Hi, I'm an engineer working in aerospace and living in Birmingham.
Hi, I'm an engineer working in aerospace and living in Birmingham.
Member since:07.01.2004
Reviews:4
Members who trust:2
My 1970's SLR camera bit the dust a couple of years ago, so I'd been keeping an eye on digital developments to see when the technology/price equation became favourable. I'm neither a novice photographer nor a techno-wizard, so in making my decision I was looking at a combination of features, ease of use and price. I wanted a lot of camera for the money...
In between times I had bought a (relatively) cheap 'compact' camera using the APS format and had brought back some rather dull and under-exposed holiday photos - a very big disappointment. Recently I'd borrowed a couple of digital cameras, one from work and one from family, so I could 'have a play'.
I
used Internet searches to gain some base information and quickly decided that, to get the quality I required, a resolution of 4 million pixels was required. My pocket not being bottomless I had determined that £500 was the maximum I was willing to pay, although my short list included some cameras (way) over this limit to give an idea of what was available. On-line reviews by professionals in the field were very useful in weeding out some of the 'also-rans'.
The short short-list was around 6 cameras in total and I put together a spreadsheet of all of the features which were important to me (such as zoom power, effective focal range [35mm equivalent], video type and size, flash range, memory type, battery type etc. etc.). From this I could readily see which products fitted the bill in terms of features and make an objective ranking of features and price.
Why did I choose the Olympus C-750UZ? It met the requirements for the resolution (4.1 mega pixels); it has a 'big' zoom lens (10 x optical zoom - ignore the digital element as this is at the expense of picture quality); it has an acceptable movie-mode with sound; a delay timer and a remote control (so I can be in some of the results!); xD Picture Cards are available in an increasing range (and getting cheaper) and the AA batteries are ideal for rechargeables (digital cameras eat batteries, I found during my trial and error sessions with borrowed equipment).
Price varies enormously - much more than I expected - by as much as +50% on the cheapest. For this camera the price ranged from just under £300 to about £450... I used a number of comparison utilities available on the Internet (Ciao being among the best) to glean the cheapest price: some care is required because different vendors do offer different packages, so comparing apples with oranges is a risk. Having chosen the camera and vendor all that was required was to place the order, which took a bit more effort than expected (due to concerns over UK Internet credit card fraud) but eventually the order went through. The camera arrived the following day...
Although the camera is (almost) equivalent to a traditional 35mm SLR it is relatively simple for even a newcomer to use in 'Auto' mode: turn it on, point it and press the shutter button - the camera will do the rest. I tried it out immediately by taking the same photograph - my back garden - using every Record Mode (i.e. resolution) available. At the highest (2288 x 1712 TIFF) only 1 picture fits on the included 16MB memory card: at the lowest (SQ2 640 x 480) 166 pictures can be taken using the same card. Until I invest in a bigger (256MB) card I've chosen an intermediate setting so that I can take a number of reasonable quality photos before needing to empty the card.
To date I have to admit to being rather pleased with my purchase - compared with the disappointing results the 'compact' camera gave the C-750 gives bright pleasing pictures with good colour balance. There are still many features which I have yet to try (and with which I'm looking forward to experimenting).
The not-so-good points? The zoom is a bit sluggish, but not unacceptably so; operating at low-light levels is not easy (the camera does not have an Auto-Focus assist lamp); time lag between pressing the shutter button and the flash when using the built-in flash can be quite long - if your subject is moving you can end up with a photo of empty space. However, taken in the round I am extremely pleased with my purchase and would recommend it to any others who wish to move into the era of digital photography.
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Feb 16th, 2004
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