How about some more aperture settings?

You can trick EX-Z850, in Shutter Priority mode, into giving you high F-stop settings, such as F8.0, by slowing the shutter down or increasing the ISO. Slowing the shutter is fine in bright light as you can stay above 1/60 so as not to blur your photos, but in dim lighting this trick doesn't work - You have to also increase the ISO which brings in a lot of noise, and let's face it... the noise levels on the EX-Z850 are quite high and sometimes very intrusive.

So... if you can get F8.0 (at the wide end of the zoom) in Shutter Priority mode, why can't we get it in Full Manual and Aperture Priority? I am unware of the technical limitations of such a small camera, but with only 2 aperture settings it is almost pointless having control over it - There is virtually no difference in the depth of field offered by these two aperture settings.

So come on Casio... give us some more aperture settings, so we don't have to 'trick' it!!

I'm not gonna complain too much though, it's still a great camera that provides more control than any other ultra-compact on the market and I'm very happy with it (even with 1.00 firmware - with contrast up a notch and sharpening down a notch)

Thanks.

PS. Oh... and how about a 28mm lens like the tiny Lumix?

Not going to happen. The Casio Z120, Z750, Z850 (and probably others) only have two physical apertures. Plus there is an ND filter. The apertures are holes in a metal plate it can't be "fixed" by firmware. It is quite common for compact cameras to have limited apertures where there would not be room for a full iris mechanism.

If the lens only has 2 physical apertures, then why is there a full range of apertures available in Auto & Shutter Priority modes? (which can be forced by changing shutter and ISO settings)

This has been covered before, so I'm not going to repeat it, for example...

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1015&message=18902813&q=2+apertures&qf=m

Don't forget that the f stop varies with the focal length, plus the ND filter can be switched in and out to give you virtual f stops with each of the 2 apertures.

Right! Thanks for the link to that thread.

A 'virtual f stop'!! It would be nice if there were some mention of that in the manual. (I should mention now that the manual is rubbish and doesn't explain anything at all)

If the camera is achieving (the appearance of) F8.0 by simply notching down the exposure a whole load, then I can do that myself!!!!

Thanks for your help, any other useful tips please post here.

Steve.

There are many tips to be found in this forum by searching.

One topic was "virtual iso," which is essentially using EV adjustments along with post processing. If I understand it correctly myself, here's an example...

I look at a low light scene with flash off and antishake on with the s770. It's going to shoot at 1/60th second at iso 800. Suppose I want iso 800 sensitivity, but iso 400 grain. One thing I could do is just use the menu to set iso 400 instead of auto (which picked iso 800). But this will slow the shutter to 1/30th and motion might be blurrier. So, another option is to bump the EV down a few notches. If you have EV assigned to the joy button, this is very easy. Now, the camera thinks we want things darker, so it goes down to iso 400, and keeps the 1/60th second. The picture will in fact be darker, but in post processing it can be EV compensated back up. The result is iso 800 sensitivity with iso 400 noise. The disadvantage, or course, is you have to play around with the camera, and do post processing. No free lunch.

I believe the z750 didn't have iso above 400, so regular poster Bart Hickman (who has since gone to the dark side) posted a lot of info about getting virtual iso 800 and 1600 with the z750.

Here's one link to some of this stuff. Look at the posts before and after this one in the same thread, and search for "virtual iso" for more.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1015&message=17776579

swhite78 said:

Right! Thanks for the link to that thread.

A 'virtual f stop'!! It would be nice if there were some mention of
that in the manual. (I should mention now that the manual is
rubbish and doesn't explain anything at all)

If the camera is achieving (the appearance of) F8.0 by simply
notching down the exposure a whole load, then I can do that
myself!!!!

Thanks for your help, any other useful tips please post here.

Steve.

Click to expand...

if thing in that thread are true, F8 mean physical F4 and camera auto shift EV down , right?

then, when camera already got F8 (F4 and EV auto down) user can't shift EV down anymore because EV already down ???

so i think that theory(F8 = F4 and auto shift EV) may be wrong.

I see what you mean, but the whole idea of a virtual f-stop is ridiculous as it is. Perhaps Casio can tell us?

swhite78 said:

swhite78 said:

swhite78 said:

There is virtually no difference in the depth of field offered by these two aperture settings.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

More aperture settings won't solve the problem. The lack of DoF results from the small physical size of the CCD (compared with the 35mm film frame). The small CCD size results in a small lens diameter which, in turn, produces a large DoF.

You can check out eg. this site http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/digital-camera-sensor-size.htm

and do some calculations there- and with 1/1.8" sensor in Z750 You can see that the minimum aperture can be 4 (and not 5.6, 8, etc.)
Best and happy shooting, JR
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