Following my previous entry about the Sony NEX-5 vs Canon G12 vs Olympus XZ-1, I actually took back the demo unit on Friday and purchased my own XZ-1 in white, I’ve not been messing about with it as much as I’d hoped so far, but I want to get a half decent case for it to save it getting bashed about etc.. before I start taking it everywhere with me.

 

So, in the safety of my own home and garden, I’ve been messing about with the macro mode. I don’t own any kind of macro lens for my Canon 5D mk2 or 5D classic so it’s been good fun to mess about with this feature.

 

First thing to do is set the camera in A (Aperture) mode, then press down on the menu wheel and click through to the focus option, to get really close in use macro s mode (picture of the macro flower with an s next to it.

 

I went out to the garden, set the aperture to F1.8 and took a couple of snaps. A nail in the felt on the roof of my shed, a knot in the wood of the shed, a poppy pod and another flower (my wife planted all this stuff, no idea sorry!). I didn’t quite hit the focus I planned for on the nail, but very happy with the other two!

 

I then went indoors and decided to have a go at a couple of close up photos of a pound coin, was really impressed with the performance straight away, the only thing I did was prop the camera up to reduce shake and used a torch to get a bit more light on the coin to stop the image underexposing (could have adjusted the ISO I guess, but thought this would be better).

 

You can see these images in the gallery below (click to enlarge), on the coin shots I added a 100% crop from the original image just to give you an idea on the detail this excellent little camera can pick up (the coin shots were at F5, ISO 200).

 

Still very glad I chose this camera, I’ll post up some more picture samples, reviews etc.. once I’ve used it some more.

 

Dave.