| Product: |
Olympus Camedia C-350 Zoom |
| Date: |
05/09/03 (1299 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: ease of use, traditional looks, price has come down
Disadvantages: greedy on batteries
As someone that was never interested in digital cameras, I am somewhat amazed at the quality of kit that is now being produced in this field. I have always maintained that digital camera photos printed off always looked 'home-made' and that I would never buy one. Well, I eat my words because I did and this is the one we picked!
When they first came out I believe the resolution was less than 1 million pixels (number of dots on the screen to those of you who were just like me before I got into this!). Although this was fantastic enough, you could definately still tell when viewing pictures both on screen and printed on paper that it wasn't fantastic and that little bits of the picture were blurred if you looked closer. This particular Olympus has 3.2 million pixels and on screen the picture is as clear as day. My printer will print photos so I got one going just to see - I was so impressed. Yes I can tell that it's not like a traditional film exposure but that is only because my printer is not heavily inclined towards producing photos. Now if I had one of these super duper photo printers then I would definately be hard pushed to argue any case against it, and would gladly spend the money in getting them whisked off the machine and into the family photo albums.
It is a snazzy little camera to look at, traditional in its' design & about 1/3rd smaller than my 35mm. Comparing the two then the Olympus is heavier but not to the extent where you are being dragged along the floor of course! It has a zoom lens (just like my 35mm) of 3x (3 times) and then on top of that a 3.3x digital zoom (where the clever little thing takes you further than you have ever gone before - Star Trek style!!). In total then combined you have a 10x zoom capacity without even needing all the clip on lenses that you get from posher 35mm's.
Now, the technical stuff. For your money you get to play with all the lovely little buttons on the back, there ar
e only 6 in total so it shouldn't be rocket science. You can;
take pictures (obviously!) & view them immediately
record a short movie but not with sound
change between 4 quality choices between super high and normal
select a shooting mode (portrait/landscape/night scene/self-portrait)
change the light metering from auto to your personal requirement
single shot piccies or sequential piccies for those action shots
take panoramic photos
change a colour shot into black and white or sepia(olde worlde brown photos)
view your piccies on screen and erase or rotate
display date and time when shooting, info passed to PC when downloading
disable the flash and red-eye reduction options
self timer for 10 seconds
go to macro mode (take close up pictures 20-50cm away)
play back your shots on a TV (cable supplied)
download onto your PC with software supplied
There are probably a few things that I have missed but if you are interested then perhaps pop to your local retailer and take a look at the book that comes with it for full info. The software package that comes with it is really easy to use, literally plug the camera into the PC, switch it on and the pictures automatically start to download. You recieve a 16MB card with the package which can take between 6 shots at super high quality and 165 shots at the lesser end. If you like your pictures to look good then it may be worthwhile investing in a bigger card. I bought 128MB card and takes more super high quality photos than I would ever need to take even if I didn't delete them regularly (once I'd downloaded them of course!)
The nicest thing or rather the thing that swung it for me in choosing this camera is that it takes AA batteries so as long as you remember to take some spares you should never get caught out by not having to charge up the battery before you go. Having said that, it is very juicy on these and if you only have the on
e opportunity to take photos then the way to make the batteries last longer is to use the traditional viewfinder (ie squint into the camera) rather than use the screen on the back to compose your shot. The super high quality photos also take a couple of seconds each time to load themselves onto the card as there is so much info to take in.
And finally to my title. Hubby picked up the camera the other day and asked me why I took a picture of the garden gnome(yeah, I know I'm sad but it was a present - honest!). As I was just about to jump down his throat for accusing me it suddenly struck me there was another pair of ears listening intently in the corner. You've guessed it, my darling daughter who has just had her 7th birthday. After having a moan about not touching expensive toys belonging to Mummy & Daddy, I had a proper look at my gnome picture and although it wasn't to my standard (cough!) it was very good for a little girl to take. So proof indeed and thumbs up to Olympus!
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