Olympus XZ-1 Assembly instructions

XZ-1 Tips page 1 of 29
Olympus XZ-1 tips
from Jonathon Donahue
http://jon404.com
Here's a grab bag of XZ-1 information... from my posts, and others, on
www.Dpreview.com ... and from other places. No charge but if you want to show your
appreciation, check out my website and get a great book!
--------------
Setting the camera
Start with Program mode instead of I- Auto, Aperture, Shutter, or Manual.
On the screen menu that you see after pressing the back OK button --
1. Select Auto-ISO. The XZ-1 will try really, really hard not to go over ISO 200 -- and
that extra stop, from, say ISO 100 to 200, will give you super low-light pictures, with a
camera-set shutter speed fast enough to handhold.
2. Next, going down the menu, select 1 Vivid. Then press the little Menu button on the
back. Go to Picture Mode, select Vivid. Press the right arrow key, and set Contrast to +1,
Sharpness 0, Saturation +1, Gradation - Normal. Important: do NOT set Gradation to
Auto, or some other stuff will stop working.
3. Next, select white balance - Underwater (the fish icon). On the back-button Menu, go
to WB, press the OK button to select the fish icon, then press the right-arrow. Leave A
(amber) at 0, in the middle... but set G (green) to -1.
Between this and the Vivid setting above, you'll get beautiful pictures, indoor and out,
daytime, twilight, and in the dark.
4. Further down, select 'LF + Raw' as your picture type. This will make both a JPG and a
RAW image. In most instances, the JPG will be great... but the RAW backup lets you
rescue any image where the JPG isn't good.

XZ-1 Tips page 2 of 29
5. Further down, select Spot metering, instead of ESP or Ctr-Weighted. After selecting
Spot, go out of the menu. The camera will now always meter light from the little circle-
area in the center of the screen.
6. Next comes Focus Point selection. Press the left-arrow key and make sure the green
focus square is in the center of the screen. Leave it there! The XZ-1 will now start
behaving normally. The XZ-1 will always try to focus in the green-square area in the
dead center of the screen, which is where you naturally point the camera.
(thanks to echelon2004 for helping me get this straight!)
Imagine that you are taking a picture of a sunset. Point the XZ-1 at the sky, to the left of
the sun. Press the shutter button lightly -- it will lock focus and exposure with a beep. If
you don't like the preview image on the LCD, move the camera up or down, and try
another preview. The screen lets you see right away what you will get!
7. Lastly, further down, select AF instead of Macro or Super-Macro. At the camera's
startup wide-angle lens setting, everything's sharp from about 2' to infinity -- like for
almost every photo you will take. But play around with Super-Macro... fantastic closeups.
Just don't forget to put it back on AF!
That's about it. Now after you set the camera, write these settings down on a piece of
paper in case something gets unset, and forget all about it -- time to start taking pictures!
From here on out, trust your eye and your camera. Think pictures, not camera settings.
Before you go, get two SD cards, and three spare batteries. You will get about 200 -250
pictures per battery charge... so three charged batteries should be all you need, who
knows what kind of electricity they have over there. You can carry the XZ-1 in a shirt
pocket, with a spare battery in your other shirt pocket.
Night photography -- if you're on the move, forget the tripod or monopod. Learn to
balance the camera on a fence, a railing, or braced against a pole. Or, carry a small
beanbag in your pants pocket. Use the camera's 12-sec self-timer to take a good sharp
picture of anything that isn't moving too much.

XZ-1 Tips page 3 of 29
Sunset -- point the spot focus to the sky at the left or right of the setting sun; watch the
LCD screen til you see the effect you like.
Water reflections -- spot focus off the reflection in the water, not the sky.
Portraits -- here's an exception to Program mode. Go to A Aperture instead. Turn the lens
ring til it says 1.8 Put the lens at full telephoto. Stand about 6 feet away from the subject.
The background behind the person should be nicely blurred. Now, if you are doing this in
bright daylight, there may be too much light for the XZ-1 to handle. So go into the OK
button menu, and change ND Off to on. The built-in Neutral Density filter lets you take
pictures at wide open lens settings in bright daylight.
Filters -- Don't bother. You can do any special effects later in Photoshop -- almost
anything except a true polarizing effect, and the Vivid settings above will help you avoid
the need for polarizing color saturation.
Street scenes -- if you have time, think ahead, about what kind of picture may present
itself in the minutes ahead. Or what kind of picture you missed may repeat itself... and
when... and be there. This is hard to do!
More about settings
I leave my XZ-1 set on Underwater color balance (little fish icon) -- A=0, G=-1, and
Vivid color mode. EV at -0.3 or 0.7... digital's like old slide film, you want to
underexpose a bit to get rich saturated color.
I keep my Custom mode set to Program, with Monotone color mode (Black-and-white)...
sometimes I like to 'see' in B&W.
If using Aperture mode, I like f/5.6 as a place where the lens is very sharp with
tremendous depth-of-field. And f/2.5, at full 112mm tele, if you want to blur the
background. Really bright day? Use the ND filter to stop overexposure. Shutter speed --
at least 1/125 sec to stop motion. Or, 1/25 sec if you want to get a controlled blur, like

XZ-1 Tips page 4 of 29
when panning with a moving car or runner.
Confused about all this? Use Program mode, with the ISO at 100. Pictures in the dark,
without flash? You can go up to ISO 640, maybe ISO 800, but not more, or you will get
blotchy pictures (chroma noise). With the lens at f/2 and ISO 640, you'll be amazed at
how you can get almost any nighttime image.
Use spot exposure. Meter for the highlights, or close to them... like the sky to the left or
right of the sun at sunset.
Spot exposure note -- opinion from Ken Sills, Dpreview -- "I set my XZ-1 per your set-up
guidelines and then went on a vacation trip. The spot exposure caused me lots of
problems with landscape photos that had uneven lighting. I was constantly under or over-
exposed. I went back to center-weighted and the problem went away."
So -- maybe, for fast-moving action where you don't have time to meter carefully, leave it
on Program... Ctr-Weight instead of Spot.
Convenience -- keep the XZ-1 in your left shirt pocket. Keep a charged spare battery and
52mm polarizing filter in your right shirt pocket (you can hold it over the lens to knock
out reflections. For bright days, when its hard to see the screen, you also carry a small
older Pen VF-1 optical viewfinder that works OK with the lens at the startup 28mm
setting. And carry a beanbag in a pants pocket to put the camera on at night, and use the
self timer at 12 sec to take the picture, like for a nightscape without too much subject
movement.
Post-processing ('developing') -- Corel After Shot Pro is a very good inexpensive
program with enough features to keep you busy for a long time.
RAW vs JPG -- the XZ-1 JPGs are very good. But every now and then, like in some
weird flourescent light or mixed-light situation, switch it from LF (best JPGs) to LF +
RAW. You can learn about RAW in your Olympus software, or in After Shot Pro.
Secret -- focus lock: normally, you hold the shutter button halfway down and wait til you
see the little green box and then take the picture. The green box means that the XZ-1 has

XZ-1 Tips page 5 of 29
locked both focus and exposure on that spot. But what if you want to lock the focus on
the spot, but get the exposure somewhere else?
Here's how. Use the back-wheel left arrow to put the focus box in the center of the screen
(always best with spot focus). Then - you can put the XZ-1 on SCN > Underwater-Wide
and then press the down arrow on the back wheel, and it will lock the focus on whatever's
in the center of the screen. With the focus locked, you can move the camera and get an
exposure from somewhere else in the scene. The focus lock will hold until you turn off
the camera... or until you press the down arrow again to release the focus lock.
Flash -- in Shutter, Aperture, or Manual mode, you can adjust the flash power. Try 1/64
power to add a flick of light, of sparkle, to your portraits or closeups.
Image quality -- for almost all pictures, your XZ-1 takes images as good as any other
camera. There are a very few situations where much more expensive DSLRs are better.
But not often, and not worth the bother of carting one around. How to 'improve' a
picture? The old Life magazine adage -- crop, then crop it again. Your XZ-1's 10
megapixels gives you plenty of room to crop to the most visually strong image possible.
Flash settings
Very first thing: use the Menu button - Camera Menu > Flash settings > Sync > Sync 2.
The 'Sync 2' shoots off the flash at the end of an exposure, rather than at the start. So, on
a longish exposure, if your kid moves a bit, that movement will be 'overwritten' by the
bright sharp end-of-exposure flash image. Leave it on Sync 2 all the time; saves a lot of
pictures.
But, since the XZ-1 has a very 'bright' lens, you also have the luxury of choosing a nice
fast shutter speed. Put the XZ-1 in S Shutter mode, with the top dial.
On the right-side screen menu (press the back OK button to see it), make sure the ISO is
on 'Auto-ISO'. In the dark, the XZ-1 will go from ISO-100 to ISO-200... more light for
your picture, allowing an even faster shutter speed.

XZ-1 Tips page 6 of 29
So -- turn the lens ring until you get to a faster shutter speed, like 1/250. This speed will
freeze anyone moving towards you or away from you. 1/500 will freeze side-to-side
motion, but might let in too little light in a dark room.
Go the the Flash menu (right-arrow on the back dial), and pick the little lightning bolt --
for auto-intensity Fill In flash (just the lightning bolt, NOT the icon with a bolt and a little
eye). The XZ-1 will send out an almost invisible pre-flash, measure the light bouncing
back from it, and then fire off the main flash at just the right strength.
This, of course, will cause your child to go blind for a few moments, if not longer. You
can put a piece of Kleenex over the flash, to diffuse the light... and try again. If the
picture is too dark, move the Flash menu setting from Fill In to Full, or 1/4, or 1/16... or
just move closer with the tissue over the flash.
Or, you can tape a little angled piece of cardboard in front of the flash, to bounce the light
up at the ceiling, and then down onto the child.
All these flash units put out 'daylight' bluish light. Which is sort of stupid, because we
mostly use them indoors, under warmer room light -- lightbulb light -- tungsten light. If
you get a little piece of light orange plastic gel from a camera store -- ask for a CTO gel
-- and then tape it over the flash, amazing! Suddenly, the light from the flash matches the
color tone of the room light -- and those candles on your kid's birthday cake.
Last thought -- take a few minutes to experiment with the Flash menu low-power
settings. Outdoors in daylight, try 1/16 and 1/64 to add just a flick of fill flash to your
subject. .. very nice (no orange flash filter needed, unless you want a 'late-afternoon'
sunlit look).
Optical Infrared Wireless Slave flash
The XZ-1's popup flash can set off other flashes... infrared or 'slave' flashes. I use a cheap
Yong-Nuo YN-460N, which is fully adjustable for intensity. It works perfectly indoors --

XZ-1 Tips page 7 of 29
as long as the camera and flash are NOT in daylight coming in from a window. To
photograph a room with daylight coming in from a window, use M Manual mode with the
shutter at, say, 1/250. Get a correct exposure from the window (the rest of the room will
go black). Then, with the XZ-1 flash on 1/4 power, have it set off the slave flash -- with
the slave flash bouncing light off the ceiling, or hidden behind a chair.
On the LCD screen, if the room now looks too bright or too dark, adjust the Aperture...
NOT the Shutter speed. Because since the flash fires at faster than 1/2000 of a second,
your shutter speed setting is only meaningful for that window-daylight exposure setting.
The interior room part of the exposure is controlled by the flash, and changing the
aperture is the only way to add or take away light from the room.
Get an inexpensive set of Rosco color gels... http://www.amazon.com/Strobist-
Collection-Cinegel-Filter-Strobes/dp/B002SWIOOM ... and a gel holder
--http://www.gelholder.com/gelholder/ (works great with the YN460N) and you are,
instantly at super-low cost ... starting to light like a pro!
Great resource -- Strobist website, see their 'Lighting 101'. http://strobist.blogspot.com/
Radio-controlled Wireless Slave Flash
-- post on Dpreview by Echelon 2004
Using the XZ-1 with a Cactus V4 radio transmitter to set off Nikon SB-900 speedlights...
It's very easy. Use a transmitter of some kind Or use a camera-mounted flash in manual,
Or use the built in flash in manual at lowest power to trigger the slaves. Have everything
on the camera in manual. Have the flashes in manual. If using Cactus receivers, flashes
should not be set as slaves but just as normal camera mounted flashes. Otherwise the
slaves need to know that they are to react on the master flash. But manual settings are the
key, and never add a light that isn't needed.
Autofocus lock (AF lock
Press down-arrow in Underwater mode
But only in underwater mode!

XZ-1 Tips page 8 of 29
In SCN > Underwater-wide or -macro modes, press the down button for focus lock (it
even labels the focus confirmation 'box')
A half-press on the shutter then gives exposure lock.
You can overide the white balance and some other settings from the scene mode defaults.
You appear to be stuck with Vivid.
But all these settings can be overriden or ignored if shooting RAW.
If nothing else, it shows what capability is hidden in the firmware.
SCN > Underwater Macro mode
If you set the XZ-1 to SCN > Underwater Macro mode, it will always start up with the
lens extended to full 112mm tele, with the aperture fixed at f/4, and the shutter at the
fastest-possible setting.
ISO remains at whatever you set; I use Auto ISO, since on the XZ-1 it won't ever go up
over 200. All flash power options are available.
This might be helpful to anyone doing snapshot press photography... "Quick! Here comes
Charlize Theron!"
An afterthought -- might be interesting for street photographers to see if shooting with the
lens at 112mm is better than at 28mm... or better than mid-range 50mm 'normal vision'
setting. That mild 112mm tele might just be better, what do you think?
Slight error! With it set to SCN > Underwater Macro, with the lens opening at startup to
112mm and the aperture locked at f/4, and the camera speed set by the XZ-1... using
Auto-ISO, the ISO will go over 200 but it has to be REALLY DARK to get the camera to
do that. In near-total darkness, it goes to ISO 400. In absolutely total darkness, it stops at
ISO 800.
In practice, in this mode, Auto-ISO works really well in combination with the XZ-1's
choice of shutter speed to get you a good picture... at low ISO, almost always below ISO
200.

XZ-1 Tips page 9 of 29
XZ-1 … a 448mm lens?
Discovered today that my Olympus XZ-1, with its 28mm - 112mm lens, actually has a
28mm - 448mm lens!
Well, sort of. As you know, the glass lens, the 'optical lens', enlarges an image 4 times,
when it zooms from 28mm to 112mm. But then, the camera's computer can enlarge it 4
more times, from 112mm to 448mm... what's called 'digital zoom.'
Now, your little camera probably can do this too. But nobody likes digital zoom, because
the image quality isn't as good as optical zoom. Pro photographers and advanced
amateurs actually SNEER at digital zoom. How bad is it? Well, my Olympus manual
flatly states "Avoid using digital zoom to take pictures (p.75)" That's bad!
But is it really? You tell me. Here are three XZ-1 pictures, taken from the same camera
position, handheld, at 28mm optical wide angle, 112mm optical telephoto, and 448mm
digital telephoto --
jon404 > digi-tele-test (Original)
Dec 31, 1969 16:00:00
My take? The digital one isn't that bad... worth trying another tomorrow with the camera
on self-timer and a beanbag. We'll see. But as of tonight, looks like my little XZ-1 just
went super-zoom!
VF-1 Optical Viewfinder
The Olympus Optical Viewfinder VF-1, which was an accessory for the Pen cameras,
works just fine on my XZ-1. It is much simpler (and a LOT less expensive) than the
newer VF-2 electronic viewfinder. It slides into the hotshoe. On a bright day, when the
LCD screen is hard to see, it's a Godsend. The field-of-view is close enough to the XZ-1's
28mm wide-angle startup lens setting... great if you're snapping pictures of fast-moving
people or objects.
There's something else. Like many of you, I treasure the XZ-1's form factor... it fits in a
shirt pocket... always there, always ready. My shirt has two pockets, and I keep the VF-1
viewfinder a polarizer, and a spare battery in the other. And that's all I need, DSLR folks!
That's it! No lens adapter, no other filters, no teleconverter adapter, no teleconverters.

XZ-1 Tips page 10 of 29
Nothing else! Well, maybe a tripod in the car trunk. And , a small beanbag with lead shot
to put the XZ-1 on when I don't have the tripod out. But thanks to digital post-processing,
we just don't have to lug all that stuff around anymore... isn't it wonderful!
Underwater Mode
Noticed that the XZ-1's Underwater Mode does a great job white-balancing the nightime
mixture of tungsten, sodium vapor, neon and fluorescent light. And! For all you purists
complaining about a missing XZ-1 Focus Lock button, guess what! In Underwater Mode,
just press the down arrow on the back ring to lock the exposure.
Besides the two Underwater Modes (wide-angle and macro), you can also set the white-
balance to 'Underwater'. I'm using Cloudy for all my daylight and twilight images, and
then Underwater, usually with aperture priority, later at night.
This camera is so amazingly shirt-pocket portable. Am becoming an expert finding places
to brace it against for low-light shots... keep a tripod in the car but somehow never use
it... can put the camera on anything stationary (car roof, mailbox) and use the self-timer
to take a very sharp shot. Fun!
SCN > Underwater Macro
More XZ-1 -- there are two SCN > Underwater settings -- Underwater Wide and
Underwater Macro. If you have it set to Underwater Macro, the camera will start up with
the lens at full 112mm telephoto.
Now, you know that you can press the shutter button halfway-down to do a focus-AND-
exposure lock on the spot target. This works for almost every situation.
But here's a little-known feature: locking focus WITHOUT locking exposure.
Both SCN > Underwater settings also let you lock focus... point the center of the screen