Understanding the Information on the LCD Monitor

The camera communicates with you through the LCD monitor. Since the camera has two operation modes, the LCD monitor has two different screens, one for each mode. The following images show some important elements on the LCD monitor for each mode. Some of the most frequently used ones will be discussed briefly in the next two sections. Moreover, the same content will be repeated on the corresponding page.

In shooting mode	In playback mode

In the Shooting Mode.....

In the shooting mode, the LCD monitor shows a lot of information. The following screen shot contains some very important ones. Let us start with the most basic ones.

• Top Row
  • The focus indicator shows up when the shutter-release button is pressed half-way. If it is blinking, the camera does not lock on the subject. If it is solid, it means the camera has successfully locked on the subject.
  • When you press one of the two zoom buttons (i.e., W or T), the zoom indicator appears. Pressing buttons W and T moves the zoom lens to the wide angle end (i.e., zooming out) and telephoto end (i.e., zooming in), respectively. The white portion indicates the percentage the lens has been zoomed in or out. To the left of the vertical line is the range of the optical zoom and to the right is the range of the digital zoom.
  • The shooting mode indicator. The 2500 has two shooting modes, the A mode and the M mode, indicated by a A and a M followed by a camera icon, respectively. The A mode provides the basic shooting features and the M mode permits you to fine tune these features.
  • When the shutter speed (selected by the camera) is slow, camera shaking could cause blurred images. Thus, when the shutter speed is slow, the camera shake icon appears in the upper-right corner.

• Bottom Row
  • The first number gives the image size being used. In fact, this is actually the number of pixels per row in your image. The 2500 supports four image sizes, 1600 for 1600×1200, 1280 for 1280×960, 1024 for 1024×768 and 640 for 640×480. Here, 1600 is the default.
  • The second is the image quality indicator. Here, NORMAL is the default. The other choices are FINE and BASIC.
  • The flash mode icon is in the middle. It shows the firing mode of the internal flash.
  • The +/- icon and the number next to it indicate the exposure compensation. If no exposure compensation is used, this field is blank.
  • The number in the bracket is the number of exposures remaining. A Compact Flash card has a limited storage and hence can save only finite number of images. This number is calculated based on the image size and image quality being used. Changing either one of these two, this number changes. In the image above, it says under the 1600 image size and NORMAL image quality, we can shoot 226 images before the memory card is full. Note that this is only an estimation because the memory used for storing an image of a very complex scene is definitely larger than that of an image of a very simple scene.

• Left Column
  • The white balance indicates the current white balance selection.
  • The best shot/continuous shooting mode indicator shows if the camera is in the best shot mode or continuous mode. The best shot selector, as shown above as BSS, indicates that the camera will take maximum 10 photos as long as the shutter-release button is held down, compare these photos, and select and save the best one. In the Continuous mode, as long as the shutter-release button is held down, the camera will take photos in a rate of three frames every two seconds. However, unlike the BSS mode, all images are saved in the Continuous mode. There is a Multi-Shot 16 mode in which the camera takes 16 consecutive 400×300 images. Note that these three modes are mutually exclusive. In other words, only one of them can be selected, and, as a result, the icon of the selected mode is shown in the middle. If none of these three modes is selected, the camera is in the Single, meaning one image is taken for each press of the shutter-release button.
  • By default, the sensitivity of the CCD sensor of the 2500 is approximately equivalent to ISO 100. Under low light condition, the camera will increase this sensitivity to about ISO 400 for faster exposure. Should this happen, the sensitivity icon ISO is shown.

In the Playback Mode.....

The information shown on the LCD monitor in the playback mode is relatively easy to understand. See the image below.

• Top Row
  • The folder name and file name are shown in the upper-right corner. Images taken by the 2500 are organized in folders, and each image has a name. The default folder name as shown on the LCD monitor is 100NIKON; however, you can create your own folders. The filename always starts with a sequence number followed by a file extension.
  • The upper-left corner shows the creation date and time of the current image.

• Bottom Row
  • The image size and image quality have the same meaning as they are in the shooting mode. However, they are referring to the image size and quality of the image being reviewed.
  • The numbers in the bracket such as [ 31/ 33] indicate the total number of images stored on the memory card so far and the current number of the image being reviewed. In the above, there are 33 images on the memory card and the 31^st is being reviewed.