I'm right with you on this one Jeff. WHY, Sony? The VX/PD was a much better operational idea whereby you could instantly switch between two presets, indoor and outdoor. All this delving into the deep menuy system just to change the preset's value is laughable.

Has anyone come up with a good reason why this is so? I could live with 2 presets and one manually set w/b thank you Sony.

tom.

Guys, why can't you use memory A & B positions to store an outdoor & indoor WB respectively (A for indoor and B for outdoor)?

Ken, we can do that of course. But why should we have to?

Tom: Thank you, I thought I was the only one. It is the most non-sensical thing I can imagine. I look at this feature, the menu scroll wheel, and the placement of the hot shoe that doesn't allow for opening and closing the LCD when anything is mounted and I imagine they must have made these decision with the idea that it would be wrong to give us a camera that is near-perfect for the money.

Jeff, I'm not sure I'm understanding the difference between having an outdoor WB stored in "A" and an indoor WB stored in "B" as opposed to having a dedicated outdoor/indoor switch. A simple switch between A & B accomplishes the same thing, no?

Is it that you feel you're losing two potential memory slots that you could use for other WB adjustments?

Because the 'manually set' A & B positions are potentially unreliable. Did I change these on the last shoot? Is it 'nearly indoors', or 'warm outdoors'? I like to see the bulb and sun, and work fromn there.

My Z1 is excellent in that it allows me to set the outdoor preset and then fine-tune this setting (warmer or cooler) with the assign buttons. 5 clicks on button 5 and I'm in the artificial mode setting. I presume the Z5 has this very useful feature too.

tom.

Tom, the 1000 does have a WB shift feature that allows you to adjust in an 18 point scale, warmer or cooler (9 point warmer, 9 point cooler) from the cam's decision.

Plus, you loose those two presets that could be set for something else. For me, I would like to toggle between indoor/outdoor and set the A&B preset for something like the bridal room and the sanctuary. Like it is I had to set B for outdoor, A for sanctuary and set the preset to indoor.

Well said Tom.

As Tom said, give me the light bulb and the sun thingy and we can take it from there. Since we have to use one of the custom settings as an outdoor or indoor preset we lose a preset anyway which makes the whole affair of this new "Feature" an excercise in futility on their part and a waste of time for us. It just doesn't make sense to have "fixed" something that worked.

That's what I thought would be the biggest negative.

Ken, where is that? I haven't found that.

Tim, page 40 of the 1000 manual. You can download it from Sony if you don't have it handy.

Awe man, I thought I was done testing.

You haven't even begun Tim, you haven't even begun. :)

The perfect camera will never happen!
 

[QUOTE=Jeff Harper a camera that is near-perfect for the money.[/QUOTE]


Well gents the inventers always need something to seemingly invent on the next one.

I mean getting all of us and them (Sony) in a room and nailing the perfect bang for buck camera would be too logical and put them out of work!

Good point Martin.