Olympus E-420 SLR Review

Pressing the Play button displays the last recorded frame. You can navigate through stored images by using the Arrow Pad or rotating the Control Dial on top of the camera allows you to zoom into images on the LCD.

Pressing the Info button allows you to control the amount of detailed information that is displayed for an image. Above you can see an animation of the available options. Press this button repeatedly until the desired information is displayed superimposed on top of the photo. Stepping through the available information first brings up the first screen, Info 1, which displays the memory card being accessed (CF), image quality mode (Large Normal), file number, and image number.

The Info 2 screen shows all of Info 1 plus the resolution (number of pixels), compression rate, date/time and file number

Info 3 moves the image to a thumbnail in the upper right and displays all the shooting information on the right of the screen and 4 tiny histograms on the lower left.

Info 4 is the enlarged histogram display showing the distribution of the brightness of the image. The histogram graphically shows the contrast and dynamic range of the image on a scale of 0 - 255 (left to right) with 0 being black and 255 is white.

Info 5 is the Shadow/Highlight display superimposed over the image highlighting the overexposed/Underexposed parts. Highlight will blink Red, while Shadows will blink Blue.

Info 6 clears all information off the screen, displaying only the image itself; perfect for when sharing pictures with friends and family.

The Index/Calendar Display mode lets you show several images on the LCD monitor at the same time. During single-frame playback, turn the Control Dial counter clockwise and the number of images shown changes from 4 to 9 to 16 to 25 to 49 to 100 and finally to the Calendar display mode. With the Calendar display on the screen, you can choose images by the date they were shot.

Close-up playback, also know as the magnify function, allows you to closely inspect images by zooming in up to 14x in several steps. Once an image is enlarged, you can move around inside of it by using the Arrow Pad.

Playback menu options:

• Slide show - Begin automated slide show playback changing every 5 seconds with 1 up, 4 up, 9up, 16 up or 25 up at a time
• Auto Rotate - Enable image rotation controlled by the +/- Direct Button, images are recorded to memory card in final position
• Edit - Enters the Edit menu, shown below
• DPOF - Store print reservation information (# of prints, date/time) to send images to a DPOF-compatible photo lab or DPOF-compatible printer
• Copy All - Copy all images between memory cards
• Reset Protect - Protect images from accidental erasure

Edit menu options:

• Shadow Adjustment - Helps brighten dark backlight objects
• Redeye Fix - Remove occurrences of Redeye in you portrait images
• Crop - Crop a section of an image and save as a new file
• Black&White - Convert an image to black&white
• Sepia - Convert an image to sepia tone
• Saturation - Adjust the color depth of an image
• Resize - Save an image to a smaller size (1280x960, 640x480, 320x240)