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Manual Control Options
The EX-F1 offers aperture-priority, shutter-priority and full manual shooting. The metering system makes them difficult to use, though. Instead of offering a live on-screen display indicating the current metering as you adjust the aperture or shutter setting, all you see is the setting you’re manipulating in green on-screen text. Then, when you press the shutter half-way, the camera takes a meter reading, sets the shutter speed and ISO, and lets you know whether you’ve hit an acceptable combination by displaying ISO, aperture and shutter readings numerically. If the type is white, you’re alright. If the type is orange, your settings are bad, though there‘s still no indication of how far off you might be from the camera‘s idea of an ideal setting, making further adjustments another hit-and-miss proposition. This guesswork approach to manual control is so inefficient that it will discourage newbies and experienced shooters alike from moving the mode dial off Auto.
Values for Sharpness, Saturation, and Contrast are adjustable through the Record mode Quality menu, each offering two steps up and two steps down from normal.
Focus
The Focus button on the lens barrel toggles between four modes:
- Auto Focus, available in the range from 1.3 inches to infinity
- Macro Focus, available from approximately 2.0 inches to 19.7 inches
- Infinity Focus, which sets focus for landscape and other distant subjects with one press
- Manual Focus, from 2.0 inches to infinity
Auto Focus (8.75)
There are three auto focus modes, each of which basically uses a small focal spot, but in different ways. The basic spot focus mode concentrates on the small area in the center of the screen. You can always use focus lock to aim at an object in the middle of the screen, focus on it by holding the shutter down halfway, then move the camera to recompose the image without changing the focus setting.
The Free focus mode overlays a visible crosshair pattern on the viewfinder and lets the user move the point of intersection up and down, left and right to select a point anywhere on the screen as the focal point.
Finally, Tracking mode focuses on the object in the middle of the screen when you half-press the shutter button, then automatically maintains focus on that subject as it moves, as long as the shutter button remains depressed. There are a few picture modes where Tracking isn’t available, including still image prerecord, slow motion view, and YouTube.
Continuous Auto Focus is also available in all three modes. When enabled, this feature maintains focus even when you don’t keep the shutter button half-depressed.
There is an Auto Focus Assist Light to the left of the lens which illuminates automatically when the shutter is depressed halfway in dim lighting situations.
The EX-F1, sad to say, is auto focus challenged, particularly in low light situations. We frequently found that the system refused to focus the first time we held the shutter down, only to lock in quickly and efficiently when we pressed it a second time, with no change in position or settings. There’s no rhyme or reason to the problem. It is worse when the lights or low, but even an outdoor scene with clearly defined edges can suffer from focus interruptus.
Manual Focus (7.75)
During manual focus operations, a yellow box appears on the monitor. Focusing is controlled using the left and right sides of the four-way controller. When you start to focus, the area within the yellow box enlarges to full-screen to make details easier to see (the display returns to normal after remaining idle for two seconds). If you prefer, you can use the set-up menu to set the lens barrel ring to control manual focus. We found this much smoother and more instinctive than using the four-way controller, and recommend making the change.
ISO (7.50)
There are five ISO settings, 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1600, plus Auto. Some odd restrictions turn up regarding ISO when you read the fine print, though. When shooting RAW, the maximum ISO setting is 200, for no apparent reason. Also, when shooting movies, Auto ISO is always used.
White Balance (6.50)
In addition to the default Auto WB setting, which lets the camera set the white balance based on live readings while shooting, there are also six user-selectable white balance presets: Daylight, Overcast, Shade, Day White Fluorescent, Daylight Fluorescent and Tungsten (i.e., light bulbs). You can also set a white balance value by selecting Manual WB from the white balance menu, aiming the camera at a white piece of paper and pressing the shutter button.
Exposure (7.25)
The EX-F1 offers aperture-priority, shutter-priority, full manual and auto exposure modes. Exposure compensation is available from the main Control Panel menu in the -2.0EV to +2.0EV range, in 1/3EV increments.
One-button backlight correction is also available by pressing the middle button on the lens barrel. This choice combines exposure shift with dynamic range adjustment to compensate for an underexposure caused when a dark subject is positioned in front of a bright background.
The AE-L/AF-L button is programmable through the menu system to lock either exposure, focus or both when pressed.
We found that, when left in auto mode, the EX-F1 frequently blew out highlights, even when the range from dark to light wasn’t all that challenging. Seting exposure compensation to -1/3 nearly always solved the problem without excessively darkening the image, but we expect the auto exposure setting to handle that chore.
Metering (8.50)
The EX-F1 supports three metering modes, accessible via the Control Panel. Multi-pattern metering analyzes the entire image area to create an exposure setting that maintains an overall balance. Center-weighted, as the name implies, favors achieving proper exposure in the middle of the frame. Spot metering reads only the small central area of the image and sets exposure value accordingly.
Shutter Speed (10.00)
The shutter speed specs for the EX-F1 are unlike any other camera we've seen. Yes, you can take long exposures up to 60 seconds, but you can also shoot at 1/40000th of a second thanks to the system’s unique high-speed technology. When shooting single-shot stills in Auto mode the shutter speed range is a bit more traditional, maxing out at 1/2000th second. And as noted in the testing section, the camera puts hard limits on the selectable slow shutter speeds based on ISO values. While a 60-second exposure is allowed at ISO 100, you’re limited to 8 seconds at ISO 400 and 1 second at ISO 1600.
Aperture (8.50)
Aperture settings range from f/2.7 to f/7.5 at the widest end of the zoom range and f/4.6 to f/13.1 at the maximum telephoto setting. That represents respectable light sensitivity at the wide setting, though the telephoto side of the range isn't up to our expectations. The Olympus SP-570 UZ, for example, is a 20x ultra-zoom model ranging from 26-520mm (35mm equivalent), yet still delivers a maximum aperture of f/4.5 at the top of its telephoto range.
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