White balance and Colour
For most of the test I set the XZ-1 to its natural or vivid settings. The former produced realistic colours, though a few images needed a touch more contrast. Like the evaluative metering, the automatic white balance worked well in various conditions both during the day and at night. When photographing a tungsten-lit shopping arcade at night, the AWB ever so slightly took the edge off the tungsten cast, leaving it looking as warm as it appeared in reality.
When shooting inside a Viennese cafe, switching the camera to the tungsten setting removed all but the slightest trace of the warm tungsten lighting, and with it a hint of the atmosphere. However, this is obviously preferable if you require a clinically correct white balance.
As well as the standard colour settings, the XZ-1 also includes the Olympus Art Filters. These are a lot of fun to use, and make more sense being in a compact camera than they do in the company’s E-series DSLRs. Of the various filters, the grainy black & white setting is my favourite. It creates high-contrast, gritty images, which I found great for a compact camera. Of course, if you save JPEGs and raw files simultaneously, you’ll get the Art Filter image as well as the raw image file for editing.
Olympus XZ-1 White balance and Colour: Score – 8/10
