Rating: 
Summary: Happy I bought it!
Review: This is my first digital camera. I did a lot of research before deciding on the c-700. I have absolutly no complaints. Its easy to operate and downloading the pictures went flawlessly too.... I dont think you can find more camera for the money!
Rating:
Summary: engineering marvel with total ease of use
Review: I looked at a lot of digital cameras before I finally bought this one. It seems a little pricey, but this little gem is an engineering marvel, and very well thought out to maximize the ease of use for all that power. It can be used as a PhD Camera (Push here Dummy), or full on, do all your own settings or anywhere in between. Customizable button. Fantastic zoom capability - so much you have to be careful of camera shake a full zoom. I find the zoom really allows flexibility of shots, I always find I want to zoom in on a face, on wildlife or a special scene, and this camera can do it like no other - 38 to over 1000 zoom equivalent 35 mm. Add black and white, sepia, or whiteboard capability. Add 100 to 800 ASO settings, manual or automatic. I found almost instantaneous download through my USB port. I bought the card reader, but don't really need it. I bought the 128 meg card, and its well worth buying more card space, 8 meg is not enough. All digitals tend to eat batteries, but Olympus cameras are among the most miserly of the current digitals. This camera uses batteries, but at an acceptable rate. It can use 2 lithium packs or 4 AA's - recharagble or alkaline - so you can always find power in a pinch. Automatic white adjust for true colors whether you are outdoors, indoors with tungsten or flourescent lighting. Professional quality 4 x 6 prints, very acceptable 8 x 10. How big do you need? All for 10 trim ounces of weight! Take it anywhere. What are you waiting for? If you have the $ you will have a blast with this camera. The only drawbacks I found are the blue halo on bright white edges - but I think all current digitals have that - and this darn camera is smarter than I am.
Rating: 
Summary: Cute but flawed
Review: Background: - my first digital camera; - used for two weeks before returning to the store; - pictures taken: ~400 in all kinds of environments; - for me, image quality is *extremely* important.Overall Ratings (out of five): Image Quality: 2 (yes, that is a "two") Features: 5 Ease of use: 4 Build quality: 4 Because you can read about all the great things this camera can do elsewhere, I will concentrate on the things it does poorly. There are two major flaws in the images this camera produces: - chromatic aberrations (purple fringing due to the interaction of lens and the CCD); - moire. The purple fringes are easily fixed in photoshop and occur to a with most digital cameras, even though to a lesser extent. The moire, however, is far more difficult to correct. In my two weeks of shooting, about 50% of shots with buildings/fences (and other objects with closely spaced high contract lines) showed some kind of moire patterns. Note that the moire does not occur when shooting natural objects (landscapes, people, etc.), because there are very few repeating patterns in nature. Other than these two flaws, the picture is good for the camera in this price range: the colors especially. Low light capability is not that great, however (a lot of noise and "hot" pixels). So this is how the "image qauality" rating came in at a 2. And because image quality is most important to me, I could not give this camera anything more than 3 stars. If you decide to get the camera, make sure you can return it without a restocking fee...
Rating:
Summary: A digital camera to keep
Review: Last year I went through a variety of digital cameras and never found a keeper. This model is different. We've had it a month and will definitely keep it. It is very easy to use, although the flash modes are not terribly intuitive. The colors are very vibrant. And, it is fast between exposures which was a huge drawback in the past with very small children. The size is very portable yet easy to hold. Give it a try!
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Amazing
Review: This camera is absolutely amazing. The pictures are unbelievable, and it is extremely easy to use. I bought it for several reasons and it has lived up to all of them. First was the picture quality. Olympus was rated very highly in Consumer Reports, and the 2 mega pixel reportedly had the best picture quality, even over the 3 mpxl. This is spot on, and I've produced very high quality pictures with a HP Photosmart printer. The second was the zoom capabilities. For the money, it is by far the most powerful, and the quality of the picures with this is superb. I have taken nature and scenery shots using this feature and the results have been outstanding. Finally, I purchased this for the flexibility it provides. I am an amateur who enjoys playing with my AE1 SLR. This camera gives me the same flexibilty - manually selecting a desired shutter speed, aperture, or simply reverting to Auto mode where you don't have to think. All in all, a great camera. Obviously you will need add'l memory, and I purchased a 128mb Viking with it. With a 250-300 picture capacity, it's more than I'll ever need. For those not familiar with digital cameras (as I wasn't), transferring the pictures to your hard drive is simply accomplished by plugging in a USB cable from the camera to your computer, opening up the E drive, and dragging your pictures to the C drive. The photo software included is as good as any I have used. All in all, I would stongly recommend this.
Rating: 
Summary: For the size - it's amazing.
Review: I got this camera so that I could zoom in closer than with the 3x zoom model I've had for a couple years. I mostly take pictures outdoors while travelling and indoors without the flash. I looked at the 2100 and the Sony Mavica line, and everything with a 10x zoom was well over a pound and quite large. This camera is only 11 oz and feels nice and balanced in the hand. But, as you'll see in the other reviews, it does not have image stabilization, so you have to be very careful with your higher-zoom shots or they will be fuzzy. The camera does allow manual almost-everything, so it's possible to compensate for most conditions, but the controls do take some getting used to. For me, it's just about the ideal camera (for now - ask me again in two years!!!) to take along and have that extra zooming capability without sacrificing my neck muscles. A few slight complaints that kept it from getting 5 stars: (1) The zoom function is quite noisy, so not so good for unobtrusive shots in conferences, etc. (2) Wish it came with a case. (3) The "manual focus" I was hopeful about doesn't really let you turn the focus ring on the lens, but rather a dopey dial mounted RIGHT next to the eyepiece, so you have to be a contortionist to use it. Not something I would use everyday since the auto-focus seems pretty good, but a dumb design "feature."
Rating:
Summary: Highest-rated 2.1 megapixel camera
Review: After having done an exhausting research which included reviews of many different cameras from about 10 digicam review websites both here and in Europe, and having had years experience with other digital cameras, I have chosed to purchase this camera based both on the ratings and the features it had.
The C-700 is truly an engineering marvel with absolutely astounding picture quality which exceeds other more expensive cameras and even cameras with a higher pixel count (!!!). The camera has good optics and is still the world's smallest 10x optical zoom digital camera. With the optional Olympus lens "tube" (screws in over the camera lens) you can use the Olympus wide-angle lens as I do, with the final 35mm camera equivalent being 30.4mm (38mm without the wide-angle lens).
Some of the minuses are: unlike the 2100 model it does not have the physical image stabilization so if you go at the maximum zoom you have to be careful to hold the camera extremely steady. Majority of other cameras also lack this feature, however, so it's not really that big of a minus. The camera does not have a way of turning off the internal LCD, even if only the large LCD on the back is being used, the lifespan of my 1600mAh NiMH batteries inside the new C-700 still far exceeds all of the other digital cameras I have used before, especially compared to the power-hungry Nikon digicams, so this is more of a gripe in principle than anything else. The C-700 CCD chip, LIKE ALL OTHER CURRENT digicams, creates a blue-ish halo around high-contrast edges (example: a tree or a roofline against a bright sky).
The pluses are plentiful. In the manual mode, you have almost complete control over the camera, plus (and this is very important) the camera has a MANUAL WHITE BALLANCE setting, as well as the standard auto and misc. presets. This is extremely helpful if you take photos in tricky lighting (studio lighting, etc.) I also really like the fact that you can record a 5 second audio clip with each photo, even after the fact after you review the images, just to keep yourself from forgetting what the photo object is (part number, name of the person, street address, etc.) The camera is very well balanced and feels comfortable when shooting.
I would recommend you getting an Olympus brand SmartMedia card if you plan to do any panorama shots, which greatly increases the efficiency of making them due to Olympus card's built-in ROM program. The software that comes with the camera is unusually well done, unlike most of the other packages I have seen with other makes and models. Panoramas get directly exported to Quicktime 360" web-ready panoramas, it's a joy to do this task. No need to get your hands dirty with funky 3rd party software and extra steps. Simply shoot with an Olympus card, 'stitch' the photos (automatically) using the Olympus software that comes with the camera and SAVE-AS 360 file. Then you upload it to the web, link to it and you have a rotating 360 shot! The software even knows what type of zoom you used for each photo, as that is embedded within each JPG file, along with complete exposure information, while still remaining fully compatible with PhotoShop, etc.
This is also the first camera I have ever seen that follows the standard external storage protocol which allows you to unload the camera to any computer (Win ME, Win 2000, Mac, etc.) WITHOUT installing any software or any drivers. The camera simply shows up as yet another drive when plugged in to a USB port, without rebooting.
Olympus really did a great job on this camera and priced it extremely aggressively considering the features, in order to further increase their digital camera lead in the marketplace. This camera produces up to 8x10 photo quality inkjet prints and about 4x6" (excellent quality) in 300 dpi for magazines, etc. (a lot of my photos get published in misc. travel magazines). If you need to do magazine work with photos bigger that the 4x6", check out the 4+ megapixel Olympus E-10 (price), though I cannot comment on it as I have not yet used it first hand.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome!
Review: This is my first digital camera and I've only had it less than a week, but I'm very impressed. Even at the lowest resolution, picture quality is very good...more than enough for computer/TV viewing. The zoom is what is most impressive. Just playing with the 27x digital zoom, I was able to get close to things almost a half mile away! While in digital, the quality drops dramatically but it is better than I expected. Just increase the resolution and film speed and it works great. Complaints? Small Smart Media card (8 mgs) and no rechargible batteries included.
Rating:
Summary: EXCELLENT CAMERA!!!
Review: This is a HUGE camera in a TINY package. This 2+ megapixel camera is large in QUALITY, and ZOOM POWER (38mm to 1000mm+), in a SMALL case that can fit easily in your hand (apx 4'x5'x3"). The camera is simple enough that my lovely wife can use it as a point-and-shoot camera, and complex enough for me to have complete manual control. There are also programs for sports, scenery, and portraiture, and also aperture and shutter priorities. This camera has EXCELLENT macro capabilities, which are perfect for me to take close-up pictures of small items I need to display on power-point presentations. The literature says it has a macro focus of as close as 4", but I have taken good photos from closer distances. The Smartcard that comes with it is rather limited in its capacity,if you like to take good quality pictures; but it WILL take a 128MB Smartcard, which will give you enormous capacity for photos. I HIGHLY recommend this camera!!!
Rating:
Summary: This camera ROCKS!
Review: This is the perfect camera. Looks great, takes great photos, and is not so much money compared to anything comparable. Don't be fooled, this camera does take great little movie clips, you get a camera for pictures, not takin movies right?? Well take pictures it does, and very well. I shoot pictures for a Big Ten University, shots of the stadium, sporting events, etc, this camera is the best I have ever used. the manual controls are great, but it is also very easy to use as a point-and-shoot. The 10x optical zoom blew mw out of the water. If your lookin for a camera that has the complexity of manual controls yet the ease of point and shoot, this is your camera!!
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