Olympus FE-280 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, SHQ = Super High Quality (3264x2448) and there's enough space our xD card for 89 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 Up, Left, Down or Right allows you to quickly change settings for Exposure compensation, Macro/SuperMacro 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.) These exposure modes are designed to give users the best results possible in a variety of different shooting situations.

You can choose from 21 Modes: Portrait, Landscape, or Night & Portrait on the mode dial or Indoor, Sport, Candle, Self-Portrait, Sunset, Sport, Fireworks, Cuisine, Documents, Behind Glass, Auction, Smile Shot, Underwater Wide 1 and 2, Underwater Macro and Movie under the SCN position.

Press the MENU button to bring up the Record mode shortcut menu. You can use this menu to quickly change image resolution, reset all settings to factor defaults, enable Silent mode, change the scene mode (when set to the SCN position on the mode dial) as well as enter the Camera and Setup menus.

Record Menu Options

White Balance - Auto, Daylight, Overcast, Tungsten, and 3 Fluorescents
ISO - Auto, 50, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600
Fine Zoom - On, Off
Picture+Sound - Add a voice memo to the image just captured (On or Off)
Panorama - Enter Panorama mode, requires Olympus brand xD-picutre card.
AF Mode - Face Detect, iESP, Spot

Press the 4-way selector "left" to enable Macro focus mode and take closeup shots at a range of 3.98" (0.1m) - infinity (Wide), 23.6" (0.6m) - infinity (Tele), or enable Super Macro mode and get as close as 2 inches (5 cm).

Movie mode lets you capture SHQ (640x480/30fps), HQ (320x240/15fps) and SQ (160x120/15fps) resolution motion video with sound. The length of a movie is limited only by the available memory. Because the FE-250 features a built-in microphone, the optical zoom may not be used during recording. You can preset the desired focal length before recording starts. The digital zoom can be used while recording, however we suggest not using it as it degrades image quality. Clips are saved in AVI Motion JPEG (.AVI) format.