Timing & Performance

The C-8080 Wide Zoom is a fast camera for its type, indeed its sub-one-second startup time is better than some digital SLR's, it's still faster than the competition even at telephoto. Kudos Olympus. Auto focus felt fast and was truly fast in a point-and-shoot situation, if you 'half press' the camera returns with an AF lock indication somewhere between three quarters and one and a half seconds. However this isn't the whole story, if you skip the half press and simply take a shot in one action (full depression of shutter release) the C-8080 auto focuses, measures AE and takes the shot much more quickly. In a good AF situation (wide angle, good light) we managed it in 0.3 seconds, that's almost twice as fast as the competition.

The C-8080's slowest function is playback, image to image times with an SHQ quality JPEG were around two and a half seconds which can get a bit tedious for reviewing.

Timing Notes

All times calculated as an average of three operations. Unless otherwise stated all timings were made on a 3264 x 2448 SHQ JPEG image (approx. 3,500 KB per image). The media used for these tests was a 1 GB SanDisk Ultra II Type I Compact Flash card.

Action	Details	Time, seconds
Power: Off to Record	Lens to wide angle	0.9
Power: Off to Record	Lens to telephoto	2.2
Power: Off to Play	Image displayed	3.2
Power: Record to Off	Lens at wide angle	1.1
Power: Record to Off	Lens to telephoto	1.8
Power: Play to Off		<0.1
Record Review	Image displayed	1.5
Mode: Record to Quick View	Depends on image size	3.1
Mode: Record to Play	Depends on image size	3.1
Mode: Play to Record	Lens already extended (wide angle)	0.8
Mode: Play to Record	Lens not extended (wide angle)	1.7
Play: Magnify	To first level of magnification	<0.1
Play: Thumbnail view	2 x 2 thumbnails	1.1
Play: Thumbnail view	3 x 3 thumbnails	1.8

Lag Timing Definitions

Half-press Lag (0->S1) Many digital camera users prime the AF and AE systems on their camera by half-pressing the shutter release. This is the amount of time between a half-press of the shutter release and the camera indicating an auto focus & auto exposure lock on the LCD monitor / viewfinder (ready to shoot).	(Prime AF/AE)
Half to Full-press Lag (S1->S2) The amount of time it takes from a full depression of the shutter release button (assuming you have already primed the camera with a half-press) to the image being taken.	(Take shot, AF/AE primed)
Full-press Lag (0->S2) The amount of time it takes from a full depression of the shutter release button (without performing a half-press of the shutter release beforehand) to the image being taken. This is more representative of the use of the camera in a spur of the moment 'point and shoot' situation.	(Take shot, AF/AE not primed)

Continuous mode

The tables below show the results of our continuous shooting test, indicating the actual frame rate along with maximum number of frames and how long you would have to wait after taking the maximum number of frames before you could take another shot. Media used for these tests was a 1 GB SanDisk Ultra II card. Shutter speed was kept above 1/250 sec during these tests.

High / Standard / AF continuous drive modes

Image Type	Continuous mode	Avg. frames per sec *1	Frames in one burst *2	Delay before next shot *3
3264 x 2448 RAW	High	1.8 fps	5	61.8 sec
3264 x 2448 SHQ	High	1.8 fps	5	8.7 sec
3264 x 2448 HQ	High	1.8 fps	5	7.1 sec
2288 x 1712 SQ1	High	1.8 fps	5	7.6 sec
1600 x 1200 SQ2	High	1.8 fps	5	6.7 sec
3264 x 2448 SHQ	Standard	1.2 fps	12	5.0 sec
3264 x 2448 HQ	Standard	1.2 fps	22	3.0 sec
2288 x 1712 SQ1	Standard	1.2 fps	14	4.7 sec
1600 x 1200 SQ2	Standard	1.2 fps	40	2.5 sec
3264 x 2448 SHQ	AF	0.8 fps	12	5.0 sec
3264 x 2448 HQ	AF	0.8 fps	22	2.7 sec
2288 x 1712 SQ1	AF	0.8 fps	14	5.0 sec
1600 x 1200 SQ2	AF	0.8 fps	41	2.5 sec

A consistent, reliable if average performance from the C-8080. Thankfully at least Olympus has chosen to be conservative in its marketing material, it labels high speed as 1.6 fps (we achieved 1.8 fps) and standard speed as 1.0 fps (we achieved 1.2 fps).

File Write / Display and Sizes

Timings shown below are the time taken for the camera to process and "flush" the image out to the storage card, the timer was started as soon as the shutter release was pressed and stopped when activity indicator beside the Compact Flash compartment door went out. This means the timings also include the cameras processing time and as such are more representative of the actual time to "complete the task". The media used for these tests was a 1 GB SanDisk Ultra II Type I Compact Flash card.

A respectable performance, the C-8080 processes images quickly and begins writing them about a second faster than some other eight megapixel digital cameras. In addition it had an approximate CF interface throughput of between 1 and 1.5 MB/sec.

Low Light Auto Focus

This test is designed to measure the minimum amount of light under which the camera can still focus. The focus target is our lens distortion test chart (shown here on the right), camera is positioned exactly 2 m (6.6 ft) away.

Light levels are gradually dropped until the camera can no longer focus. This is carried out at both wide angle and telephoto zoom positions (as more light reaches the focusing systems with a larger aperture).

AF assist lamp

The C-8080 has an orange AF assist lamp positioned on the camera body which it uses to illuminate the scene in low light situations. This extra illumination is designed to assist the contrast detect portion of the hybrid AF system to achieve a good AF lock.

Low light AF was as we had expected, AF lock in complete darkness with the AF assist lamp enabled and AF lock with a little light with it disabled. AF times were noticeably slower in these low light situations but again approximately what was expected for this type of camera.

Battery life

We ran the camera through our new battery life test. This test is designed to be fair and comparative to each camera and battery type:

• Take 4 shots without flash
• Wait 2 minutes (50% of the time powering the camera off)
• Take 1 shot with flash
• Wait 1 minute
• Repeat

Batteries are fully discharged and recharged before the test and all cameras were reset to their factory default settings. Here are the results:

The C-8080 Wide Zoom lasted for almost six hours on its BLM-1 Lithium-Ion battery. Not only was this the best performance of any of our eight megapixel group but also was the longest lasting camera we've ever tested. Sufficient to say that even if you shoot all day the C-8080 and a single battery will last and probably even into the next day.