Best I could ask for!

Author's Rating:

Pros: Versatility, zoom, options, weight, size.

Cons: Price, power button small (minor), small memory

The Bottom Line: 
Great camera with lots of options, something for everyone to use. Best I could find for the price and options.

Author's Review
I looked for months before buying the Olympus C740 camera. I wanted a camera with a great zoom lens, one that would give me many options, but not too complicated. I also wanted one that I knew my husband would want/could use if need be. This meant everything on it had to be easy to understand, from directions to turning it on.

This camera does require you to ready the directions from front to back, but they are NOT complicated. Very straight forward and I am a very visual learner so the pictures in the manual are very helpful. It takes you through putting in the memory and batteries, explaining how to plug it into your TV for viewing and adding pictures to your computer. Though I found that the software they give you is not 100% "complete", in order to have their Pro package you spend another $20 or so and you get more options, like emailing pictures, etc. Really I don't know if that was necessary, but I thought I spent $400 on the camera $20 more wasn't too bad. You can do all this from home, via web site, and it is applied to your software using your registration number, which is a nice thing for Olympus to do.

I like the warranty, fair enough. My basic opinion is that if you use your camera often and if it's going to break it probably will break more sooner than later, so an extended warranty isn't necessary, when the original one should cover it.

Battery life seems to be big thing with digital cameras. I used one set of original batteries for about a month before they stopped working. Now this was over the holidays, many pictures, deleting pictures, reviewing pictures, showing people how the camera worked, zooming in and out, using the high optical as well well as the digital zoom, a football game, and pictures of the kids at home. I thought that was fair. I bought a recharger for my new (CR-V3)rechargeable digital camera batteries. Plus I have reg CR-V3 batteries as backups when I need to charge. I've the had the new ones in for a month now and haven't had to recharge at all.

The optical zoom is amazing and you can use the digital zoom to make objects even closer, but for this I would recommend using a tripod if the object of your photo is moving at all. My little boy has a tendency to never sit still if I want to take a picture so you may have to work with the ISO and zoom to see at which speed and distance you need to get good solid pictures if you have a child who is very bouncy, which most are!

You can make your photos, black and white, (sepia)antique looking, regular color and black or white board. You can take 2 in 1 photos, which I think is very cool, one child on one side of the picture and the other on the other side of the frame. Panoramic is another option, though, I haven't used it yet, nor do I really expect to.

You can delete one picture at a time or save one or two pictures and delete the rest all at the tough on a couple buttons, very nice feature.

I like the view monitor, I think it's much clearer than other cameras of the same quality and zoom ability. I have yet to use the optical view, not useful to me with the great monitor.

I don't like the power button, to me it's just small and hard to push, same with the view button. Unless you push it right in the middle of the button it doesn't switch from the optical view to the monitor view. Also, the 16 MB memory is really too small, even for the casual photograph. If you go on vacation or Christmas, holidays, birthdays, etc, you make take more HQ pictures than the small memory will allow for without deleting some. Sure you can use SQ mode and get more, but that's not always possible when you're trying to get a quick photo and don't want to mess with the controls to get into SQ mode. Sure the price is a little high, but hey, it's a great camera with a lot of options.

The pictures taken are of very good quality. I have made many 8X10 and they are all beautiful and if I had a really good printer they would be amazing pictures. Very clear and the color is fantastic. I have taken pictures in a dark room, like with our Christmas tree and the flash was so bright you couldn't see the lights on the tree and it looked as though the room was bright, not dark. I have no issues with the flash at all, except maybe forgetting to put it up once or twice.

My husband used the camera at a football game and all the pictures were clear, including the action shots. He isn't the best photograph at all which is why I was happy the photos turned out so well.

Finally, I used a 35 mm for YEARS and I will never go back. I like the ease of use and the small size for the camera. I was very surprised at the size, pleasantly surprised.