Olympus C-5000 Zoom

I'm a 35mm slide film nut, and didn't know why I bought it at first. I'm glad I did, because it's an awesome camera. It has many features of an SLR-manual exposure control, shutter speeds from 1/1000 to 16 sec, manual focus(but it's a joke), hot shoe for flash, aperture and shutter priority, spot metering, selectable AF target area, exposure compensation, filter threads with CLA-6 adaptor. Some other great features-white balance with fine adjustments, wireless remote(included),flash exposure compensation, panoramic feature(with Olympus xD cards only), noise reduction for long exposures(it really works), video out jack and cord to hook up to TV, sharpness, contrast, and color saturation adjustments. If you're used to films with strong colors, you'll probably want to keep the saturation maxed out. The dedicated Olympus flash costs about $250-300, which is crazy. Almost any flash can be used, as long as it has an auto aperture mode. You set the camera and flash to the same ISO and aperture. The sensor on the flash determines the correct exposure. On mine, it underexposes 2/3 of a stop with my Nikon and Sunpak flashes, so run some test shots and compensate as necessary. I set the camera to ISO 80 and the flash to 50. The image quality is very good. Even shooting at 1600 X 1200 High(about 2MP), yields a great 4X6 print. Movie mode is available, but I've never used it. The lithium ion rechargable battery gets eaten by the internal flash and LCD screen, but it's still reasonable. Invest in an extra battery. The lens has good optics, but only 3x optical zoom is less than ideal. It has digital zoom, but you're sacrificing image quality when using it.

You get many features for the money Picture quality Almost fits in your pocket

3x optical zoom-at least 5x would be nice Shutter delay(typical of digital point and shoot cameras highset ISO is only 320 Battery life can be short if you use LCD screen and built in flash Cost of accesories

none- this is my first point and shoot digital

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C-5000Z This camera takes excellent photos under most conditions without a lot of fussing around. The preset modes seem to work well and the manual modes are nice. Very good battery life, adjustable resolution and quality settings will stretch the memory. The case is easy to hold on to and is not to heavy. Reaching around the mode button is a bit of a stretch. The Display button is very handy to show off a shot to the subject (I get much more co-operation when I show them what they look like). Downloading is a joy with the USB cable and changing the memory and battery is easy and secure. I don't print on an inkjet any longer as Ofoto.com gives me better prints and at very low cost. The memory and battery are not too hard to find and not over 10% over the more common types ($35 for the battery and $58 for the 128 meg Xd memory). Work a rounds while focusing during dark scenes is to point at a brighter scene set the focus and turn back to the subject works, also there is a manual focus mode which I haven’t used so far. Close photos in dark scenes where the flash is too strong, I change to the portrait mode which seems to reduce the flash output. The infrared remote only works to about 15 feet, I am considering using a “learning” remote or changing the led with a super bright type. When I bought this camera I got a free 128 meg Xd memory. Comes with battery, nice charger, 64 meg memory, USB and video cables. Camedia photo editing and panorama software.

very good photos. long life on battery, good auto settings, lots of special and custom settings.

focus in low light, slow lens, special battery and media. no sound in movie mode. smallish 64Meg included memory (get 128 or 256 megs)

Fuji 1200, Oly C-3020, C3040, Panasonic PV-SD5000, Sony FD-7,

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