The "point-n-shoot" Auto mode screen. Beginners or anyone that just wants to take a picture without setting anything will like this mode. The only menu option is shown in the next frame.

In Auto mode the only menu option is for image quality, the S50 will recognize several shooting scenes and select appropriate settings for landscape, portrait, night scene, or general subjects.

Auto mode has an informative Help function that is invoked by depressing the ?/Fn button. All functions of the Mode dial, 4-way controller and buttons on the camera's back cover are described.

Program recording mode is also an automatic mode but the user has many menu and function options available. Onscreen icons indicate space for another 105 pictures on the SD card and the battery level is full. The white brackets in the center is the auto focus area.

When the shutter is half-pressed and the auto focus is locked, the AF bracket will shrink and turn green, the selected shutter speed and aperture value is also displayed.

Pressing the DISPLAY button turns the color LCD on/off and also controls how much information is shown on top of the live image. Here we have all the exposure information enabled including the real time histogram.

Pressing the ?/Fn button in other than Auto mode brings up this shortcut menu to quickly change image size, image quality or exposure compensation. The functions assigned to the 4-way controller are registered via the Setup menu.

Press the MENU button to access these options:

Recorded Pixels - 2560x1920, 2304x1728, 2048x1536, 1600x1200, 1024x768 or 640x480
Quality Level - Best, Better or Good
White Balance - Auto, Daylight, Shade, Tungsten, Fluorescent or Manual
Focusing Area - Multi. or Spot
AE Metering - Multi segment, Center-weighted or Spot
Sensitivity - Auto, 50, 100, 200, 400
Frame Rate - Movie frame rate of 30 or 15fps
Digital Zoom - On/Off
Instant Review - 0.5, 1, 2, 3, or 5 secs. and Off
Memory - Saving shooting function settings when camera is turned off
Sharpness - Hard, Normal or Soft
Saturation - Hard, Normal or Soft
Contrast - Hard, Normal or Soft
EV Compensation - +/-2.0 in 1/3EV steps

If you find the menu options difficult to read, touching the telephoto zoom control enlarges the font.

The PICTure Modes available are: Flower, Self-portrait, Surf, Snow, Sunset, Museum, Text, Food, Landscape Portrait, Marine.

The Digital Effect Modes are: Black and white, sepia, Red, Green, Blue, B&W + red, B&W + green, B&W + blue, 2 in 1, Panorama assist.

In Super Macro Mode you can close focus from 2.4 to 8 inches with excellent results. The regular Macro mode covers a range from 7 to 20 inches.

Movie mode lets you record motion JPEG at 320 x 240 resolution at 30 or 15fps; monaural audio is also recorded. The length of movies is limited only by available memory space.

The S50 can be used as a voice-only recorder too.