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| A four-image panorama taken on a C-2000 Zoom and stitched together using Olympus' own software (the view is of Table Bay from the top of Table Mountain, Cape Town, South Africa) |
Before reading the following substantial article, you may wish to read the three separate short reviews of Olympus cameras which are provided on their own individual pages:
Note that each of the above three articles is illustrated with photographs from the camera in question. Comparative photographs, as well as a large table summarising the features of all three cameras, appear towards the end of the following article.This article is intended both to arm you with some of the information you need in order to make an informed choice when buying a digital camera, and to compare the relative merits of the three Olympus digital cameras reviewed in this issue. Although the cameras are reviewed individually, the following article compares them with each other within the broader topic of digital photography in general.
The following topics are covered in this article; you may click on the links below to jump to the associated heading, and on the headings themselves to scroll back to the top of the article:
Progress has been made at an astonishing rate, however, and digital cameras have now caught up with traditional film in many ways. Digital cameras, which started as simple point-and-shoot devices, now rival film cameras in the range of photographic options that they provide, and the number of pixels in a camera's output images are now measured in millions rather than hundreds of thousands. For all but the most professional uses, digital cameras now provide a perfectly viable alternative to traditional film-based models, and any remaining shortcomings are likely to be resolved in the next year or two. There's no doubt that digital cameras represent the most exciting and fastest-moving area of photography these days.
So, why would you want to abandon film and buy a digital camera? Here's a short list of advantages and disadvantages of digital cameras compared with film models.
Advantages
Disadvantages
It would be fair to say that there are certain hidden costs associated with digital cameras once you've bought one. First of all, the chances are that you'll want to buy a photo-quality printer in order to output your photos, and the ink cartridges and paper for such printers are quite expensive. Having said that, your own prints will generally work out somewhat cheaper overall than paying for regular film prints, and of course you'll only print out the shots that you actually want, rather than having to pay for a whole set of prints from an entire reel of film. Secondly, whilst you don't have to buy film or pay for its development with a digital camera, you do have to buy expensive storage cards on which to take your pictures. They work out cheaper than film in the long run, though, as you can reuse them indefinitely, so the more photos you take, the more money you save. Finally, you'll definitely want to buy a battery charger and a couple of sets of batteries to go with it, as a digital camera eats up batteries like nothing else!
When considering memory cards, you should buy the largest capacity you can afford: the higher capacity cards, while expensive, are cheaper than buying two cards of the next-lower capacity. They're also much more convenient, as having ample free space means that you don't have to worry about running out of room and swapping cards quite as often. Finally, the bigger the capacity, the more pictures you'll be able to cram in: due to the variable nature of JPEG image sizes, the relationship is not quite linear, and a single 64Mb card, for example, will generally accommodate a few more pictures than two 32Mb cards will hold. Remember, too, that the higher the resolution of the camera (a factor which is increasingly rapidly at present), the fewer pictures you'll get on a single card, so it's always best to buy the biggest card you can afford.
Once you've got all the equipment you need, though, there's nothing to match the immediacy and instant gratification that a digital camera can provide. There's no waiting for days for your pictures to be developed, and there's no chance of the development labs making a pig's ear of your prints; something that's regrettably common with high street developers. Just hook your camera up to your computer, download the pictures, and view and print them in no time!
As a final point, it's worth mentioning that, as digital cameras have become more widespread and popular, support for them has also increased. If you don't have a suitable printer of your own, you can actually take your memory cards to many traditional film developers to have prints made, and there are now various sites on the Web to which you can upload images and have prints produced, not to mention special items such as mugs and T-shirts. The quality of picture that a good digital camera can produce is remarkable now, and it's clear that the days of film photography are numbered in the medium-term.
As for the question of which cameras to review, I have chosen three Olympus models for a number of reasons:
The cameras are of course available from a wide range of photographic retailers, and prices do vary enormously, so it's well worth shopping around. However, the main supplier of these cameras in the RISC OS market is Photodesk Ltd, and appropriate RISC OS interface software is included free with any camera bought from them. Other special offers may well be available at the same time, such as a reduced-price copy of Photodesk. Photodesk Ltd supplied the C-2100 Ultra Zoom model reviewed here.
So, let us now consider the more important aspects of digital photography.
Computer users generally find it easier to think of pictures in terms of their numbers of pixels in two-dimensional 'across and down' format, like a monitor screen, and in fact digital cameras do produce photos which correspond broadly with screen sizes. The earliest consumer digital cameras, which started to appear in 1997, almost all produced pictures with a top resolution of just 640×480 pixels. The best-quality camera of that initial wave was capable of taking pictures at 1024×768 resolution, which equated to around 0.8 Megapixels.
Nowadays, even the lowest-end digital cameras can take pictures containing at least 1.2 Megapixels (1280×960), and they're often considered inadequate for serious use. The minimum resolution for a 'serious' digital camera is now considered to be 2.1 Megapixels (1600×1200), and the resolutions are getting higher all the time.
But what does this all mean in practical terms? Well, in general, it's obvious that the more pixels you have in a picture, the finer its detail will be, and the larger you will be able to print it without its becoming obviously blocky. So, in many ways, the higher the resolution the better. But to balance that, the higher resolution the picture, the more memory it requires (both in the camera and on your computer once you've downloaded it).
So, when choosing the model to go for, you really do have to have a fair idea of the likely uses to which you're going to put your pictures. If you're only going to use them on the screen (or on the Web), then you don't really need a high-resolution camera; a 1 Megapixel model will do. Assuming you'll want to print out at least some of your pictures, then a 2 Megapixel camera is much preferable, and if you expect to include pictures in professionally printed publications (such as magazines), then the higher the resolution the better.
As a quick rule of thumb, here's what you can do with the pictures from different resolutions of digital camera:
That is, of course, a very rough guide, but it does represent reasonable use (of course, it assumes that you're using the camera at its highest resolution in each case). For instance, I have printed 1600×1200-resolution (2 Megapixel) pictures from my own C-2000 Zoom at A4 size on a photographic-quality printer and been very pleased with the results, though slight blockiness can be seen if the printout is examined closely. Printing the same resolution of image at A5 size, though, gives very crisp results (and equates to printing the image at around 200dpi). Printing a 2048×1536 image from a 3 Megapixel camera at A4 size produces significantly crisper results, and equates to printing the image at around 170dpi.
So with a 2 Megapixel or better camera, you can take excellent pictures and print them out to a more than acceptable standard. However, remember that you are at the limits of a 2 Megapixel camera's resolution if printing a full picture at as large a size as even A5. What happens, for example, if you've taken a picture and want to enlarge a feature from its centre? The answer is that, of course, you end up with a very blocky, pixellated image. If you want to have the flexibility to crop, or otherwise extract elements from, your pictures and print the smaller sections at a large size, you'll need to have taken high-resolution pictures in the first place.
All three cameras under test here are of reasonable quality in terms of resolution; not the highest you can get, but more than adequate for most normal uses. (And note that the question of resolution is different from that of colour balance and overall sharpness, which are areas in which all three of these cameras excel.) The C-2100 Ultra Zoom and the C-2040 Zoom both have 2.1 Megapixels (a top resolution of 1600×1200 pixels), whilst the C-3040 Zoom has 3.3 Megapixels, which enables it to take photographs of up to 2048×1536 pixels.
However, a sensible compromise in lieu of a definitive answer would be to consider the Kodak PhotoCD format. For anyone unfamiliar with this, it was an idea pioneered by Kodak some years ago in which standard pictures were sent off for processing, scanned at a high resolution (2200dpi, in fact), and returned to the customer on a PhotoCD (a proprietary CD format) which could then be put into a special player (for viewing on a TV) or used on a computer. PhotoCDs can be used on RISC OS with a variety of applications (including ChangeFSI, Photodesk, Ovation Pro and many other packages).
Each photograph on a PhotoCD is actually supplied in five resolutions, and given that PhotoCDs were designed as a professional format, and are still in fairly widespread use by professional designers and photographers, it's fair to conclude that the highest resolution offered on PhotoCD is indeed high enough for use in fully professional situations. The five standard resolutions are:
The C-3040 Zoom, reviewed in this issue, has a top resolution of 2048×1536, which has exactly twice the number of pixels as the next-to-highest resolution of image on a PhotoCD, but still falls some way short of the top PhotoCD resolution. It's also worth noting that Olympus has just released yet another new camera (not reviewed here) called the C-4040 Zoom. It's in the same compact format as the C-3040 Zoom and C-2040 Zoom (again, with a 3× optical zoom), but it's a 4 Megapixel device, offering a true top resolution of 2272×1704 pixels. In fact, the camera is advertised as offering a top resolution of 3200×2400 pixels, which is significantly higher than the highest-resolution image on a PhotoCD, but that's 'cheating' because the extra resolution is achieved by image processing within the camera rather than by actual pixels in the CCD imager.
Indeed, Minolta has recently become the first manufacturer to release a 5.24 Megapixel camera, the Dimage 7, which offers a true resolution of 2560×1920 pixels. That's starting to get close to the top PhotoCD resolution, and to equal it we'd need a camera with around 6.5 Megapixels. (More pixels are actually needed in the camera's imager than appear in the photographs it outputs, so a 7 Megapixel camera would be a safer estimate.)
So, can digital really rival film photography? My personal suspicion is that a certain degree of snobbery is in evidence on the part of film-based traditionalists who disapprove of the rise of the digital camera! After all, whatever your opinion of digital versus film, the fact is that the two media have very different characteristics and are really not directly comparable.
For example, even with a quite expensive film camera, scanning a transparency at a high resolution can frequently produce disappointingly grainy results (especially in dark areas of the picture) which look unpleasant and fuzzy. It's not true to say that films have 'near infinite' resolution; the problems that they suffer are not the same as those of digital cameras, but they exist. With a digital camera, whilst you are limited by the physical resolution of the camera's imager, within those constraints the results you will achieve are likely to be both better quality and more consistent than with a film camera. There will be no colour variation due to the use of different types of film (you can process your images on the computer afterwards if you want to saturate your picture or produce other effects), and the quality will be fairly constant. Moreover, you will never get the grainy, fuzzy appearance that a film camera can sometimes produce. (Of course, you can still blur your pictures by moving the camera while you take them, but that's different!) A good digital camera will consistently produce very clean images in which the colours are vibrant.
Realistically, by the time digital cameras have got to around 7 Megapixels, they will have exceeded the quality of all but the very best professional film equipment, and for most users they're amply good enough right now.
For digital cameras, though, the distinction is much less important. The reason is that, with all digital cameras that feature an LCD monitor (i.e. just about every model these days), you can use the LCD screen instead of the viewfinder when taking pictures, and thus see pretty much exactly what you're going to get before you take the shot. And quite apart from that, you can of course check your photo on the spot and have another go at taking it if you don't like your first attempt. Note that the LCD preview is actually more accurate on some makes of digital camera than on others; with some models, it will show significantly less of the image than the camera actually takes. However, on all the Olympus models, the LCD monitor preview is very accurate.
That isn't to say that a digital SLR camera is a gimmick; in reality you will use it slightly differently than a non-SLR one, in that you will use the viewfinder rather than relying entirely on the LCD screen. Also, in strong light, LCD monitors can be very hard to see, but if you have your eye up against the viewfinder, you won't be faced with this visibility problem.
Another consideration is that traditional SLR cameras are generally bulkier and more robust than so-called compact models. This is just the same in the digital world: an SLR digital camera will usually have a larger body than a compact one, and so will be less convenient to carry around; but the big advantage of the larger design is that the camera will be more responsive at switch-on time. With almost all compact cameras, time is required for the camera to protract its lens housing and ready itself to take a picture when you first turn it on. The two Olympus compact models reviewed here are among the fastest digital cameras to ready themselves, but they still require nearly four seconds before a shot can be taken, and turning on the LCD screen takes a second or two on top of that. The SLR model reviewed here, though, is ready to go virtually as soon as you turn it on. Most of the time, the turn-on speed isn't important, but it can occasionally make the difference between your getting a speed-critical shot and missing it.
In other words, there's a small advantage in having an SLR digital camera, but it is only a small advantage, and much less significant than in a film camera.
In the specific case of the C-2100 Ultra Zoom, the viewfinder is in fact not what you would expect: rather than being an optical 'through the lens' view, it's actually a tiny monitor. When you switch the main LCD monitor on the back of the camera on and off, you are actually toggling between two screens: the large one and a tiny one in the viewfinder. That reinforces my argument in the previous paragraphs: digital cameras with LCD monitors do not need to be SLR models because you can rely on their screens for taking pictures.
Earlier Olympus SLR digital cameras did in fact use a purely optical SLR, and it is only from the C-2100 Ultra Zoom onwards that the electronic viewfinder has been introduced. Whilst this has some clear advantages, it also has a couple of disadvantages, too. First, the former ability to use the accurate optical viewfinder rather than the monitor meant that your batteries lasted a lot longer (as LCD displays are a great drain on power); now you have no option but to use a screen. Secondly, the resolution of the tiny screen in the viewfinder is rather low, which makes it hard to distinguish precise positioning when looking through it. At least you do see what you're going to get, though; the optical viewfinders in the two compact models reviewed here are a little imprecise.
So for the C-2100 Ultra Zoom, the decision to buy really depends on whether you want that enormous 10× zoom lens or not. My personal opinion is that it's a fantastic benefit, and far more useful than the regular 3× zoom, but then the price difference between this camera and the C-2040 Zoom (which has a broadly similar specification but only a 3× zoom lens) is quite significant.
In terms of physical size, these three cameras are actually very similar in width and height; the only big difference is in depth, where the C-2100 Ultra Zoom's huge lens housing makes it quite bulky. In its favour, though, you don't have to worry about the lens popping out of the front of the camera when you turn it on (and the motorised zoom is much smoother in the C-2100 Ultra Zoom than in the compact models). By contrast, if you forget to detach the lens cap before turning on one of the compact models, they make a most alarming grinding sound!
The optical zoom, as its name suggests, is the genuine zoom produced by the camera's zoom lens; it's the true zoom which actually brings distant objects into focus and increases the level of real detail in the picture.
Digital zoom, on the other hand, is merely image processing that's applied within the camera to give the appearance of zooming. It is in fact nothing more than the sort of operation you can perform in software on your computer. Drop a photograph into an image processing package such as ChangeFSI or Photodesk and scale it up by a factor of 2:1. You've just performed a digital zoom.
Now, digital zooming can have its uses. If you do want to perform this kind of processing on your image, then it's certainly quicker and easier to be able to do it with the camera itself, at the time that you're taking the picture, than to have to fiddle around with other software later. However, it's important to make the distinction very clear between optical and digital zoom.
The important point is that optical zoom will give you sharp detail from one extent of its range to the other, because it represents the detail that the camera will actually 'see'. Digital zooming, however, being a software-based enhancement technique, cannot add any more detail on top of the current optical zoom. It merely blows up the central portion of the picture by an arbitrary amount and 'invents' extra detail by scaling the detail that's already there. In fact the results can be very convincing (see the review of the C-2100 Ultra Zoom for a good example), but they will never be more than a supplementary layer on top of the optical zoom.
In other words, don't be conned into thinking that a camera with only a digital zoom has a zoom at all. It doesn't.
With the three Olympus cameras reviewed in this issue, the digital zoom only ever comes into effect at the extreme of the optical zoom. However, it's entirely optional, and can be explicitly enabled or disabled.
It's also worth noting that, unlike many makes of digital camera, Olympus models provide a 'continuous' digital zoom; in other words, you can zoom smoothly with the digital zoom, just as you can with the optical zoom. This is in contrast with some other manufacturers, whose cameras often only allow preset scaling factors (e.g. 2×) with a digital zoom.
A true combined movie and stills camera has yet to arrive: currently the choice is between a digital camera which can take reasonable-quality movies, or a digital movie camera which can take moderately good still pictures. Remember, because movies are usually destined for viewing on TV screens at best, they do not have the high resolution requirements of a static photograph, so the two kinds of camera really serve quite different purposes.
The Olympus cameras reviewed here are of course primarily stills cameras, although the movies that they're capable of taking are actually surprisingly good. If you want to record a QuickTime video for presentation on your Web site, for example, one of these cameras will do an admirable job. All three models take the same kinds of movies (i.e. at the above-stated resolutions), even though their native resolutions vary. However, the best of the bunch is the C-2100 Ultra Zoom because, in addition to its 10× zoom lens, it has a microphone input socket, so you can get far better quality sound than you would be able to achieve if you had to rely on the tiny inbuilt microphone (which is placed at the side of the camera, near the photographer's mouth).
The C-3040 Zoom is the next best choice because it can also record sound (its microphone is on the front); however, it has no other means of sound input, so you're stuck with the rather inadequate inbuilt microphone. The C-2040 Zoom, however, has no sound input capability at all.
All of these cameras allow movies that they have recorded to be played back on the LCD monitor. They can also be viewed and edited on a frame-by-frame basis, and they can compile large-format photographic index files of the movies, too. However, none allows the native playback of sound; that can only be done by playing the movie on a computer, or by hooking up the camera to a TV set and watching the movie on that.
Note that these cameras all record movies in Apple's QuickTime format, which produces very good quality results. Unfortunately, the format used is not currently supported on the RISC OS platform, so you'll need a Mac or PC for viewing the movies initially. It's possible (by using a Mac or PC) to convert the movies into a format that RISC OS can handle, such as AVI, but this results in a significant loss of quality.
A sample (silent) movie is presented on the C-2100 Ultra Zoom review page in both its native QuickTime format (for those reading this magazine on a PC or Mac) and AVI format (which RISC OS users can view).
An interesting byproduct of the sound input facility on the C-2100 Ultra Zoom and the C-3040 Zoom is audio captioning for still pictures: in other words, it is possible (either when taking the picture or subsequently) to add an audio caption of up to four seconds in length, describing the scene. Again, this cannot be replayed on the camera itself.
Ever since Olympus started producing its digital Camedia series I have been a strong proponent of their digital cameras, if only because the quality of the pictures they take has always seemed significantly better than the competition. In the early days (1997), the Olympus models were demonstrably far better than anything else. That's no longer true, as a lot of other makers have caught up and now offer similar quality, but I still feel that Olympus usually has the edge.
An important factor is that Olympus approached the subject of digital cameras from the perspective of a dedicated film camera producer starting work in the digital field, rather than as a computer peripheral manufacturer venturing into the world of cameras. In other words, the photographic quality considerations were put first, and it really showed in the early days. Olympus still maintains a reputation in the digital field for producing very good quality cameras with exceptional lenses, and the three models under test here do nothing to damage that reputation.
However, given that there's now much less of a quality differentiation between the top makers of digital cameras, other factors come into play when weighing up which model to buy, and probably the most important secondary consideration is the amount of photographic flexibility a camera offers. Two questions need to be asked: (a) how good is the camera at judging settings automatically and taking pictures in a wide range of conditions; and (b) how much flexibility is available for situations where you want to override the camera's defaults?
In the case of all three Olympus models reviewed here, the answers are very positive for both questions. Having used a C-2000 Zoom (which has a very similar specification to the C-2040 Zoom) for a couple of years, I can confirm that, left in automatic mode, it will produce a superlative picture virtually every time, and copes well with a wide range of situations. I have taken pictures of moving objects (e.g. vehicles), photos in bright sunlight (e.g. landscapes) and others in near darkness (e.g. concert halls, stained glass windows and even a Christmas tree in an otherwise unlit room), and whilst I often experimented with manual settings as well, I generally found that the camera's own judgement proved to be optimal, and the results were superb. So I consider my own C-2000 Zoom to be virtually beyond criticism in this respect.
As for the second question, one of the points that distinguishes Olympus models from other digital cameras is the range of photographic options that they do offer, should you wish to abandon the excellent automatic setting. There really is a huge range of options to edit. You can set the camera to shutter or aperture priority, or use fully manual settings; you can simulate different ISO settings, alter exposure compensation and white balance, alter the overall sharpness of the pictures that the camera takes, use spot metering, perform sequential shooting and so on. Some of the options are, admittedly, a little gimmicky and not terribly useful; for example, the options to shoot in sepia and posterised monochrome (literally, black and white with no shades of grey) seem rather superfluous, and I'm not even a fan of digital zoom, personally. Nevertheless, the large majority of the options are indeed well worth having, and will be extremely welcome to traditional users of film cameras who are moving into the digital field. Users who don't understand the options can of course just ignore them and leave the camera in automatic mode.
The table at the foot of this article gives a comprehensive feature comparison of the three models. It's not absolutely exhaustive about every conceivable aspect of each camera, but it will give a good idea about the range of features on offer. Of all three cameras under consideration here, the C-2100 Ultra Zoom offers (by a small margin) the largest number of photographic and image-editing options.
Each camera is well thought out in terms of its interface to the user. A small number of buttons on the body of the camera provide direct access to the most common functions, such as flash mode, macro mode, spot focus and so on, with the less frequently used options available via an on-screen menu. Some people claim to find these menus confusing, but I have always considered them to be clear, easy to use and helpfully laid out. The menu will vary depending on the mode the camera is in (stills shooting, movie shooting or viewing mode), but once you've learnt what's where it's all very easy to use.
All three of these cameras can be used with an infra-red remote control for remote shooting, and this control can also be used in 'slideshow viewing mode', if you've hooked the camera up to your TV. The control is supplied with the two more expensive cameras, but not with the C-2040 Zoom; that model is compatible with the remote control, but it's a separate purchase.
This has both advantages and disadvantages. As there is no limit on the number of pictures that can be used to construct a panorama, you could theoretically put your camera on a tripod and construct a 360° 'cylindrical' photograph (and note that you can take vertical as well as horizontal panoramas). However, the disadvantage is that you need to be very precise in your positioning of the camera. It needs to be kept absolutely level, and variance in the height of component shots will cause problems. Moreover, if you misjudge the overlap between pictures slightly (and it has to be judged to a fair extent by guesswork), you can end up with pictures which won't stitch together cleanly. The results can be very good (see example below), but they're not straightforward to construct.
Unfortunately, RISC OS users do not have an easy time when creating panoramas. Dedicated PC/Mac software with a panorama-stitching function is of course supplied with the cameras, but I know of no equivalent stitching utility for RISC OS. It's possible to stitch the frames of a panorama together in an image processing utility such as Photodesk, but this is a rather time-consuming process to undertake manually. Perhaps some enterprising RISC OS programmer might rise to the challenge of writing a utility of this sort for our platform.
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| A four-image panorama taken on a C-2000 Zoom and stitched together using Olympus' own software (the view is of Table Bay from the top of Table Mountain, Cape Town, South Africa) |
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C-2100 Ultra Zoom 1600×1200 Central detail: |
C-2040 Zoom 1600×1200 Central detail: |
C-3040 Zoom 2048×1536 Central detail: |
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In all cases, the colour balance is excellent. Slight variations in brightness can be accounted for by a number of factors. First, as the pictures were taken on different days, the ambient lighting would vary. Secondly, distance between camera and painting was not consistent (in particular, the C-2100 Ultra Zoom was mounted on a tripod at a considerable distance from the picture, whilst the other two cameras were held by hand much closer to it). And finally, there would have been some difference in flash intensity between the cameras.
The sharpness is also excellent in all cases, with the texturing of the hardboard (which is not especially obvious in real life) being visible even in the two lower-resolution cameras. The higher resolution of the C-3040 Zoom really shows its worth here, though; the texturing of the hardboard can be seen even in the sky (where it is almost invisible with the lower-resolution cameras), and individual brush-strokes can also be discerned.
The next comparison picture was taken as a test of fine detail. The picture is of a large map, mounted on a wall, on which is printed a great deal of very small text. I did not expect the smallest text to be legible in either picture, and indeed it isn't; but it's close to being legible on the picture from the C-3040 Zoom. A 4 Megapixel camera may just about be able to reproduce the text legibly.
Note that there are only two versions of this picture because it was a test of resolution rather than of camera performance. The 1600×1200 image was taken using the C-2100 Ultra Zoom; it could have been taken on the C-3040 Zoom, except that I felt it was better to test this resolution on a camera for which it was the native maximum resolution of the imager, rather than being a scaled-down image.
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| 1600×1200 | 2048×1536 |
And secondly, because digital cameras can still not rival the level of detail that film cameras can capture, and because they're significantly more expensive than film cameras of similar specification, you have little alternative but to spend a fairly hefty amount of money when buying a digital camera. For example, the first Olympus digital camera, the C-800L (which appeared in 1997 and was easily the best camera on the market in terms of picture quality for quite some time) was launched at £800. Now, several generations later, its vastly superior successor, the C-860L, costs little more than a quarter of that price and is better in every way.
However, I believe that it is false economy to spend as little as £200 on a digital camera even now. If you're serious about wanting to buy a digital camera then the chances are that you have some specific uses for it in mind. You'll want reasonable flexibility from it, good picture quality and high resolution, and the usefulness of an optical zoom lens cannot be overstated. As the low-end cameras only have digital zoom options (which you can replicate on your computer using image processing software), I would rule them out and go for one with a proper zoom lens. Two hundred pounds or so is a lot to spend for the digital equivalent of a throw-away holiday snaps camera. (That's unfair to the digital camera, but I'm only making a broad point.) On the other hand, if you spend twice as much and buy a decent digital camera (such as a C-2040 Zoom or better), then you will end up with a model that will satisfy your needs for a significant time to come. There's no denying that it won't be long before it's superseded by a better and cheaper model, but in terms of what it does, you're unlikely to regret the purchase even so. Speaking personally, I bought a C-2000 Zoom in 1999, when it was top of the Olympus compact range. The new C-2040 Zoom, despite being the least capable model on test here, is very much cheaper and has a lot more features than the camera I bought two years ago; but in spite of all that, I'm still delighted with my C-2000 Zoom.
So, if you're serious about wanting a digital camera right now, my recommendation would be to buy a decent mid- to high-end one. If they still seem too expensive and you're not desperate, then don't buy a low-end one now; wait for six months or a year for the prices to drop, as they surely will, and buy a model with at least 2 Megapixels when they've become more affordable.
However, the other new model, the C-700 Ultra Zoom, is of greater interest in relation to this article as it delivers most of the features of the C-2100 Ultra Zoom SLR model in a compact case design. Although it lacks some of the more high-end features of the SLR camera, the practical differences are minor; it even has an SLR-style electronic viewfinder (in other words, a tiny monitor in the eyepiece rather than just a lens). The only significant practical difference is that, being a compact model, it requires time to protract its lens when you switch it on.
Considering that this new C-700 Ultra Zoom is being advertised at a mere £550 including VAT, it looks as though it represents astonishing value. At only £25 more than the C-2040 Zoom, and £200 less than the largely equivalent C-2100 Ultra Zoom, it seems to be a very good buy indeed. What's more, going by the specifications alone, it appears as though it offers nearly all of the photographic options of its SLR sibling, including the ability to rotate images after taking them. It seems to lack full-time AF and image stabilisation, but it includes some of the options that are missing on the C-2040 Zoom (sepia shooting and a choice of 1280×960 resolution). This camera looks like much better value than the C-2040 Zoom, and a very attractive alternative to the more expensive SLR model.
Note that, like the C-2040 Zoom, both of these new cameras lack a serial connection, so for the time being you'll need a SmartMedia reader. The implication is certainly that the days are numbered for serial connections on digital cameras.
Full details about these and other cameras can be found in the digital imaging section of Olympus' Web site: http://cf.olympus-europa.com/consumer/digimg/ (a site which unfortunately performs less than well on current RISC OS Web browsers, though it's usable).
| Feature | C-2100 Ultra Zoom | C-2040 Zoom | C-3040 Zoom |
| Imager |
2.1 Megapixels
½-inch CCD solid-state image pickup (2,110,000 pixels) |
2.1 Megapixels
½-inch CCD solid-state image pickup (2,110,000 pixels) |
3.3 Megapixels
1/1.8-inch CCD solid-state image pickup (3,340,000 pixels) |
| Resolutions supported |
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| Memory supported | SmartMedia @ 2Mb, 4Mb, 8Mb, 16Mb, 32Mb, 64Mb | SmartMedia @ 4Mb, 8Mb, 16Mb, 32Mb, 64Mb | SmartMedia @ 4Mb, 8Mb, 16Mb, 32Mb, 64Mb |
| Average max. JPEGs on 16Mb SmartMedia |
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| Approximate storage size of HQ JPEGs | 350K to 500K | 350K to 500K | 650K to 900K |
| Erase option | One frame/All unprotected frames | One frame/All unprotected frames | One frame/All unprotected frames |
| LCD status display |
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| LCD monitor | 1.8" TFT colour LCD (approx. 114,000 pixels) | 1.8" TFT colour LCD (approx. 114,000 pixels) | 1.8" TFT colour LCD (approx. 114,000 pixels) |
| Viewfinder type | Electronic SLR (0.55" TFT colour LCD) or main LCD monitor | Optical real-image or main LCD monitor | Optical real-image or main LCD monitor |
| Exposure control |
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| Light metering |
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| Shutter speed |
Mechanical shutter
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Mechanical shutter
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Mechanical shutter
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| Auto-timer |
(12 sec.)
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(12 sec.)
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(12 sec.)
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| Lens |
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| Aperture |
Wide angle: F2.8 to F8.0
Telephoto: F3.5 to F8.0 |
Wide angle: F1.8 to F10.0
Telephoto: F2.6 to F10.0 |
Wide angle: F1.8 to F10.0
Telephoto: F2.6 to F10.0 |
| Macro mode |
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| Focus |
Wide angle: 0.6m to infinity
(Macro mode: 0.1m to 0.6m) Telephoto: 2.0m to infinity (Macro mode: 1.0m to 2.0m) |
0.8m to infinity
Macro mode: 0.2m to 0.8m |
0.8m to infinity
Macro mode: 0.2m to 0.8m |
| Auto-focus |
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| Full-time AF |
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| Auto-exposure lock & multi-metering |
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| ISO selection |
(100, 200, 400)
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(100, 200, 400)
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(100, 200, 400)
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| Auto-bracket option |
(3 or 5 shots)
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(3 or 5 shots)
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(3 or 5 shots)
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| Sequential shooting |
(2fps)
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(2fps)
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(3.3fps)
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| Panorama mode |
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| Optical zoom | 10× | 3× | 3× |
| Digital zoom | 2.7× | 2.5× | 2.5× |
| Max. combined zoom | 27× | 7.5× | 7.5× |
| Stabilisation system |
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| White balance |
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| Special effects |
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| Flash modes |
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| Flash charge time | 6 sec. | 6 sec. | 6 sec. |
| External flash option |
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| Stills recording formats |
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| Rotate photos in camera |
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| Movie option (QuickTime Motion JPEG) |
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(video only)
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| Sound format | WAV | N/A | WAV |
| Built-in microphone |
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| Audio captions for still images |
(max. 4 sec.)
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(max. 4 sec.)
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| External microphone jack |
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| A/V out jack |
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(video only)
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| RS-232C serial port |
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| USB 1.0 connector |
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| DC in jack |
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| Power supply options |
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| Remote control |
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(Optional extra)
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| Compatible with optional lens attachments |
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| Calendar |
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| Dimensions | W: 112.5mm × H: 77.5mm × D: 141mm | W: 109.5mm × H: 76.4mm × D: 69.6mm | W: 109.5mm × H: 76.4mm × D: 69.6mm |
| Weight (without batteries) | 540g | 307g | 307g |
| Price (approximate!) | £750 inc. VAT | £525 inc. VAT | £790 inc. VAT |
The photographs supplied with this article are copyright © Richard G. Hallas