Olympus D-600L How-To

This is a short list of notes on how to use the department's Olympus D-600L digital camera. You are of course welcome to read the long and stupid multi-language instruction booklet instead.
Please send tve@cs.cornell.edu corrections and/or additions!

The package

You should have gotten, the camera, a soft leather pouch, the Ni-MH battery charger, the serial cable, and a second smartmedia card in the side-pocket of the pouch.

Taking photos

• Press the center of the on-off button at the top center of the camera
• Use the lever at the top right of the camera to zoom (marked "w" and "t")
• The button at the top right of the camera is the shutter release (obvious location)
• Depress the shutter release half way to lock the exposure.
• If the yellow LED blinks in your eye, you should consider flipping up the flash.
• If the green LED blinks in your eye, the camera can't autofocus because it's too dark or there is not enough contrast. Try to aim at a vertical line, depress half way, re-compose, then depress all the way. If it's just too dark (and you are going to use the flash), press and hold the "+" or "-" buttons on the back of the camera before (& while) pressing the shutter. This fixes the distance.
• While the green LED blinks and the LCD shows the photo the camera is compressing and won't do anything else: just wait.
• The LCD at the top shows the approx number of images remaining.
• We currently have two 4MB smartmedia cards. The one in the camera is behind the latch that opens at the right rear of the camera. The second one is in the side pocket of the leather camera pouch. I've orderd an 8MB card.
• The four buttons at the top-rear are for (from left to right): self-timer, close-up mode, flash mode (off / red-eye-redux-preflash / on), and spot-metering mode.

Resolutions

• The LCD at the top shows the quality:
  • SHQ is 1280x1024 at jpeg 99% quality: a true waste of memory
  • HQ is 1280x1024 at jpeg 90% quality (I think): can't visually see the difference to SHQ
  • SQ is 640x480: a waste of this good camera (except to squeeze more lousy photos out of the remaining memory)
• To change the quality, press the menu (top) button on the back of the camera. Use "+"/"-" and "OK" buttons (just play around a bit and you'll get it).

Viewing photos

• Turn the lever around the on/off button to "play" and you will see the last photo.
• "+"/"-" goes forward/back
• the rightmost button on the top rear shows 9 thumbnails to index quickly
• the leftmost button on the top rear (has a red icon below) deletes the current image (the camera will prompt you for an extra "ok")

Uploading photos

• Get the olympus software from \\jeep\cdrom\olympus. The stuff you want is in the win95nt4 directory. Either the twain driver or the "c21w95" application (haven't tried it under NT).
• Use the darn serial cable which plugs into the left of the camera under the soft plastic cover.
• You can either erase the images on the card from the software or use the menu buttons on the back of the camera.
• While you twiddle thumbs (no swearing please!), be assured that I've ordered a PC Card adapter...

Batteries

• There are 4 Ni-MH rechargeables behind the latch on the right of the camera.
• You should have gotten the charger with the camera, it charges the batteries in a few hours.
• To put the batteries back in, put the camera flat on the table, and look into the open slot, then the polarity picture makes sense (I must be getting old, it took me a while to figure the perspective out...)
• I've been positively surprised by the Ni-MH which have already lasted much longer than the "photo-grade" alkalines that came with the camera.

Thorsten von Eicken, Jan 1998