I just purchased a Olympus D-600L. The users manual was very basic and left me with some questions that I hope someone will be able to answer. Being new to the world of digital photography (and really all photography) these questions may be simple.

Any help would be greatly appreciated with the following questions:

1. AE +/-: Manual didn't go too deep into this. Is this solely for indoor/outdoor difference..??

2. Spot Metering: Owner's manual says it's used mainly to obtain the right light exposure. Does this take the place of using the AE function..??

3. NiMH batteries: I've already noticed that the camera goes through batteries unbelievably fast. Do the rechargeable NiMH batteries last the same as normal batteries (i.e. Duracell)..??

4. Date stamp: Does this only appear in print mode..?? Was trying to get a date stamp on .jpg transfer and was unsuccessful.

Thanks...

-- BeachTerp beachterp@yahoo.com

-- BeachTerp (beachterp@yahoo.com), May 03, 1999

Answers

The AE +/- is Automatic Exposure compensation. If the Automatic Exposure is getting fooled into exposing the picture differently than you intended you can compensate for this with the the AE +/- adjustment. Cases where this might occur is foreground and background lighting are dramatically different. Situations where this might occur would be outdoors portrait shot with the sun in the background. The faces would end up disapearring into the shadow. To compensate you could use fill flash or Adjust the AE +/- to the + side. This can also occur indoors if a bright light such as a table lamp was in the image. You would adjust the AE +/- the opposite way for a dark background where faces are getting washed out because they are too bright. The spot metering is used to select what portion of the image you want to be properly exposed instead just taking the average of the entire image and adding a fudge factor with the AE +/-. So yes it is in a way taking the place of the AE +/-. I am not familiar with the D-600L specifically but I would assume the spot metering occurs in the center of the image, at least that is how my Olympus OM-2S SLR 35mm spot metering works. The one thing I don't know about the D-600L is how the spot metering works with the flash. I will look into that and get back with you or maybe someone else can help in that area.

As far as batteries NiMH are your best bet. You can get extra sets from Radio Shack. Digital cameras go throught batteries especially if you use the LCD viewfinder often or download to the computer from the camera without an ac adapter. You could also get a smartmedia card reader to trasfer the images to the computer.

Not sure on the date stamp.

Good luck!

-- Bob G. (rgreg88721@hotmail.com), May 03, 1999.

The date stamp will be embedded in the JPEG header, but won't appear in the image itself. The date stamp can be enabled when printing from the camera directly to a P-300 or P-330 printer (Olympus units), but once in the computer, you'll have to resort to other means. There are several digicam-printing programs out there that will read the date stamp (and other info) from the JPEG header and print it as a caption to the pictures. Thumbs Plus comes to mind, from Cerious Software. (www.cerious.com)

-- Dave Etchells (detchells@imaging-resource.com), May 10, 1999.