The more one uses the Kodak P880 the more there is to be surprised about in the positive sense. Professional and semi-professional quality cameras have auto focus and auto exposure built-in, but also allow you to set these manually. The Kodak P880 has these features, and has the ability to mix things.

First of all, the P880 has the ability to lock auto focus and auto exposure. This allows you to take pictures that would seem to be candidates for failure. Normally, when you frame your photograph, you aim for the most important subject, press the shutter button halfway and then direct the camera to where you really want to center upon.

The exposure is set by pressing the button halfway. The focus, however, will change as you move the camera’s lens into a different direction. This may be what you’re looking for, but then again, it might not be. So, in automatic and semi-automatic modes, there must be a means to lock focus as well as exposure.

With the Kodak P880, you get three modes to choose from. There is AEL or Auto Exposure Lock mode which sets the exposure independent of pressing the shutter button. This allows you to focus by pressing the shutter button halfway.

Then there is AFL or Auto Focus Lock which will lock focus where auto focus may not work. Examples are low-contrast scenes, patterned subjects, etc. You can focus on what is inside the focus frame marks, press the AFL button and then direct the lens in a different direction wiith the main subject still in focus.

The third mode the P880 supports sets both AEL/AFL, which makes the camera’s shutter button behave independent from the shutter button altogether.

If you’re using Auto Focus, even when AF by itself may not work and you have to set the AFL button, you can still use manual focus in a sort of hybrid mode that will first set focus automatically, then allowing you to fine-tune focus by turning the focus ring.