Olympus C7000 7MP Digital Camera with 5x Optical Zoom

Rating:
Summary: Well worth the price!
Review: As an owner of 2 canon cameras I was not expecting to buy an Olympus. I decided I wanted a digital camera(my first) for Christmas/Birthday (my husband loves it when he knows exactly what to get) and after MUCH research and thought I concluded I wanted the C-7000.
I received it from Amazon.com 7 days ago and have had not one moment of regret. Within minutes of opening I had the xd picture card and battery loaded and had taken a couple of pictures. Then I charged it for two hours as instructed.
What I noticed immediately is how easy it is to use. It is easy to hold, feels very sturdy and has a rubber grip on the front right side. The compact digitals always felt too small to hold comfortably. Trashing unworthy images is painless and navigating the menus is straightforward. I have not read the ins and outs in the manual (product of having a 16 month old) but I have the basics down.
I must admit to being behind the times, my computer has win 98 and the software "bundle" is not compatible. This has not created a problem as I do have a mult-function printer (hp 2400) which has a xd slot. Pop it in, it downloads quickly and without any input. From one screen you can then edit, email, print and save. I can't imagine it being easier with another program.
I had considered buying a backup battery immediately but have decided to wait and see if needed. I have used this camera quite alot in 7 days and the battery shows full powere after only that initial 2 hr charge.
BUY A OLYMPUS 512 MB XD PICTURECARD
i got mine a couple of days before the camera arrived and boy am I glad. Yesterday I went to a party, a house full of one year olds and their mothers. I then discovered it is hard to take a bad picture with this camera. I came home with 78 pictures and those did not include obvious trash (ie blurry or child half out of picture) It loads quickly, focuses quickly, flash cycles instantaneously which are all important as one year olds do not hold still for anyone especially mama. I forgot to use the flash (one button pop-up) and it compensated very well for low light. better than my 35mm would have when subject is backlit.

I am looking forward to using and exploring the more complex options of this high powered toy. I still have about 240 pictures I can take on this card without deleting any.

Closing thoughts: I think this camera is competitive with the SLR models selling for a couple to several hundred more dollars and is more convenient. You don't immediately need a backup battery but I would get a 512 mb olympus xd card (only olympus cards allow you to use panoramic function)

Rating:
Summary: Otherwise Great Camera Marred By Poor Auto-Focus...
Review: Having purchased an Olympus D-580 a few months back, and not having been thrilled with its auto-focusing ability for indoor photos, I decided to splurge and purchase the C-7000 after considering the Canon G6 and Sony DSCV3. The C-7000 has an AF Illuminator that the D-580 doesnt have; I figured this would solve the auto-focus issues I had experienced with my D-580 while taking indoor photos. Wrong. Under indoor, lamp-lit conditions, the C-7000 often takes several seconds to focus and then, when the green "focus indicator" light finally comes on, a quick glance at the monitor reveals that the camera is obviously NOT focused. (And, your subjects will probably be wondering how much longer they're going to have that red AF Illuminator shining in their eyes.) Having said all that, I will admit that after using and practicing with the C-7000 for awhile, you sort of "get the hang of" (for lack of a better term) the auto-focus and can achieve acceptable results. I also found it helpful to adjust the camera to "always auto-focus," which is an added drain on the battery, but seems to improve focusing performance. But, all things considered, I'd prefer to just be able to point the camera at my subject and shoot rather than wrestle with an inferior auto-focus. For a $500-$600 camera, I think Olympus can do better.

On the good side, this 7.1 megapixel camera does take very good, very high resolution photos (see my samples) and is solidly constructed (aluminum and plastic). All sorts of settings, ranging from full auto to full manual, including aperture priority, shutter priority etc... I basically leave it on auto, but I did go in and increase the color saturation and the contrast a bit. This compact, easy to carry camera also has a nice selection of features as well (I couldn't get the red-eye reduction feature to work, but oh well: I can fix those better on the computer, anyway.) The C-7000 also allows you to take black-and-white or sepia photos, but you have to switch into either mode BEFORE you take the pictures, whereas the D-580 allows you to make B&W or sepia versions of photos you've already taken. Battery life is decent; it takes just under 2 hours to give the battery a full charge, so buy a spare. The C-7000 uses a proprietary battery so you can't just swing into a convenience store and buy some Duracells to throw into it...

The big question: If I had it to do over again, would I still go with the C-7000? No. I'd choose between the Canon G6 or Sony DSCV3. But, I'll stick with the C-7000 for now. Over time and settings adjustments, I suspect I'll learn to like this camera.

Rating:
Summary: Just might be the perfect digital camera...
Review: I had done a lot of research prior to buying this camera. I previously had owned an Olympus Camedia C-2020 (2.1 megapixels) with which I had not had any problems, but I was ready for the next generation of digital cameras. I needed a smaller size, but more capabilities, especially more zoom. I had narrowed by choices to the Canon S1 IS, the Olympus c-765 or C-770 or the Fuji S-5000.

A local photo shop hosted a manufacturers rep day and I went and had some great conversation. When I first saw this camera I was amazed at all it could do, despite it's small size. 5x optical zoom, 20x total zoom, 7.1 megalpixels and a size that allows it to be carried in your pocket. You can read all the fancy specs at a lot of good review sites, checkout www.pricegrapper.com, but before you buy a camera in the $400-$550 range, check out the Olympus S-7000.

Rating:
Summary: Olympus C70
Review: I have owned an Olympus C70 now for a couple of months, I have taken over 1500 photos with it. I "upgraded" from a Sony Cybershot DSC P73 (4megapixel). I have a large collection of Olympus OM SLR film cameras/lenses, and was interested in getting back into the Olympus family.

When it actually manages to focus the Olympus C70 produces absolutely fantastic images, but in normal family photographing it rarely manages to focus, or it underexposes severely when using the flash, or it spends ages trying to focus. What is the point of a camera that cannot focus on a human face in anything but direct sunlight? Why is there an AF illuminator that makes absolutely NO difference to the ability of this camera to focus? The Sony cybershot beat this olympus camera, it focused nearly instantly every time. I never lost a photo due to bad focus or the flash exposures being badly underexposed. With the C70 I spend so much time trying to work with the focus limitations that I have begun to hate using it. It's just not possible to use this camera to take quick family photos, by the time you mess around getting it to focus that magic moment is gone forever!

At first I though it was a bad camera, I exchanged it for another, if anything this new one is even worse. Perhaps it is my technique that is at fault, Olympus say that it uses contrast to judge focus, that's great, but it appears that a human face does not have enough "contrast" to get this camera to focus in anything but direct sunlight. Often it will focus on some high contrast object in the background, or if I have it in spot focus mode it will refuse to focus on my childs face. Olympus customer support said that one workaround is to compose your picture by focusing on a similarly distant object, lock the focus and then reframe the picture on to your subject. Sounds great in theory but in reality for shooting shots of people that move this is really a pain in the neck. And in my experience I have often been faced with trying to find a suitable high contrast object to focus on. There is a manual focus mode, that works very well, and I often have to resort to this, but it's interesting that the much cheaper Sony that I had before did not need this option and focussed perfectly every time in every situation.

There is an option to allow full time autofocus, this supposedly allows the camera to keep focus even when the button is not pressed. This option is very much an annoying waste of time. You can point the camera at something, this continuous autofocus will then get it into focus all by itself, great!! Then you press the button to take the shot and the camera has another go at autofocussng and you end up in the same position as above. And it seems strange to me that the continuous focus, often gets focus where the actual Auto focus it tries to do when taking a photo cannot? This option must have been added for marketting purposes.

The image quality when it manages to get focus is nothing short of stunning, I love opening an image in Photo shop and just zooming in, the details seem to go for every and are pin sharp. The noise levels of this camera are excellant, you can take a photo of a blue sky and not see any visible noise! You can take a photo of a face and zoom in until you can see every single little hair! It's really an amazing image quality. If it would focus then this camera would be perfect.

Oh and a word or warning, be "very" careful with that expensive bit of plastic and aluminium, I phoned the local olympus repair centera and was told that if you so much as scratch the camera, olympus can and sometimes does void your warranty. At least this is what I was told on the phone, not sure how legal that is in Australia.

In summary, If you want to take still life photos and can live with an autofocus that is useless for low contrast objects, this camera's image quality is unbelievable. For family snaphots, it's the pits.

Rating:
Summary: Great Camera, Questionable Software, New RAW Format
Review: I'd like to split this review into different sections: The Camera, Implementation and Bundled Software.

I'll begin with the negative impressions first.

Implementation
One of the driving forces behind my new digital camera purchase was that I'd outgrown my old camera's capabilities. My skills had reached the point where having a camera that saves images in a RAW format was highly desirable. When screening my choices, the C-7000 came in at a reasonable price while offering this feature.

I must digress for a moment here. It seems that RAW format is not a universal standard. My present imaging software, PhotoShop CS, lists RAW formats from a variety of vendors. Apparently all are unique. While the C-7000 was not specifically mentioned, the C-8080 and C-5060 were mentioned, as were several other Olympus models. Additionally, Adobe has proposed an open standard for RAW formats, dubbed DNG for Digital Negative, and the same list of cameras appears on the list of supported formats that may be converted to the DNG format. Once converted, a DNG image may be read by any program utilizing that format.

At least that's the theory. Olympus seems to have changed their specs for RAW from the other cameras in their line up as neither the DNG converter nor PhotoShop, with the latest RAW reader plug-ins, is able to read an Olympus Raw Format (*.ORF) image from the C-7000. Major disappointment! Other than ORF images, I had no trouble reading any other images.

Bundled Software
The inability of my software to read an ORF image lead to the installation of the included Olympus Master software. Installation is painless: insert the disk and an auto-install wizard takes over. Once installed, the software is ready to go.

Personally, I felt the software was aimed at a first time camera user. The interface was so simple I found it almost insulting. I mean, come on, do you really need a wizard to help you e-mail a photo or print a picture? You also don't need the software to transfer images to your PC (see The Camera, below). I found nothing in the software, or advertised features, to warrant the expense of upgrading to the "full version" at a cost of almost US$20.

While the software is capable, especially if you have no other image enhancement software, there are some serious shortcomings. I hate to keep harping on the RAW format, but it's a problem here too. You are free to manipulate the image, but you can't save it to another RAW format usable by any other product. You can save the image as a JPG or TIF, but there is quality loss involved. That's what the RAW format is supposed to avoid. Olympus, PLEASE sign on to the DNG standard or at least offer the ability to convert these RAW images to the same format as your other cameras that are supported by third party imaging software.

The Camera
Now we're getting to the good stuff! Ten minutes after unpacking the camera, I was off and taking pictures. It's that easy. The controls were different from my old D-460, yet intuitive enough there were no major problems. Even if this was your first digital camera, I estimate you could be taking your first digital photos in less than half an hour. The setup folder is easy to follow. I used the battery without charging it and got about fifteen exposures before I ran it down. Fully charged, I'd expect about a hundred exposures before recharging.

Now that I had some test shots, I wanted to see them. Without reading the manual, I simply plugged the supplied USB cable into the camera and then plugged the cable to my PC via a hub. Windows 2000 showed a notice that new device was detected and in a couple of minutes I received a notice my removable drive was ready to use. No additional disks to insert for drivers, no Internet searches for drivers or anything more complicated than finding an open USB port. Windows Explorer showed the new drive and I was able to navigate to the photos, drag `n' drop to a temporary folder and I was able to view them with my graphics viewer of choice (JPG images only). I'd expect the same to be true for Windows XP or Mac users.

The only customization I'd done to this point was selecting an image size of 640 x 480 to maximize the number of images stored on the supplied 32 Mb XD flash memory. During use I was impressed with the speed it wrote to the memory. On viewing the images, I was impressed with the evenness of the exposure, accuracy of focus and quality of the flash. Using a tabletop to hold the camera steady, I did some available light work with exposures of one to two seconds length. The resolution is impressive as is the contrast of the images. I don't have any objective data to back my results, but I'd match this camera against any other fixed lens digital camera on the market. Superb optics!

Another major surprise was the camera body finish. The brochure describes it as Titanium. I don't know if Olympus is describing the color or the actual material, but it certainly isn't plastic! The shell has a nice solid feel in your hands and, while I wouldn't deliberately drop it, it gives the impression of ruggedness. Holding it you feel your money was well spent.

Conclusions
Overall, I'm very pleased with this camera. I bought it because I wanted something compact and rugged, yet easy to use. I bought it for the quality of the camera and the picture taking ability of the camera, not the software. In time, I'm sure my problem with the ORF images will be solved and the image format in no way interferes with the camera's abilities. I would suggest two accessories to purchasers of this camera, both of which are based on common sense, not any shortcoming of the camera.
1) Get an extra battery and always keep a charged spare with you.
2) Buy the highest capacity XD card you can find. You'll use it!

To Olympus I'd suggest offering some conversion of this new ORF format to DNG and perhaps marketing another package that is priced to include the camera and XD memory without the proprietary software. While the software may be useful to some users, it is an unneeded duplication for others.

12/23/2004
Adobe has solved the problem of reading the RAW format. There is a new plug-in for PhotoShop, RAW 2.4 Beta, that allows me to read the ORF this camera generates. I still stand by my 4 star rating based on the quality, or lack there of, of the bundled software. The camera by itself earns a full 5 stars, it's the total package that suffers.


Rating:
Summary: portable, superior results
Review: My perfect camera has to do two things very well. First, it has to deliver superior results. Second, it has to be portable. I think this Olympus C-7000 comes the closest to perfect and this is the one that I bought.

For superior results I thought I wanted a dSLR, but after handling one I realized I wouldn't often want to take something that large and vulnerable with me.

The Canon G6 and S70 are the only other cameras that I took any serious interest in. The G6 was tempting but still a little thick (especially the grip bump). The S70 was tempting too, but still longer than the C-7000.

Neither Canons offer as much zoom as the C-7000 (5x optical), though they both offer a wider angle.

I gave only four stars because I still wonder how it compares to the G6 in light gathering ability. Maybe I'll upgrade it to five stars once I settle that issue.

I was determined to buy a Canon or a Nikon. I had no thought toward buying an Olympus. This camera impressed me enough that now Olympus has a new customer. Nice job Olympus.