What I meant Dave was that if you use spot focus it will be just like the SR11 but if you use exposure control you will lock out the new features whereas AE shift control will not. Exposure fixes gain in a linear fashion( you only get to gain after the iris is full open) whereas AE does not so that the camera can play with iris and gain independently to maximizes picture quality. When focus and exposure are in manual the new features are locked out since these are the things that need to be controlled to exploit the picture enhancements. I feel that even the focus needs to be part of the picture since managing depth of field requires the camera to manage focus and exposure control which it can do when it knows where the faces are for instance.
Having said all this I have for the second evening shot in full auto with very good results. The image was a little bright and I think next time I will try AE-1 with spot focus.
In just two outings I am really impressed though. The SR11 was set as normal with Spot focus and manual exposure using the zebras, so the XR500 was just to experiment.

Ron Evans