An affordable, quality digital camera

Author's Rating:

Pros: Easy to use

Cons: shutter lag time, uses XD cards

The Bottom Line: 
I would highly recommend the C-740, for it's ease of use, affordablity, and options. The high quality pictures are perfect for friends, family and memories.

Author's Review
Last week, my Wife and I ran out of 35mm film, and decided it was time to bite the bullet, and purchase a digital camera. What better time to enter in to the 21st century, right? So, with our 10 month old, and my father (the more technical savvy one) in tow, we visited our local Circuit City. We were surprised at the quantity of digital cameras available to us. We knew, right off the bat, that the higher the megapixel (MP), the bigger the file, and the longer it would take to send via e-mail to the grandparents. The 3.2 MP pictures look great on the computer screen. I took a few pictures to full screen, and did not notice any pixilation, so the C-740 takes very clean shots, even in standard mode. Now if you were making a life size picture of someone, well, you may want to go with a 5.0 MP or greater, but the 3.2 MP is great for every day shots.

So we were able to eliminate the 4 and 5 MP cameras, but we didn't want to drop as low as 1 MP. That narrowed the field quite a bit. We finally had the selection down to 2 cameras, and we decided to buy the slightly more expensive model, the C-740 by Olympus.

For both me, and my wife, the deciding factor was the feel of the camera. It was like handling a regular camera, and most importantly, where the zoom knob was. On several cameras, I noted that the zoom was located on the back of the camera. It seemed slightly awkward to zoom using my thumb. The C-740 zoom knob, is located on the front of the camera, and you use your index finger to zoom in and out. This, for me, is more familiar. The thumb was not.

After purchasing the C-740 (and the service plan, which I always advocate) I immediately started playing with it, and noticed a few pros and cons. I liked the small LCD screen, and the zoom capability. The LCD screen, while small (1 1/2 inches), provides a very clear picture. The zoom (10x optical) is also one of the higher zooms in the 3MP range. With the 3x Digital Zoom, you can get up to a 30X zoom capability. Most of the cameras I saw only went from 5-7x optical zoom. The flash is very bright, and can light up an entire room quite well. You have to manually open the flash, so it will only go off if you really want it to. There are 6 scene options that allow you to dictate how the camera will take the picture. These include Black and white, sepia, white board, black board, 2-1, and resize/trim. This also one of the only digital cameras to handle panoramic shots.

The camera runs on 2 CR-V3 batteries which are included. They are not rechargeable (con) but can be replaced by 4 standard AA batteries or rechargeable batteries (pro). If you want the longer lasting replacement battery, the cheapest I could find was $16 (for 2) at Walmart. The C-740 uses the XD picture card, and a 16 megabyte (MB) card is included. These cards are about the size of a nickel, so they can be easy to loose. The one card that does come with the C-740, does not have a case, it comes in a plastic baggie. This card will get you approximately 20-24 pictures in standard mode. The higher the mode, the less pictures you'll get out of it. You can buy additional cards, the cheapest I found was a 64 MB card, for $38 at Walmart. They do go as high as 128 MB, for around $75-$80. If you do not have a XD card reader for your computer (about $25-$35 at Circuit city and Walmart), you can upload the pictures to your hard drive via a USB cord. You use battery life when you use this option. So in the long run, get the card reader, you'll save the $30 in batteries.

One of the only problem thats I have encountered, is a bit of a lag time, from when I hit the shutter button, to when the picture is actually taken. While the lag time is maybe, a half of a second, that's a long time for a 10 month old baby on hyperdrive. So some pictures require some preplanning. I think that with a bit of practice, I'll learn to work with the lag time.

The other con I've run across, is the video feature. Don't buy this camera if you think that the video feature is the end all of digital cameras. With the standard 16MB card, you only get 30 seconds, and only at 2.6 frames per second. So the video is very jerky.

In all, I really like this camera. It was affordable, considering all the options on the camera, and it is easy to use.