Top of camera controls
Button Combination |
Function | Options |
Macro | Macro mode | On/Off |
Flash | Flash modes (only with flash popped-up) |
Flash off, Anti red-eye, Flash forced on |
Zoom | Change focal length | Push up to zoom in, down to zoom out |
SHIFT + Macro | File size | 1800 x 1200 or 640 x 480 |
SHIFT + Flash | Quality | Hi (TIFF), Fine, Normal and Basic |
Full use of these controls can be a little confusing at first, however once you get used to them it's a quick shortcut from having to go to setup mode to change file size or image quality, and it's a good way to cut down the exterior button count.
Rear of camera controls
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Rear of the camera are to be found the arrow control buttons, surrounded by the Execute (Menu) / Cancel (back) buttons. Surrounding the LCD are the Display, Power On/Off and SHIFT buttons. |
Button Combination |
Function | Options |
Up / Down Arrows | Rec:
Digital Zoom, Menus Play: Navigate |
Rec: None, 1.2x, 2.5x |
Left / Right Arrows | Enter and navigate menus | |
Disp(lay) | Rec:
Toggle LCD live view Play: Overlay, Thumbnails |
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SHIFT + Up/Down | Manual Focus | Progressive across range |
SHIFT + Disp | LCD Brightness | Enters a brightness menu |
Record mode display
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The MX2900 has several different capture displays, in Auto-Record mode you can choose between: No display, Simple overlay or Tram Lines. In Manual-Record mode you can choose between Detailed info with no live preview or Detailed info overlayed over live preview. The shot displayed here is detailed information with a live preview in Manual-Record mode. here you can see macro/flash mode, frames available, compensation, white balance, target brackets, menu settings and the "shake" warning. |
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In Manual-Record mode: Immediately after taking a shot you are shown a review of the image taken, press Execute to store or Cancel to discard. Nice feature, although I would have preferred it to automatically Record if you didn't press anything within a few seconds... |
The MX2900 has a unique composition "tram lines" feature which overlays various guidelines over the live image (this only works in Auto exposure mode, not manual mode) the first mode is portrait shooting for positioning head, shoulders or half-body height, the next (below) is for group / landscape shots and the final (bottom right) is the traditional "frame thirds" .. A novel feature which would have been useful implemented in manual mode too. |
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Play mode display
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Switching to play mode the camera displays the last image taken along with folder and filename, date and time the image was taken. Unfortunately there's no way to retrieve exposure information from the image in play mode. |
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The play zoom feature is useful going all the way to 4.0 x zoom, it's also scrollable. The only problem here is that you're actually only zooming in on the low-resolution thumbnail the camera has stored within the JPEG and thus you can't visibly seel any more detail by zooming in (thus the playback zoom doesn't help assess things like blur or out of focus). |
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Pressing DISP twice displays a thumbnail view, you can navigate around the view using the arrow keys, press DISP again to zoom back to 1:1 size or use SHIFT+arrows to move through images on the card a page (9 images) at a time. |
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