Olympus C-3040 Zoom

Opinion: Old age, but still produce high quality pictures..

Opinion: I´ve used this camera for about a year and I have a lot of equipment (even a scuba bag) to use it with. In my personal opinion it is a good camera, with enough definition and pretty good when point-and-shoot. Most of the rating I´ve just done are in comparison to the actual standards for this kind of camera. It has a lot of functions and features that makes it a very entertainment toy (the features works ok always).

You may want to check how the pictures look when this camera is used by unexpertice user: www.pbase.com/matias (please choose a decent resolution picture). It is fine for me, but judge yourself.
Please feel free to ask anything about this camera trought the guestobook in my site. Spanish spoken if possible ;-)

Opinion: ACTUALLY I OWN THE 2040 SERIES WHICH IS MUCH LIKE THIS ONE. THE DIFFERENT ARE ONLY MINOR:
1) BIGGER BUFFER (32MB VERSUS 8MB)
2) 3MP VERSUS 2MP
3) BETTER GRIPS MATERIAL

Opinion: I bought the camera in August 2001. Before I had a 1MP HP camera and a 2 MP Olympus 700 UZ.
I bought following acessories for the camera:
Lens tube adapter for UV-Filter and Polarizer filter.
Olympus wide angle, tele and Macro lens.
Vivitar 285 external flash (perfect indoor results) with a no name flash bracket and Olympus connection cable to flash.
The quality of the prints is great. I use Future Shop Online in Canada. I made a few prints 12x18. From 80cm distance the prints look very good. Some interpolation done in Photoshop to increase resolution to ~180pixels/inch.
My pictures improved a lot with Paint Shop Pro 7 / Photoshop post processing. Mainly Unsharp Mask / Levels / Saturation.
I use a 128MB card + 64MB card and always take pictures in the 3MP mode. I store pictures on CD's and on a external harddrive for backup. So far I filled 16CD's with pictures taken in Canada/USA in 2001-2003.
I'm very happy with this camera but would like to get an Canon D10.

Opinion: After five months, I can say that I am still quite happy with this camera. It's not without its problems, but if you are an amateur taking snapshots of family gatherings and the like, you will most likey be pleased with it too.

Image quality is very good, even in low light situations. The fast lens will take pics in low light (without flash) which will surprise you with their detail. Make sure to have a tripod for such situations, however...as with all cameras, the slower shutter speed can cause blur.

Color saturation is lovely, very warm. Skin tones are well rendered. Olympus grain is not that bad; it's there, but not so much so that it detracts from regular sized (4x6 or 5x7) images.

There can sometimes be strange color effects when the flash is used. I don't know if it's due to a weak flash or what, but the camera can get confused when used indoors with the onboard flash. Backrounds will be colored normally, but subject tends to be washed in blue-purple, as if it's only white balancing for part of the scene (the existing lighting that it auto-balanced for when depressing the shutter half-way to focus lock). This does not happen with every image...but often enough to require frequent trips into photoshop to fix the balance. It's not annoying enough to make me dislike the camera, but it keeps me from giving it a "5" for image quality. (Admittedly I am a novice, and there may be some tweakable setting that I am not aware of to remedy this, but on full-auto I would expect better performance.)

Shutter speed is reasonably fast for its class, though to achieve the best response time be sure to prefocus by depressing the shutter half way. Write times are also not too shabby; not lightning fast, but not a chore either. (TIFF files, however, take an eternity to write to the disk.)

Reviewing images afterwards is easy, and the LCD viewscreen responds very quickly to zoom and pan requests. Also, directly after taking a picture, the LCD shows the image it just took for a couple of seconds. This handy feature enables me to quickly determine whether or not I got the shot I was looking for, without fumbling with any buttons or menus.

The menu interface is fairly intuitive, especially if you have previous digital camera experience. I found it easy to learn how to quickly negotiate the menus to turn features on and off and change settings (such as ISO, autotimer, etc.). It will take some getting used to, but once you get the patterns down you'll be doing it in your sleep.

The camera also comes with a remote control, which is very handy for being part of family events instead of just the documenter.

The 3040z also comes with a great piece of photo printing software (EasyPhoto). As a reasonably advanced computer user, I generally find bundled software to be badly written, clumsy pieces of junk that serve only to clog my hard drive. However, I was very pleased with EasyPhoto. It makes batch printing wonderfully easy, and cropping pictures a snap. My only gripe is that you can't select pictures from multiple folders at once. Also, some adjusment features would be nice...light/dark, brightness/contrast, sepia tone/black and white.

I have seen people expressing concern about the lens cap. When left in place and turned on, the retractable lens attempts to open anyway, and makes an awful grinding sound and then emits a series of plaintive beeps.

At first I was concerned that this was dangerous to the mechanism, but once the camera detects the problem, the lens will stop moving, retract, and wait for you to reset the camera with the cap off. It will then recalibrate itself and extend normally. My camera endured repeated lens cap assault -- about ten times a day for the first week -- and suffered no ill effects.

At any rate, with the startling noise it makes when you forget to take the cap off, you will quickly learn not to leave the lens cap on.

For me, the 3040z is a great value in terms of image quality for the money, has a good solid build, and takes a great pic. In spite of minor annoyances, I have never regretted buying it (and I am a picky consumer!).

Opinion: This camera is loaded with features, some of which are still very rare even in very expensive digital cameras. The most impressive features include the huge zoom (still the largest?) which compensates its low megapixel a lot, the image stablization (still the only one?) that saves you from carrying a tripod, and the EVF (i.e. the SLR-style electronic viewfinder) that helps to extend battery life. My coworker who used to shoot photos with Nikon exclusively was so impressed by this camera after comparing his with mine that he bought one for over $700 which is $200 more than what I paid a year ago! He is now sold on Olympus brand! By the way, Olympus' German lens are among the best of the best.

Opinion: I bought my 3040 in March of 01. Since that time it has been to Kuwait, UK, Trinidad, and various other places and have taken enough diital images that they no longer fit on a single CD. I am guessing well over 1200-1500 images. It is still an excellent camera with very good image quality. I used it on a business trip taking pictures of several facilities and brought them back for planing purposes. Every one was very impressed with the quality of the pctures. This is my point and shoot camera - I have not shot film since I bought this. 8 x 10's are nice and have reasonable quality although I would not say 35 mm quality at that size. In 6x8 it would be hard to tell and in 4 x 6 it probably is a dead heat for what you can get from say a Walmart photo lab on 35 mm. It is now dated a bit from the 3.3 megapixtel stand point with 4 and 5 megapixtel camera's in the offing but it is still a good choice for the money.

Opinion: Great for low light and action photography. I use mine to photograph live theatre (no flash) and it handles the often-low lighting very well most of the time. At ISO 400 the noise level is acceptable for web images and snapshot quality prints. AF is amazingly accurate and quick in low light.

Despite the complaints I read about this and other digital cameras being too slow for action photography I haven't encountered any problems. The trick is to partially depress the shutter release button to keep the electronics alive and alert. Turning on Full-Time AF (buried in the submenu) helps, tho' at the cost of higher battery consumption (still within reason, tho'). In burst mode at JPEG resolution I've captured my grandson's perfect T-ball swing and takeoff toward first base.

Another trick for action shooting, or just to be ready for anything: turn on the camera and leave it on. Let the battery saver feature take care of putting the camera in sleep mode - it'll wake up promptly when the shutter release is partially depressed or when most other control buttons are pressed. Much better than turning the camera on and off between shots which forces the user to wait for the zoom lens to extend. Don't count on this camera for action in TIFF or hi-rez JPEG modes tho' - write times are too slow.

In terms of high quality images for prints or online display this camera is strongest in macrophotography. Detail is exceptional. The already strong macro capabilities are further enhanced by an old trick - mount a normal lens from a 35mm camera backward via a reversing ring.

Built-in flash is also exceptional and easy to finesse, whether for fill flash in people pix or stronger flash for macrophotography. Another macro trick - cut a hole in a white styrofoam plate, poke the lens through and use the plate as a flash diffuser. Besides creating more even light it also helps minimize the "dead spot" or shadow in the lower left corner caused by the lens.

A must-have accessory, IMHO, is the CLA-1, a simple aluminum tube that surrounds the lens at full extension. Add a 43-49mm step up ring and you can use readily available 49mm filters and other accessories, including those from the Olympus OM SLR system. I think Vivitar sells a similar extension tube. I leave my CLA-1 on all the time - the camera is less compact but I feel the protection and convenience is worthwhile.

Sample photos can be seen here:

http://www.photo.net/photodb/user?user_id=172915

All photos in the Hip Pocket Theatre folder were taken recently with the C-3040Z in the lowest light you can imagine trying to shoot under, even at ISO 400.

Photos in the Olympus C-3040Z folder are mostly of technical interest, demonstrating the camera's metering modes, macrophotos, digital zoom and slow-synch flash.

After several months of constant use and thousands of images I have no regrets, tho' I was seriously tempted by the E100RS for its 10x optical zoom and action-oriented features. What really sold me on the Olympus was the ergonomics - it simply felt better in my hands. I'd expected to buy a Canon but none of 'em felt secure in my hands. The C-3040Z design isn't as compact as some but that isn't as important to me as overall ergonomics.

Opinion: Bought this camera before I DISCOVERED this great website. Kudos to DPreview for this flawless site and fanstastic review, very objective.

The camera:
1) Good Resolution
2) Great Onboard Features
3) Fast Lens but slow camera
4) Good Size among it's class
5) Movie Mode is Good with Sound
6) I think I made the right choice for 3 mega class because the resolution/memory size(cost!) ratio is just right. Great if load in 128Mb card!!