Top of camera controls

The mode dial surrounds the shutter release (same layout as 700 & 950), A-REC offers automatic control over most settings and fixed Matrix metering, M-REC (which is the mode most people will find themselves in) offers more control over settings. PLAY mode is for the display of images.

Below the top LCD are set of four buttons for controlling various shooting mode settings.

Picture mode:
Just tapping this switches between Landscape, Macro, Self-timer and Normal mode, holding the button down and using the rear up/down arrows enables manual focus in total of 45 steps: 0.07m - 0.26m (0.01m increments), 0.28m, 0.30m, 0.32m, 0.35m, 0.40m, 0.45m, 0.5m, 0.6m, 0.7m, 0.8m, 0.9m, 1.0m, 1.1m, 1.2m, 1.3m, 1.4m, 1.5m, 1.7m, 2.0m, 2.5m, 3.0m, 4.0m, 5.0m, 7.0m, 10m and Infinity. [NOTE: a vast improvement over the 950 & 700's 10 manual focus steps] (note that if "DIST ft." is selected through setup these distances are represented in feet).
EV compensation:
Holding the button down and using the rear up/down arrows allows for exposure compensation +/-2EV in 0.3EV steps.
Quality selection:
Switches between the four available picture qualities: HI (TIFF uncompressed), FINE (JPEG 1:4), NORMAL (JPEG 1:8) and BASIC (JPEG 1:16).
Flash modes:
Auto anti-red eye, Forced on, Slow sync, Auto, Forced off

You'll note that below the last three buttons are play mode indicators, in play mode these buttons double-up as delete / thumbnail / zoom&select buttons. Top right you can see the main operating mode switch which changes between OFF, Auto REC, Manual REC and PLAY modes.

Rear of camera controls

The back of the camera is very simple, just four buttons.

Monitor: toggle the LCD between on & overlayed info, on & just picture, off.
Menu: enter / leave menu mode.
Up/down arrows: digital zoom / manual focus in record mode, next or previous picture in play mode and scroll through options in menus.

Record mode display

When shooting the camera overlays a display of current settings (if applicable, in this example we're in Macro mode), compression settings, remaining frames and (best of all) a live report of current exposure settings.

After taking the shot the camera shows you a review of the image for around five seconds during which time you can choose to discard the image (it's simultaneously writing the image to the CF card).

Play mode display

As you can see by default the date and time, the folder name, filename, image quality and frame counter are displayed on the screen.

On the 800 there is no way to display the exposure information after the shot (on camera, you can of course do it later on your PC/Mac).

Pressing the () button displays thumbnail mode where you can scroll through a whole page of thumbnails, on the 800 you have two levels of thumbnail, a 3x3 view seen here and also a 2x2 view.
Zooming by pressing the ( ) button first gives you a 2x and pressing again a 3x zoom into the image, note on the 800 you can't scroll around the image when zoomed in.

You can also delete the current image by pressing ()
(Yes/No confirmation is displayed before deletion).