OLYMPUS C-770 Ultra Zoom 4MP review

Movie buffs will go ape over the C-770 Ultra Zoom's MPEG-4 capabilities, which provide 640x480-pixel capture at a smooth 30fps, with decent audio, for as long as your xD-Picture Card holds out.

On the basis of its lens alone, the Olympus C-770 Ultra Zoom begs to be used for sports photography, and it didn't disappoint. While the shutter lag of 0.9 second under contrasty lighting conditions caused us to miss a few critical moments, we had better luck switching to low-speed burst mode, pressing the shutter release just before the action began, and cranking out nine full-resolution pictures in less than 5 seconds. In high-speed burst mode, with the resolution reduced to 640x480 pixels, we captured five shots in a blazing 1.9 seconds. But action photography under dreary, low-contrast conditions is likely to be frustrating. The C-770 Ultra Zoom took 2.9 seconds to squeeze off a shot under that unfavorable lighting.

In single-shot mode, the Olympus was able to snap an image every 2.6 seconds without flash, which is about average, and once every 5.57 seconds with the flash turned on, which is a little slow. A green indicator in the viewfinder shows when the camera's buffer memory fills during shooting and indicates when the current images have been saved to the memory card. Saving images in TIFF format results in a long, 12-second wait between shots. And you'd better keep this camera switched on and ready for action because wake-up time was more than 6 seconds.

We liked the electronic viewfinder, but it tended to freeze; display streaks; dim; and black out just before, during, and after exposure. The rear LCD exhibited the same behavior but we didn't use it much because it was more difficult to view outdoors under bright light.

The muscular flash unit's range extends from about 1 to 15 feet at the wide-angle setting, and 4 to 17 feet in telephoto mode, both at ISO 100.

The quality of our test photos from the Olympus C-770 Ultra Zoom was generally very good, with consistent exposures, lots of detail in the shadows, and little tendency to blow out highlights. Indoors, the automatic white balance sometimes gave us extrawarm exposures, but noise wasn't a significant problem until the light sensitivity setting was bumped up to ISO 400.