Shown here is the Program (auto) exposure mode with the full info display enabled. You can see the live histogram in the lower right corner. Onscreen icons indicate space for another 341 still images, image size was set at 2560x1920 pixels, *** (Best) quality, manual white balance, AE metering, and ISO Auto. The battery level is Full. The white brackets in the center denote the auto focus area which is set to Wide.

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

When you press the Fn (Function) button in Record mode this screen is shown. This is a shortcut menu that is very handy when wanting to quickly change settings. You can also customize this menu for different camera settings (sensitivity, metering, sharpness, saturation, etc.) via the Setup menu.

The Tv (Shutter-speed priority) mode allows you to set a desired shutter speed and the camera will select the appropriate aperture value. If the shutter speed is too low or high then the aperture value is displayed in red which indicates that you need to select a different shutter speed. Shutter speed range is from 1/1000 to 4 seconds.

The Av (Aperture priority) mode is like the Tv mode, here you select the desired aperture value and the camera selects the appropriate shutter speed.

The Manual exposure mode gives you complete control over both the shutter speed and the aperture value. Adjust one or the other until the +/- indicator disappears when exposure is correct.

Press the MENU button to access these options:

Recorded Pixels - 2560x1920, 2048x1536, 1600x1200, 1024x768 or 640x480
Quality Level - Best, Better or Good
White Balance - Auto, Daylight, Shade, Tungsten, Fluorescent or Manual
Focusing Area - Wide or Narrow
AE Metering - Multi segment, Center-weighted or Spot
Sensitivity - Auto, 50, 100, 200, 400
Auto Bracket - On/Off
Interval Shoot - On/Off
Focus Limiter - On/Off
Time-lapse Movie - On/Off
Flash Exposure Compensation - Adjust flash output +1.0 to -2.0
Digital Zoom - Off, x4, x10
Instant Review - 0.5, 1, 3, or 5 secs. and Off
3D Mode - Parallel, Cross
Memory - Saving shooting function settings when camera is turned off
M mode - Choose Manual, Shutter, or Aperture mode for the M position on the Mode dial
USER - Choose desired exposure mode for the USER position on the Mode dial
Noise reduction - On/Off
Sharpness - Hard, Normal or Soft
Saturation - Hard, Normal or Soft
Contrast - Hard, Normal or Soft

The PICTure (Scene) modes are: Landscape, Flower, Portrait, Self-Portrait, Sports, Surf & Snow, Autumn Colors, Sunset, Museum, Food, 3D and Panorama Assist

To focus manually -- Press the Focus mode button until "MF" is displayed and then adjust the focus distance by using the Up and Down positions of the 4-way controller. When you are actively changing the focus, the center portion of the LCD display is magnified and a distance scale is shown on the left. The focus can also be locked at infinity.

One other focusing feature is the ability to freely move the active AF Area to any one of the 5 positions within the frame.

Macro focus mode covers from 4.7 in. (0.12m) to 2.3 ft. (0.7m), while Super Macro mode get you as close as 1.2 inches (wide angle only.) only.

You can also capture motion video (.AVI) files at 320x240 resolution (30fps) with sound, with the length being limited only by the amount of available memory. There's also a Time-lapse mode that captures frames at a delayed rate, when played back it makes movement seem sped up. As with most cameras that capture video plus sound - you can't use the zoom during recording, but you can preset it beforehand.

The Optio SV can be used as a voice-only recorder too. Our camera has a 512MB SD card in it and as you can see, we could record 34 hours, 1 minute and 27 seconds of audio.