconds enters this fast review mode, current image is maintained whilst a quick scrolling thumbnail view of images is shown below.
Playback zoom, pushing the up arrow (zoom in) zooms into the image, up to 15 x at 2400 x 1800. Pressing DISP switches between zooming at scrolling around the zoomed image.	Thumbnail view, press DISP twice with a normal view (as top left) will display this 3 x 3 thumbnail view, you can move around using arrow keys, pressing DISP once more reverts to a full size image.
Movie play mode, plays a half-size view of the movie with audio (tiny speaker on the side of the camera).