What is the "Mode Settings" setting on Ricoh WG-M1?

Question

I just got a sportcam Ricoh WG-M1, and I managed to understand all settings but one, which seems to be important because it is the first setting displayed. I tried many things but never detected any change in the cam's behavior according to this setting. I read twice the user manual page on this setting (screenshot below), which I did not understand. I even contacted the support service, but they sent me back to the user manual. So I come here to ask: what is it supposed to do?

I was expecting it to allow me to change the default mode between video and photo when the cam is waking up, which would be convenient, but it did not do that.

Here is the page in user manual (page 47). There is nothing more about this setting.

Answer 1

Wow, that is a confusing section of the manual. In fact, it's a confusing manual overall — I think partly because of poor translation to English. For example, it uses "viewfinder status" to mean "when the camera is in the state where the LCD screen is acting as a viewfinder", as opposed to "menu status" when it's showing the menu, or "playback status" for ... well, playback. That's an odd use of "status".

Likewise, "Mode Settings" isn't really settings. It's just one setting: which mode do you want to be in. It appears to simply be an alternate way of toggling between movie mode or still photo mode. The other way is explained in the note on the bottom right — when in "viewfinder status" (that is, not in the menu or playback), you can just press the OK button (the big round one) to switch back and forth.

Unfortunately, as you note, the menu does not change the default. Since this is an "action camera", it's biased towards video, and there's no way to make still mode be the default. (Reference).