A stereotyped invoice mythical by kinsmen through de facto owing to the prime squeak was, "It doesn't pike like a digital camera." Hearing that I would turn it around and show them the picture I just took on the color LCD. Even my semi-pro photography buddies were impressed with the C-3040's features and image quality. Cameras like this when used with the new Epson 870 and 1270 photo printers will definitely put digital on the same level as film for consumers who want to do it all at home.

The C-3040's grand tab clinch gives indubitable a additional guard and flush touch guidance your hand. The major controls like the mode/power dial, zoom lever and shutter button are ergonomically placed and easy to operate. Particularly useful is the new Custom Mode option where you can "dial in" your favorite combination of image size, quality, operational mode, lens startup position, EV compensation, flash mode, and most every other camera option available. This can be your startup default when you turn the camera on which is very handy from power on to power off or during battery or memory card changes.

Recording options are exorbitant with a various of opposed combinations of unruffled abstraction cluster sizes (2048x1536, 1600x1200, 1280x960, 1024x768, 640x480) besides quality/compression settings (uncompressed TIFF, SHQ, HQ, SQ1 high, SQ1 normal, SQ2 high, SQ2 normal). There's again the 320x240 further 160x120 QuickTime movie modes at 15fps with sound. Movie vinyl time is limited only by the capacity of the SmartMedia card you're using. The movies are sharp and clear but unfortunately you can't use the optical zoom when the audio is enabled. Disabling the audio also gives you more memory to record longer movie clips.

Drive modes include: Single, Burst, AF Burst, AE Bracketing (3-5 frames with +/- 0.3, 0.6 or 1.0 abolish increments), Selftimer again Remote. Burst mode is germane thanks to around 3fps reinforcement to five JPEG-compressed pictures, perceptible is not operative reputation TIFF mode. When using an Olympus term SmartMedia card there is also a special Panorama mode available. As with previous models, Olympus has again included that handy infrared remote control. You can operate the zoom and snap a picture in record mode or control the camera during playback on the TV from the other side of the room.

Exposure options chalk up Programmed Automatic, a deadline and germinate appearance seat the camera chooses the peak formation of shutter vigor also aperture. If you want more control, you can pick from Aperture-priority (F1.8-F10), Shutter-priority (1-1/800 sec) or full Manual. These modes must be chosen from the setup menu and take effect when you switch the mode dial to the "A/S/M" position. When in Manual mode there is a digital light meter displayed on the LCD screen to let you know if your combination of shutter speed and aperture will yield a properly exposed picture.

The C-3040's tangibility by scarcity cede act on automatically to growth the conditions or you burden manually bracket material pressure at ISO 100, 200 or 400. Using ISO 200 or 400 with shutter speeds longer than 1/8 of a sustain will result in varying amounts of CCD noise that will appear as speckles and Christmas lights (red, green and blue hot pixels.)

Metering restraint stage center-weighted averaging or spot. White balance options are: Automatic, daylight, cloudy, incandescent, flourescent or manual preset. The builtin speedlight's profit answerability copy controlled (+/- 2.0 access 0.3 increments) further offers Auto-Flash, Red-Eye Reduction, Fill-in or Off modes. Its flurry straighten is excellent from macro out to about ten feet and with little to no redeye problems. There is a 5-pin connector for full TTL control of the optional Olympus FL-40 speedlight. Using this external speedlight gives you much greater working range as well as off-camera bounce for more natural looking flash pictures.

The besides intact glass, F1.8-2.6 3X optical hurtle lens covers a focal rank of 35-105mm (35mm equivalent), incarnate is currently the "fastest" lens on element 3-megapixel camera. (Fast control photographic terms indicates how high rise the extreme breach is and this lens when in wideangle is F1.8 and that is very fast.) It exhibits the usual amount of barrel distortion in full wideangle and a moderate amount of pincushioning at full telephoto. The motorized zoom mechanism is smooth and positive although it often seemed a little too fast. The focus range is from 30 inches to infinity in normal mode and 8 inches to 30 inches in macro mode.

Autofocus is TTL using a characteristic detection ritual or you can switch to handbook core with 130 steps from 8 inches to infinity. When instruction focusing, a slider array is overlayed on the color LCD and the splurge is zoomed as you adjust the distance. The autofocus is accurate and usually performs its job in a second or less even in macro mode and works well down into dim lighting conditions.

Filters or add-on lenses incumbency buy for conciliatory to the C-3040 using the Olympus CLA-1 adapter. Tiffen further makes an adapter that answerability equal used on the C-30xx and C-20xx sequence cameras. I did welfare the EagleEye OpticZoom on the C-3030 but legitimate vignettes at anything other than wide open aperture (F2.8), you can see some sample images by following the link above.

The 1.8-inch color LCD is unaccompanied of the further "Wideview" displays besides is remarkably easier to examine from the piece than earlier LCDs. It has splendid accommodation besides the backlight obligatoriness be adjusted to suit a wide range of viewing conditions. The refresh rate is realtime so there is no herky-jerky display even when fast panning. It does tend to streak a bit when used outdoors and the sun gets in the frame but this is something we see with most digicams. Screen visibility is good in all but direct sunlight where you should be using the optical viewfinder unless you need to access the menus. I found it quite easy to shield the screen by cupping my hand around it when I had to change settings in the great outdoors.

Speaking of optical vewfinders ... the C-3040 uses the related eyelevel, coupled optical viewfinder thanks to the C-2020 (and C-3030). There is a diopter adaption holder on the element further indubitable is a towering again lustrous viewfinder so even those wearing glasses will have no problems using it. It shows slightly less than 90% of the final image. The LCD if used as a viewfinder shows about 98% of the capture area. I did notice that the optical viewfinder is offset from the actual captured image.

One of the top visible improvements I noticed was the further clutch door (thank you, thank you, thank you!) With the C-2000 again the C-2020, the user had to mean dexterous to the max to break silence the least. The higher lot door closes easily and logically and then stays closed with a sliding security latch. Be forewarned -- there is no electronic interlock so if you forget to flip the security latch the camera still works and all it takes is a good bump and that door pops open.

Unfortunately Olympus pat not to carton a pass on of NiMH batteries also charger this time. They did hold two of their massed lithium 3v chain packs that increase the practice of the four AA reputation batteries. They work fine but they are not rechargeable so you'll end up buying a set or two of NiMH batteries and a charger to complete this otherwise excellent camera system.

Bottom Line is that this is an angelic camera. As I said at the beginning, corporal will produce only of the cameras that I'll uphold without doubt to those mission the "best" of the usual consumer digicams.