- Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 7 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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10 out of 10 people found this review helpful
4.5 stars
"A great camera to grow into!"
Pros: Great Wide angle (27mm) and "super" macro shot capabilities!!! Very easy to use, even for me. great professional features! great image quality!
Cons: Zoom is only 4x and the LCD is a bit too small but I can live with it.. Lense cap comes off too easily. Need to purchse filters just to protect the lense. However filters are always a good idea.
Summary: First I would like to preface my review by saying, this review is for the beginner to advanced/beginner with a desire to advance there photographic talents.
General Information;
I have owned this camera for about two weeks now and I am very impressed with it's features, ease of use and the quality of the images! I am an advanced beginner with enthusiastic artistic ambitions for photography. I even took a couple of photography classes a few years ago but found it difficult to retain the sometimes complex information needed to advance my capabilities with 35mm (film) SLR cameras. It's a lot of information to absorb of which, you can't rely soli on common sense or logic to learn it. For example; if you take a nice photograph with a 35mm FILM camera in manual mode with specific apature and shutter speed settings it's way to easy to forget what your settings were at or how you achieved this "great" photograph. Thus, making it difficult to retain the needed information as I said earlier. Digital cameras with professional functions and features, in genral, you get instantaneous results with all the technical information at your finger tips.....literally. However most digital cameras with these professional features will cost you an arm, a leg and perhaps an ear full from your frugal significant other. It's difficult to spring for that expensive camera if all you have is a burning curiousity to learn more about photography, not knowing if you're going to still enjoy this expensive hobby once you do....if you do.
With the Olympus C-7070 you get all the professional possibilities of a high-end digital camera with instantaneous results complete with an info button that stores all the technical settings for you. Making it much easier to learn this often complex photographic jargon. furthermore, you get a fairly compact camera, for what it offers, with the ease of use of a "prosumer" camera. Of course you can't change out the lenses but you can buy adaptures and filters.
Highlights;
One of the most impressive features I found with this camera is the "super" macro setting. For example; I took a photograph of a drop of water on the tip of a blade of grass! The picture came out crystal clear (Of course I used a tripod to achieve this picture). Through experimenting with this particular photograph, deleting and briefly reading the manual (another con is that the manual is ONLY in CD form. This makes it tough when your in the field and need information on the spot. Of course you can print individual pages for yourself but....) I tought myself how to achieve better depth of field. This is something I couldn't do before.
Another highlight is the glass lense. It's apparently the company's pride and joy. Furhtermore, In 35mm terms of course, it's a 27mm-110mm lense. I might point out that most of the cameras in this price range only offer 35mm+. With a 27mm you can sqeeze so much more into the frame of a photo in tight (small room) situations or broad landscape oportuinities.
The movies and sound quality are relatively good as well. This camera also has a speaker so you can record a narative for a slide show for example (or whatever) and play it back with sound.
If you are anything like me you will enjoy this camera immensely. It's a great camera for your growing photographic talents. I'd even say a professional might enjoy this camera if he or she wanted to travel lite but still have a quality camera handy just incase.
On a personal note, I am going on an extended journey around the world and am I am very happy knowing that I will have this camera handy to grow into and to enhance my experiences and memories with high-quality images.
For a better written and more detailed review check out steve's digicams website http://www.steves-digicams.com/2005_reviews/c7070.html
Steve listed this camera as one of his top choices for 7mp digital cameras on the market right now.
BTW I found this camera on buydig.com for $457 brand new! It arrived a week later. I recommend this site.Updated
I just wanted to add to my earlier extremely positive post that I have been having problems with my brand new C-7070. It's unfortunate as I was truly enjoying many of the cameras features and it's performance. It's been malfunctioning and I have to send it back for repairs already. It has trouble focusing and the lens will not retract fully from time to time. For this reason I must drop my rating from a 9 to a 6. If I didn't get a lemon I would still be very happy with it.Updated
After having my new C-7070 for only a month I had to send it in for repairs. A few weeks later I recieved a brand new camera. I must say it's nice to see a company recognize it's fault and stand behind it's product and go out of there way to please there patrons. got to raise that rating back up to an 8!Updated
I had a defective camera and they sent me a new one instead of simply fixing the defective one. I am very please Olympus stands behind it's product and it's patrons!
