KODAK DC290 Zoom Digital Camera User's Guide-Your Status LCD

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KODAK DC290 Zoom Digital Camera
User's Guide
Your Status LCD

A display on the top of the camera shows the current settings. The following subsections briefly describe each entry. For information on how to define settings through the Capture mode, see Defining the Capture Settings.

The camera must be turned on and in the Capture mode to view and interact with this display.

Flash

Your camera is equipped with a built-in flash that offers a red-eye reduction feature. The flash has an effective range of approximately 1.6 to 13 ft (0.5 to 4.0 m).
There are four Flash settings:

Auto—fires the flash automatically when you press the Shutter button and the camera determines that there is not enough light.

Red-eye—determines that there is not enough light, and fires the flash once when you press the Shutter button to reduce the chance of red eye, and then flashes a second time 600 milliseconds later when the picture is taken.

Fill—fires the flash every time you press the Shutter button. Use this setting when the lighting is poor or when your subject is lit from behind.

Off—turns off the flash.

Exposure Compensation

In very large rooms, under low light, you may achieve better results by turning the flash off entirely, or by utilizing the flash sync capability with an external flash unit.

While in Capture mode, the camera exposure can be adjusted from -2.0 to +2.0 exposure value (EV) in 0.5 EV increments.

If your pictures are:

correctly exposed—maintain the AUTO default setting, which will automatically choose the correct exposure for the lighting conditions.
too dark—increase (+) the exposure compensation setting.
too light—decrease (-) the exposure compensation setting.

Picture Type

The Picture Type icon changes to indicate the type of picture you are taking. This setting can be changed through the Scroll and Select buttons or through the Picture Type menu. See Picture Type Settings. There are three picture types:

Still—(the default) takes a single still picture. Whenever you turn the camera on, this is the selected picture type.

Burst—takes a series of pictures in quick succession.

Time-lapse—takes a series of pictures with a time delay between each picture. You can set the time delay through the Picture Type screen.

Pictures Remaining

The Pictures Remaining icon changes automatically to indicate the remaining number of pictures that can be stored at the current quality and resolution setting. This is a display-only icon. You cannot select or change it.

The pictures remaining number does not always change when a picture is taken if the picture content is easily compressed.

When the card memory is full, the status display indicates Full. You must delete existing pictures or change the memory card to take additional pictures. See Deleting a Picture.

Advanced Capture Mode

The camera has two Advanced Capture modes, the external flash and the long-time modes. See Advanced Exposure Modes Settings.

External flash mode—disables the built-in flash and uses the external flash sync to provide flash. You can set the camera aperture setting (or f/stop). The default aperture setting is 5.6.

Long-time mode—disables the flash when taking long exposures to get proper exposure within the current ambient lighting environment. You set the exposure time between 0.5 and 16 seconds in 0.5-second increments.

Self-Timer

The Self-timer creates a 10-second delay between the time you press the Shutter button and when the picture is taken. This allows enough time for you to include yourself in the picture. See Setting the Self-Timer.

IrDA (Infrared) Communication

In a camera-to-camera connection in the Review mode, two cameras can communicate with each other through an IrDA connection. The IrDA Communication icon appears and changes to indicate the state of the communication with its IrDA partner camera. See Copying Marked Pictures from Camera to Camera.

Initiating communication—indicates IrDA communication has been initiated.

Searching for communication partner (Blinking)—indicates the camera is looking for an IrDA communication partner.

Communicating—indicates the camera is communicating with its IrDA partner. The alphanumeric display also indicates the number of pictures that have yet to be transmitted.

Communication timed out (Blinking)—indicates a problem has caused the communication to time-out. The icon continues to blink until you respond to the LCD dialog or turn off the camera.

Quality

You can set your camera to take pictures with a Good, Better, Best, and Uncompressed Quality setting. The Quality setting indicates how much the picture is compressed to save space on the memory card. The pictures are captured in a JPEG file format, except for the Uncompressed Quality setting, which captures the picture in an uncompressed TIFF file format. With the uncompressed TIFF file format, the file size is very large, and takes up a large amount of space on the memory card.

When taking pictures, you can switch freely among the four settings. However, with the Uncompressed setting, Ultra Resolution is not available. The number of pictures the camera is able to store varies accordingly. The Quality and Resolution settings combine to dictate how many pictures you can store on your memory card. For information on setting camera resolution, see Picture Type Settings. The four Quality settings are:

Uncompressed (Uncmp)—which should be used when you want an image with no compression, in a TIFF file format. Produces better image quality for certain scenes when making large prints. Please note that the image file size is very large, and can extend computer downloading times.

Best—which should be used when image quality is very important. Ideal for everyday picture-taking.

Better—which should be used for standard quality picture-taking and to store a large number of pictures.

Good—which should be used to store the greatest number of pictures on the memory card and for images you plan to use online. This setting has the most compression and provides the least image quality.

Understanding Quality and Resolution

Keep in mind that with your camera you are generally going to get beautiful digital pictures. But based on two factors, resolution and compression, some pictures will be of a higher quality than others.

Instead of film, the camera places your pictures on a memory card. These pictures are made up of pixels. The more pixels you have (or the better the resolution) the more space you use on the memory card.

To save space, you can compress each picture. When a picture is compressed, some color and detail information is discarded. More compression means a lower quality picture. Less compression means a better quality picture.

Together, compression (or quality) and resolution dictate how many pictures you can fit on your memory card.

If the quality of your pictures is most important, use the Uncompressed (no compression) or Best (little compression) Quality setting and High resolution. You may want to do this if you are printing your pictures on a high-quality printer.
If space on your memory card is most important, use the Good or Better Quality setting (which results in more compression) and Standard resolution. You may want to do this if you are using your pictures on a Web page.

Remember that resolution and quality are two different things. Resolution is the number of pixels in the picture. Quality is how much you compress them.

Batteries

The battery power icon changes automatically. It is a display-only icon, you cannot select or change it.

Full—indicates the batteries are fully charged.

Low—indicates the batteries need to be replaced.

Blinking—indicates the batteries are insufficient to run the camera and need to be replaced.

Battery life is rapidly reduced when Preview or Review modes are in use. Pictures stored on the memory card are not lost if the batteries are depleted.

Your camera uses four AA batteries for power. For your convenience, two sets of batteries are included with your camera; four alkaline batteries, and four Ni-MH rechargeable batteries with a battery charger. The alkaline batteries are provided so you can start using your camera immediately. The rechargeable batteries need to be charged before using them in the camera.

CAUTION
Do not mix different types of batteries in the camera.