Olympus C-730 Ultra Zoom

i bought this camera mostly due to it's zoom feautures - after taking hundreds of pics i am more than pleased with the results in any mode - from auto to manual - very easy to use - light weight

easy to use - light weight - very sharp clear images!

unit comes with a 16 mb Xd card - this is practically useless - had to buy a bigger card (256 Xd)

Basically all what written in previous review. But decreasing sharpness level helped! Thanks a lot!! I made thousands of pictures with 1600x1200 resolution but now i will go for 2048x1538 pixels!

good battery life, with 4 VARTA photoaccu 1900mAh fully charged i am shooting approx. 300 photos occasionally using flash.

Autofocus and manual focus in low light shots

few company digicameras and Panasonic NV-DS50 DV camcorder

did not try yet

See the BuckW review above. Through many web searches I found a resolution the the "grainy picture problem" It seems the cameras "Sharp" setting is dialed too high at the factory, so tone it down to -5 (the limit) and the pictures become more usable and even likable

The software, features for your money, size. AA batteries.

Has so much trouble focusing indoors and at the limit of the zoom lens. Manulal focus not intuitive. xD picturecard / Limited size on Smartmedia.

Olympus C3030us Canon A20 (sisters) Casio QV2000UX (first digicam) Sony DSC-P9 (a friends)

Worthless!!! You are basically on your own

I purchased from B&H Photo (Excellent Dealer) at a reasonable price. The lens attracted me and also I owned the C3030. This camera however, is CRAP!!! 90% of the pictures are GRAINY (as if your using 1000 speed film in daylight) and if manually have the ISO at 100, the camera also has a hard time focusing indoors. I have contacted Olympus Japan, they forwarded my email to Olympus USA, then all the e-mails after that to Japan are bounced back (intentionally blocked). Olympus USA has refused to deal with the problems, I sent them samples at least 6 times and each time they asked for "more sample"(5 of those times they were straight out of the camera, with the EXIF data included. The last time I contacted them (2/24/03), I was told by their rep (Mr McFairlane) that his computer OS was upgraded and he LOST my case and all pictures, such BS! Also some pictures get halos in dark areas, their answer to this is that light bouncing inside the lens causes this, that I shoud buy a polorizing filter! This is a design flaw. Setting the camera to TIFF the pictures are a lttle better. Only one review site touches on this, see; http://www.envynews.com/review.php?ID=394&page=3 Are all the others blind to this??

Price,, menu is top notch, uses AA batteries, confortable to hold, movie mode w/sound limited by memory on card

Pictures are unusable unless you resize down. Has a lot of trouble focusing indoors, and especially when the zoom all the way out. This is a Camera, you buy if for pictures, well theyre crap!

Olympus C3030us Canon A20 (sisters) Casio QV2000UX (first digicam) Sony DSC-P9 (a friends)

The respond to you alright, only to give you the run around. They didn't provide any answers, My question in reality was if there was a problem with "my" camera, never got an answer from them that resolved any of my issues. Then my case was "lost".

I bought in a C730 just before the Christmas 2002. I like it as it is handy, easy to use and with fully auto/manual operations (shutter priority, aparture priority and manual operations), White balance and ultra-zoom. Up till now, I have taken over 500 exposure by this camera. You would like it in taking long distant photos (33X would give you up to 1000mm equivalent at 35mm photo world).

Handy, Easy to use, fully automatic and manual operations, ultra-zoom (10x lens zoom * 3.3 digital zoom), 4 user programmable modes, auto/manual white balance, ESP/spot metering and multi-metering featured.

Limited to 1/1000 sec shutter speed, insensitive to auto-focus at dim environment, slow at taking continuous-shots, fair performance at lens fineness.