Reviews

[ia] Designed to appeal to photographers who want a lightweight compact digicam with a solid feel and extensive suite of user controls, the Olympus C-7070 Wide Zoom sits between the C-8080 and the C-5060 in the Olympus line-up. It has identical styling to the C-5060 Zoom, the same lens and flip-up-and twist LCD monitor and diopter-adjustable optical viewfinder. However, it sports a 7-megapixel sensor, although the CCD is the same size as the C-5060’s.

[ia] A distinctive shape, prominent lens, high-rising flash and smart black body give the Olympus C-8080 a quality appearance. It’s also distinguished by the many different ways of accessing most controls, its dual CF and xD-Picture card support, and excellent optics. The C-8080’s lens is built to the same standard as the Zuiko lenses made for E System cameras, but manual focusing is via a button control and zooming is lever-operated. The 1.8-inch ‘sunshine colour’ LCD monitor is mounted on a swing-out hinge but it can only be tilted through about 45 degrees. A neat ‘direct histogram’ uses a coloured grid to indicate areas of the displayed image that are overexposed (red) or underexposed (blue), allowing users to fine-tune exposure levels.

As well as a 5-megapixel sensor and 27-110mm equivalent zoom lens, the Camedia C-5060 Wide Zoom offers just about every control a photographer could require, including RAW and TIFF capture settings. The standard P, A, S and M shooting modes are augmented by five scene settings and program shift is available with the A and S modes.

In our tests, the A2 did somewhat better than the A1. We recorded an average combined shutter and focus lag of 0.9 seconds, which reduced to 0.45 seconds with pre-focusing. However focusing was occasionally inaccurate and shot-to-shot times remained at 0.5 seconds in the standard continuous shooting mode and 0.4 seconds in the high-speed mode. Start-up and shut-down times were almost instantaneous, and shot-to-shot times in single frame mode were under one second. Noise reduction processing for shots taken in low light took almost a minute but while shots taken at ISO settings of 100 and 200 were clean and noise-free, noise could be detected in 30-second exposures at ISO 400, and was very obvious in ISO 800 shots.

The P850 is the first of Kodak’s new series of ‘Performance’ digicams and the first model with a 12x optical zoom lens. Made by Schneider-Kreuznach, this lens includes an optical image stabiliser and has a threaded mount for fitting optional wide and tele converter lenses or a lens filter. The lens is reasonably fast (f2.8 at the wide position and f3.7 for tele) and covers a focal length range equivalent to 36-432mm in 35mm format.

Plenty of enthusiast features plus good picture quality but dynamic range restrictions and image processing artefacts may reduce user satisfaction.Kodak is targeting enthusiast photographers with its 8-megapixel EasyShare P880 camera. Sporting a fast, 5.8x mechanically operated zoom lens with both zoom and focusing rings and a large, bright LCD it provides most of the controls and functions keen photographers require. The angle of view of this lens starts at the equivalent of 24mm in 35mm format, which is wider than most digicams offer and it extends to 140mm, which will suit many users. [ia]