I currently own an Olympus 400z and have ordered an Oly 2020z. The 400 has an EV override control and I understand that the 2020 does also. How does this work? Does it change the shutter speed, f-stop, or ISO values; or does it somehow just effect something on the smart media card? Thank you.

-- Rod Kampf (rskrsk@jps.net), April 06, 2000

Answers

Rod:
Typically a function like this allows you to override the automatic exposure mode of a camera to compensate for subjects that the exposure meter can't handle correctly.
Examples of this are:

• Backlighted Subjects
• small bright objects with an unusually dark background
• extremely contrasty subjects
• with regular film you may sometime push it up to double the ISO rating (requires special developing). Some digital cameras can allow for ISO changes with some degradation of detail.

Such a compensation feature can accomplish this in many ways - including most of the ways you put into your question except by doing something to the smart media card. Each manufacturer will probably implement the override in slightly different ways. You need to be careful about this too. If you regularly shoot backlighted sports you really don't want the camera to compensate by lowering the shutter speed - you would rather compensate by using a wider f-stop.

Des

-- Dan Desjardins (dan.desjardins@avstarnews.com), April 06, 2000.