In viewfinder magnified centre square showing, zoom function stop

take it back to store,or reread manual

Try Ctrl and "-" to make smaller and Ctrl and "+" to make larger.

Did you accidentally press the lower-left DISP button on the back of your camera? This manually turns the screen on and off to save battery power. You would then use the optical viewfinder in its place. Try pressing the DISP button once to see if the screen turns back on.

You must have accidentally hit the Thumbnail button while viewing photos (the one with a magnifying glass and 4-way arrow). Press the Playback Zoom button (bottom one with just the magnifying glass) to go back to single frame view. If you keep pressing the Zoom button it will zoom in further on the image you are viewing, and you can use the arrows to move around in it.

Turn the camera on. With the screen showing, press the DISP button and this will give you a selection of different screen views i.e. squares for aligning shot squarely; black - thru viewfinder only; etc. Different modes will give you different screen displays i.e. P setting screens are different to when you have the camera set on AUTO.

Hope this helps.

just pull out the viewfinder

1. Toggle the MODE button to camera picture and press the SET button
2. Compose your image while viewing the LCD monitor
3. Press the ZOOM thumbnail button with the magnifier picture to activate the digital zoom.can zoom images up to 5 times

4 Press the shutter button to capture the ZOOMED image
Hope this helps, there wasn't a date on your e-mail so not sure when your Holiday was.
Good Luck
Missy S

Auto Mode In this mode, all you have to do is press the shutter button and let the camera do everything else. 1. Turn the camera on.
2. Turn the shooting mode dial to .
3. Aim the camera at the subject.
4. Use the zoom lever to achieve the desired composition (relative subject size in the viewfinder).

• The angle of view can be adjusted within the 45 to 100 mm range, in 35mm film equivalent.
• When the LCD monitor is on, the combined use of the digital zoom and optical zoom enables magnified shooting up to approx. 7x.

5. Press the shutter button halfway.

• Two beeps will sound when the camera has finished metering, and the indicator will light green or orange. If the LCD monitor is on, the AF frame will appear green.
• The yellow indicator will blink and the beep will sound one time if the subject is difficult to focus on.

6. Press the shutter button all the way.

• You will hear the sound of the shutter when the shutter activates.
• The picture appears for two seconds on the LCD monitor, if it is on.
• The indicator next to the viewfinder blinks green while data is recorded onto the SD card.

Hello, Don't mix magnifier mode and expanded focus mode. Magnifier mode is simply a short AF range operating mode, like a kinda super-macro. Whether you selected mag/macro/normal, the camera operates always same except that the focussing range limits are changed accordingly by the S/W. The lens itself is capable of focussing from 1cm to infinity anyway. Expanded focus is used on some still and video cameras to assit manual focus because the LCD's resolution is lower than the CCD's. It can be seen as a workaround for the lack of optical reflex viewfinder (Sony cams ar not dSLRs, including HDR-FX1!). So the center area of the pic is "digitally zoomed" to make sure you can adjust a sharp focus of the point of interest in your frame. However it has nothing to do with macro shooting, and works at any distance within the lenses focussing range. Hope having helped

Occasionally it is necessary to have the ability to manually focus a digital camera. A good example is shooting through the windows of a tour bus on a rainy day. The camera may choose to focus on the raindrops on the window rather than the actual subject. To enable the MANUAL FOCUS function hold down the OK/MENU button for a second or longer. In the lower left corner of the LCD screen you will see MF (MANUAL FOCUS) and AF (AUTOFOCUS) with AF highlighted in green. Use the left arrow key to select MF. You will now be able to use the up and down arrow keys to manually focus the camera. An added feature of the C-5500 is that when you are using the MANUAL FOCUS Mode you will see a magnified portion of the image in the center of the LCD screen. To get out of MANUAL FOCUS Mode, simply use the right arrow key to reset the camera to AF. Then press the OK/MENU button to return to the default functions.