Great Camera - Exceptional Value (Olympus Camedia C-960 Zoom)

Member Name: yorcie

Product:	Olympus Camedia C-960 Zoom
Date:	04/06/01 (293 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Ease of use, Takes quality shots, Really smart appearance and compact

Disadvantages: Consumes a lot of power if using LCD viewr or Zoom a lot, Doesnt come with a cover

Two years ago you could expect to pay around £600 for a good quality digital camera.

A friend of mine bought one for about £250, i cant recall the make of it but it gave a fish eye perspective. This wasnt very flattering when taking a portrait picture of someone you love (or dont as the case may be).

At the same time i had another friend who bought a Kodak camera for about £650. He took a couple of medium strength shots of me in his conservatory and the images were astounding. I then realised that its not worth buying a camera under £400. So i didnt.

Until now that is, I recently purchased the 960 on the grounds of price and brand name. I would always trust Olympus. Another thing was that i thought they were far too complicated to even bother with. I have now been proved quite wrong.

The C960 is a nice compact camera that is not only pleasing to look at but is very practical in its design. The holding position is comfortable and even if your really bad a photography its very difficult to get your fingers in the way of the flash or the lense.

Lets take the body of the camera first. Silver or grey seems to be the standard colour for cameras these days as opposed to the the boring black a few years ago. The buttons on it are very easy to see and do not sit too proud from the camera that you keep activating them accidently. I have seen earlier versions of this model and the buttons have been streamlined and are much more efficient. Of course there is a drawback to having fewer buttons on such equipment, they double or treble up in their tasks, this is good except when it comes to remember what each button does.

There is a button for a menu system that really is self explanitory and so easy to use, but once again this has two functions and its often difficult to remember what options you have in which mode. In order that you can navigate round the menu or your photographs there are 4 arrow keys, simple and e
ffective.

At the top of the camera there are two buttons. The one that takes the picture and the zoom lever. Easy to use and is small enough not to be obtrusive and not to get in the way. Both are a highly polished chrome which is totally in keeping with the looks of the camera.

Then of course we need a lense. The lens will pop out automatically when you slide back the lense cover. Equally when you have finished taking pictures you push it to close and the lense automatically tucks itself away. When its in the closed position the plastic cover is just that, a cover that protects the lense very well.

We find the LCD viewfinder on the back. You will be inclined to walk around using it all the time, great, this means you dont need to get your eye into the little viewfinder at the top of the camera, NOT SO GREAT. While the LCD veiwfinder is good quality it eats through batteries as easy as ploughing through several chocolate eclairs. A new set of batteries could dissapear in about 15 to 30 minutes of constant use. Something else that consumes a great deal of power is the zoom button. with older cameras you had the option to turn the lense yourself and save on power, here and nowadays you dont have that luxury. So, keep off the power consuming gadgets and you will be fine.

Finally there is the flash unit. This is eqally well tucked in at the top of the camera and just flicks up manually as and when you require it. Two clicks of a button and you can 'force' the flash to fire, another click would illiminate 'red eye'.

The camera gives you the choice of three degrees of quality. Super high quality, high quality and normal. I have a 16mb card and it gives me the following pictures:

36 SHQ 72 HQ and a staggering 244 in normal mode. It goes without saying that the SHQ ones take up much more room than the normal ones, and this includes your computer hard drive space. In effect you should only
use the SHQ if you have a real need to like a good portrait or a good picture of your car or dog or something. otherwise you will experience problems later when the pictures are on the computer, pictures made from SHQ take up a lot of room in your emails should you want to send it to your granny in Australia. Likewise when you put them into an application such as a newsletter or a spreadsheet.

Then there is the software. They supply a CD with a program that allows you to download your pictures from camera to computer, it also allows you to view them easily in thumbnail format. This too is very easy to install and even easier to use.

Overall, this has pleased me immensely. It is easy to use, basically a point and shoot but with loads of extras. In this case if your prepared to sit and read the easy to follow intructions you will get a lot of fun out of this not to mention some really good quality pictures. I only have one really large complaint. I bought this camera for work and not myself. But saying that, i would now spend nearly £300 of my own money on it because it is simply worth every penny.

Happy Snapping

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