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CNET editors' rating:
stars
Very good
Detailed editors' rating - Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 31 reviews
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Product summary
The good: Full manual controls; versatile 10X optical zoom; solid battery life; excellent macro capabilities; good image quality.
The bad: No raw format; slow autofocus under low-contrast lighting; no hotshoe; mediocre video-clip features.
The bottom line: Avid photographers on a budget get manual controls, a 10X optical zoom, and impressive macro capabilities for $100 less than what this camera's C-770 Ultra Zoom stablemate costs.
Specifications: Digital camera type: Full body ; Resolution: 4 megapixels ; Optical zoom: 10 x ; See full specs
CNET editors' review
- Reviewed on: 11/18/2004
- Released on: 05/01/2004
But you still get a versatile, 10X optical zoom with the C-765 Ultra Zoom. It comes up a bit short on the wide end at 38mm (35mm camera equivalent), but it gives you a lot of telephoto power with with a 380mm (equivalent) focal length. You can scope out your scene on a 1.8-inch LCD or through the bright electronic viewfinder (EVF). The EVF makes composing images easy, even in bright light and especially when shooting close-ups down to 2.8 inches (in macro mode) or 0.5 inch (in super macro mode).
While the Olympus's 11 scene modes and flexible automatic-exposure options will appeal to snapshooters, enthusiasts will really appreciate the ability to fine-tune their shots with shutter- and aperture-priority modes, manual exposure (from 1/1,000 second to 15 seconds; f/2.8 to f/8), and manual focus. If you're looking for the best possible image quality, you can save photos in TIFF mode.
The easy-to-use controls include a shutter release and a concentric zoom lever that you can operate with one finger. They also include a knurled mode wheel and a four-way control pad that navigates menus and sets shutter speed, aperture, exposure compensation, and manual focus. Five other multifunction buttons adjust settings that include exposure lock, self-timer, and flash mode as well as a user-customizable function. Other buttons pop up the built-in flash, switch between the EVF and the rear LCD, adjust the viewfinder diopter, activate the quick-review function, and power the camera on or off.
You can set light sensitivity either automatically or manually from ISO 64 to ISO 400. Metering options include eight-point multisegment, spot, and center-weighted. When darkness falls, a beefy flash unit illuminates your scene from about 1 to 15 feet at the wide-angle setting and from 4 to 17 feet in telephoto mode at ISO 100.
The C-765 Ultra Zoom beat the performance of its more expensive cousin in a couple of areas but fell down in others. The most obvious difference was the time needed to store a TIFF image on the memory card: 21 seconds vs. the C-770 Ultra Zoom's 12 seconds. Its wake-up time of 5.7 seconds, however, was almost a half-second faster and its shot-to-shot times were better. That was particularly evident with the flash, where the junior Ultra Zoom was able to snap off a shot every 3.8 seconds, almost 2 seconds faster than its counterpart. Without the flash, we were able to take a shot every 2.2 seconds. In low-speed burst mode, we got off three full-resolution shots in about 1 second; that time was cut to 0.5 second for the same trio of pictures in high-speed burst mode, with resolution reduced to 640x480 pixels. You won't need to recharge the lithium-ion battery very often; we got 542 shots, half of them with flash, on one charge.
We got the same good image quality with this camera as with the C-770 Ultra Zoom: consistent exposures; rich, detailed shadows; and highlights that didn't wash out easily. This camera, however, offered just 320x240-pixel, 15fps movies with adequate sound. If you're looking for 640x480, 30fps clips, spend the extra $100 and get the C-770.
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- Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 31 reviews
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