Olympus C-960 Zoom (Olympus Camedia C-960 Zoom)

Member Name: Speedscot

Product:	Olympus Camedia C-960 Zoom
Date:	23/06/01 (262 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lightweight, Lots of facilities, Great value for money

Disadvantages: Should have an AC Adaptor as standard

As a motor racing fanatic, I get very tired of the cost of developing hundreds of trackside photographs to find about four that actually have a whole car in the shot! Although really not able to afford a digital camera, I decided to stretch my budget as far as I could go with the view that it would be cost effective in the long run!

I was very fortunate that when I went to look at digicams, PC World had a special offer on the Olympus-C960 Zoom reducing it from £300 to £250. It comes with an 8mb mediacard (which can hold over 100 800x600 - pictures at the second highest quality lebel, which I find adequate). I did want a bigger card though so also purchased a 16mb one for an additional £49.99.

The C-960 is extremely versatile and easy to use. It takes 4 AA size batteries (and eats them for breakfast but all digicams do that!) I looked into the cost of an AC adaptor as it seems particularly that downloading the images to the PC takes the most juice out of the batteries. However the adapter is about £60 so I think investing in rechargeables is the way ahead...

If you limit the use of the LCD screen, particularly in live mode for setting up shots, the batteries last a lot longer. I only occasionally use the LCD to check the pictures that I have taken. It's also worth being careful too - I just shove the camera into my bag and although the lens is closed the LCD can come on if the right button gets accidentally pressed!

The camera switches on and off by sliding the lens cover across - which is very easy and useful except when you don't realise the batteries are getting low! Opening the cover and nothing happening at all is pretty scary the first couple of times it happens - you then have to fiddle with buttons before the camera display will tell you the batteries are low! I really thought it was broken once or twice!

The zoom facilities on the camera are very useful - you can use the optical zoom (3x) by pull
ing a small switch on the top of the camera - it's next to the *shutter* button so makes it easy to use while framing the shot in the viewfinder in a one-handed action. additionally there is a 2x digital tele zoom - using both together produces 6x zoom which for a £300 camera is fantastic value for money! It is a bit more fiddly to get both working together though and requires pre-planning which I'm not so hot at! Point and snap person that I am!

Of particular use to me - when taking pictures of fast moving motor cars - is the sequential shot feature. Selected from the display menu (which can be done very quickly once you get used to it), the C-960 will take a sequence of ten pictures at two frames per second while maintaining the focus brilliantly. Gone are the days of the rear wing vanishing out of the picture!

Many other features, most standard to digital cameras in this price range, are also available such as 1.3 megapixels, combination of flash facilities, self-timer and a host of others are present. It comes with one set of cheap batteries which don't last long but not many gadgets actually come with batteries these days! The connector plugs into a spare com port - which is great if you have an internal modem! It's quite slow to download though and that really uses the power as I mentioned before.

I have taken over 1000 pictures in two months of ownership - probably 500 of which are *good* and the others deletables! However compare the cost of developing those and already my money appears extremely well invested! I will be giving the camera it's first Grand Prix outing at Silverstone in three weeks and look forward to some decent pictures for a change. In terms of photography the C-960 Zoom has changed my life and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for an entry level digicam.

Summary: