Michael wrote:
On 2007-12-22 11:58:37 -0500, "Neil Harrington"
said:



Well, you're right. I just downloaded the L14 manual out of
curiosity and indeed there doesn't seem to be any way of setting the
ISO. The same is true of the L15 and L12 manuals, so apparently
that's the way it is with the whole L series. Really weird that
"ISO" appears on the LCD monitor but seems to have no use. Must be a
holdover from some older Coolpix model. I have quite a few Coolpixes in
fact (but none in that series) and
all of mine do have provision for setting the ISO. So this is really
strange. I guess they decided that buyers of those cameras wouldn't
ever want to tinker with the ISO.

Neil

What's bizarre is there are so many other things you CAN tinker with,
including white balance settings up the YingYang, multiple scene
modes, flash choices, and exposure compensation, but no ISO choice.

Yes, that struck me too when I was reading the manual. All those controls
but no ISO setting.


The print manual implies you CAN because ISO is in the index, but not
on the page referred to.

I saw that too. My guess is that they *originally* intended to provide an
ISO setting in the L series cameras, dropped it for some reason, but left
the reference to it in the manuals -- and then just kept repeating the
faulty reference in manual after manual. (The L15 manual seems about
identical to the one for L14, same page number for the nonexistent ISO
stuff. The L12 manual is somewhat different, the index gives a different
page number for ISO -- but there's nothing about ISO on that page either!)

I've just downloaded the L1 manual -- I presume that was the first model in
the series. There's no mention of ISO at all, not even in the index.

Now the L6 manual. Aha. That gives page 25 as a reference for ISO, but all
p. 25 has to say about it is this: "The ISO icon is displayed when the
camera increases sensitivity from the normal to minimize blur caused by slow
shutter speeds. The picture taken when the ISO icon is displayed may be
slightly mottled."

So I guess that's the answer. There isn't any ISO *setting*, only the icon
warning that the camera has boosted ISO because of low light. No clue as to
what it's boosted to. In the Specifications section it mentions ISO 50 and
"auto gain to ISO 800 equivalent" but nothing about intermediate levels, if
any.

Neil