dummycamera
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Here is my take after a few weeks of use. Please note I'm focusing on movie mode, as picture modes are good enough for us consumers on any >€300 camera. I also included a wish list for C-770 with references to cameras that have the feature - Olypmpus please read in order to make this a top-notch camera 
The good:
1. Good quality, well built, metalic case.
2. Great pictures. Good AUTO settings, plus all needed manual settings.
3. Excellent built-in dual-flash, above it's class for this type of camera. Does it's job to about 5m. There's also an option of external flash if needed.
TO-DO: Flash assist would be very welcome. It would give me more naturally looking pictures, instead of those white-faced-with-big-shadows-on-the-walls pictures of friends and family.
4. 10x ZOOM
10x zoom is awesome in this kind of camera, but beware - you really need a tripod to take a good picture. Taking pictures at 10x with your camera in hand will mostly produce blurry pictures.
TO-DO: Optical image stabilizer ala Canon S1 IS.
5. Movie mode produces MPEG4 encoded files in a MP4 container. However the movie quality is so-so, more about it below...
Files are easilly converted to AVI (DivX) with the excellent MP4cam2AVI tool. They play everywhere, even on my el-cheapo €50 standalone player connected to TV (actually this is the best veiwing experience). MP4 to AVI is only a file-format conversion, not a re-encoding of video data, so no quality loss occurs..
TO-DO: Produce files in AVI format.
Problems:
The bad:
1. Bad grip
Holding grip is too small to securelly hold the camera and thus impossible to (reliably) operate the camera with the holding hand. One-hand operation is a no-go even for the basic operations.
TO-DO: Maka grip bigger ala Casio EX-P505
2. Optics is not so sturdy
The optics is "moving" - if you shake the camera side-to-side you can hear and see the optics moving for about 0.5mm. Protective cap if fixed to the optics and not to the housing - if you accidentially hit something, even with the cap on, it looks like you might hurt the optics moving mechanism.
TO-DO: Make integrated optics with integrated protection ala Casio EX-P505
3. Pictures at low light
C-770 has troubles focusing in low-light conditions (= afternoon indoors). Also pictures tend to be grainy at low-light.
TO-DO: AF assist lamp as found on many cameras.
4. Movie encoding quality
MPEG4 movies are a 2000 kbit/s MPEG4 movies at 640x480 30fps. Which would mean excellent quality if this was encoded on the PC. However the quality is not so good and many artifacts are seen, especially if you watch the movie an a PC monitor (TV set is more forgiving). It seems that the camera processor is not fast enough to do the hi-quality encoding at real time. Do not expect the quality of the miniDV camcorders.
Also auto-focus is really having hard time focusing during movie mode and tends to go in- and out-of-focus really a lot, especially if the objects are moving (which they do during movie taking. Again not on par with camcorders.
TO-DO: Make real-time MPEG4 encoding as good quailty as on a 3GHz PC. Yet to be seen.
5. Zoom-microphone during movies
You cannot use optical zoom and internal microphone at the same time during movie mode. Zoom is set as default every time at power-on - which means silent movies are default. You have to go through three levels of menus to enable microphone - this is a really annoying misfeature.
You can overcome this by using the external microphone -
but in this case you have to have the side cover-doors open and exposed to breaking-off.
TO-DO: Better microphone that would work simoultaneously with zoom (without hearing zoom motors on your recording), as seen on most consumer miniDV cameras.
6. Memory cards too small and/or too expensive
While a single 512 Mb or 1 Gb card is more than enough for photos, it is not nearly enough for movies. 512 Mb xD-card only takes about 30min of MPEG4 footage. I'd need about 10 of them for my average vacation and they would cost me about 2x the price of the camera itself.
Before digital cameras get accepted for taking movies, we
need to see a price drop of about 5x-10x on storage media.
The good:
1. Good quality, well built, metalic case.
2. Great pictures. Good AUTO settings, plus all needed manual settings.
3. Excellent built-in dual-flash, above it's class for this type of camera. Does it's job to about 5m. There's also an option of external flash if needed.
TO-DO: Flash assist would be very welcome. It would give me more naturally looking pictures, instead of those white-faced-with-big-shadows-on-the-walls pictures of friends and family.
4. 10x ZOOM
10x zoom is awesome in this kind of camera, but beware - you really need a tripod to take a good picture. Taking pictures at 10x with your camera in hand will mostly produce blurry pictures.
TO-DO: Optical image stabilizer ala Canon S1 IS.
5. Movie mode produces MPEG4 encoded files in a MP4 container. However the movie quality is so-so, more about it below...
Files are easilly converted to AVI (DivX) with the excellent MP4cam2AVI tool. They play everywhere, even on my el-cheapo €50 standalone player connected to TV (actually this is the best veiwing experience). MP4 to AVI is only a file-format conversion, not a re-encoding of video data, so no quality loss occurs..
TO-DO: Produce files in AVI format.
Problems:
The bad:
1. Bad grip
Holding grip is too small to securelly hold the camera and thus impossible to (reliably) operate the camera with the holding hand. One-hand operation is a no-go even for the basic operations.
TO-DO: Maka grip bigger ala Casio EX-P505
2. Optics is not so sturdy
The optics is "moving" - if you shake the camera side-to-side you can hear and see the optics moving for about 0.5mm. Protective cap if fixed to the optics and not to the housing - if you accidentially hit something, even with the cap on, it looks like you might hurt the optics moving mechanism.
TO-DO: Make integrated optics with integrated protection ala Casio EX-P505
3. Pictures at low light
C-770 has troubles focusing in low-light conditions (= afternoon indoors). Also pictures tend to be grainy at low-light.
TO-DO: AF assist lamp as found on many cameras.
4. Movie encoding quality
MPEG4 movies are a 2000 kbit/s MPEG4 movies at 640x480 30fps. Which would mean excellent quality if this was encoded on the PC. However the quality is not so good and many artifacts are seen, especially if you watch the movie an a PC monitor (TV set is more forgiving). It seems that the camera processor is not fast enough to do the hi-quality encoding at real time. Do not expect the quality of the miniDV camcorders.
Also auto-focus is really having hard time focusing during movie mode and tends to go in- and out-of-focus really a lot, especially if the objects are moving (which they do during movie taking
. Again not on par with camcorders.TO-DO: Make real-time MPEG4 encoding as good quailty as on a 3GHz PC. Yet to be seen.
5. Zoom-microphone during movies
You cannot use optical zoom and internal microphone at the same time during movie mode. Zoom is set as default every time at power-on - which means silent movies are default. You have to go through three levels of menus to enable microphone - this is a really annoying misfeature.
You can overcome this by using the external microphone -
but in this case you have to have the side cover-doors open and exposed to breaking-off.
TO-DO: Better microphone that would work simoultaneously with zoom (without hearing zoom motors on your recording), as seen on most consumer miniDV cameras.
6. Memory cards too small and/or too expensive
While a single 512 Mb or 1 Gb card is more than enough for photos, it is not nearly enough for movies. 512 Mb xD-card only takes about 30min of MPEG4 footage. I'd need about 10 of them for my average vacation and they would cost me about 2x the price of the camera itself.
Before digital cameras get accepted for taking movies, we
need to see a price drop of about 5x-10x on storage media.