Olympus FE-190 Zoom Review

Rotating the Mode dial to the GUIDE position will bring up the built-in Shooting Guide on the LCD screen. It provides a detailed descriptions of various photographic scenarios, and will also set the camera with the touch of a button.

Here you can see the typical record mode screen. The "AUTO" indicates Auto exposure mode, in the center are the auto focus target marks, and across the bottom is image quality, HQ = High Quality and there's enough space our xD card for 339 pictures.

When you half-press the shutter release it starts the autofocus process and if it locks you'll get the "focus OK" green icon (top left). If focus fail you will get a red "can't focus" icon (not shown.) The "red lightning bolt" icon indicates the flash is charged and ready.

Digital Image Stabilization mode is also located on the Mode dial (shaky hand symbol) and uses Olympus' Bright Capture technology, which boosts the ISO sensitivity. This keeps shutter speeds higher in order to reduce the blurring effects of camera shake or subject movement during the exposure. Image size is not reduced when using this feature.

Rotating the mode dial gives you access to these shooting modes.

Pressing the 4-way controller Left, Down or Right allows you to quickly change settings for Macro focus mode, Self-timer, and Flash mode.

You can access a variety of Scene modes by rotating the Mode dial to the SCN position. As you go through the Scene selections an image depicting the mode is shown and then a brief text explanation of the mode is presented (shown above.) You can choose from 13 different exposure modes: Portrait, Landscape, Night & Portrait, Indoor, Candle, Self-Portrait, Sunset, Sport, Fireworks, Cuisine, Documents, Behind Glass, Auction.

Press the MENU button to bring up the Record mode Menu. You can use this shortcut menus to quickly change image resolution, reset all settings to factor defaults, adjust Exposure compensation, enable Silent mode as well as enter the Setup menu.

SETUP Menu Options

Memory Format - Format the xD memory card

Backup - Save a copy of images on to your PC

Menu Language - English, French, Espanol, Portuguese

Pixel Mapping - Map out bad pixels

Monitor Brightness - Adjust LCD backlight

Beep - Choose Low, High or Off

Camera sounds - Low, High or Off

Shutter Sound - Choose Shutter theme

Set Clock - Set time and or date

Video Out - Video out signal - NTSC or PAL format

Press the 4-way selector "left" to enable Macro focus mode and take closeup shots at a range of 3.9 inches (0.1m) to infinity, or enable Super Macro mode and get as close as 2 inches (5cm.)

Movie mode lets you capture HQ (320x240) or SQ (160x120) resolution motion video at 15fps with sound. The length of a movie is limited only by the available memory. Because the FE-190 features a built-in microphone, the optical zoom may not be used during recording. You can preset the desired focal length before starting to record a movie.