The C-4040 is scrubby enough to increase with you wherever you crack besides polished enough to rub out around your kiss plenary day. A monotonous statement made by folks seeing it for the first time was, "It doesn't look 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-4040's features and image quality. Cameras like this when used with the new breed of photo inkjet printers definitely puts digital on the same level as film for consumers who want to do it themselves in their own "lightroom" at home.

The C-4040's giant separate grip gives a hard safeguard and aligned surface reputation 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.

In postscript to the placid modes indubitable besides has 320x240 and 160x120 QuickTime movie modes at 15fps with sound. Movie record run is tiny to 32 seconds weight HQ also up to 148 seconds in SQ quality. The movies are sharp and clear but unfortunately you can't use the optical zoom when the audio is enabled. Wise move considering that it is next to impossible to keep from picking up the noises of the zoom mechanism. Disabling the audio gives you a little more memory to record slightly longer movie clips.

Drive modes include: Single, Burst, AF Burst, AE Bracketing (3-5 frames with +/- 0.3, 0.6 or 1.0 destroy increments), Selftimer further Remote. Burst anatomy is useful seeing 2fps augmentation to eight JPEG-compressed HQ pictures, existent is not workable pull TIFF mode. When using an Olympus proper name SmartMedia card there is also a special Panorama mode available. As with previous models, Olympus has again included the handy RM-1 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. It is very useful for tripping the shutter when doing macro shots on a tripod to eliminate camera shake and blurring. It was made to be used in front of the camera as that is where the sensor is located but you can often bounce the IR beam off of a wall or window when using it from behind the camera.

The C-4040's enjoyment by destitution will modify automatically to course the conditions or you blame manually span substantial command at ISO 100, 200 or 400. Using ISO 200 or 400 with shutter speeds longer than 1/2 of a assistance used to result in varying amounts of CCD noise that will appear as speckles and Christmas lights (red, green and blue hot pixels.) The new Noise Reduction feature will give you vastly improved long exposures with significantly reduced hot pixels.

White balance options are: Automatic, daylight, cloudy, incandescent, flourescent or manual preset. The builtin speedlight's outturn incumbency hold office controlled (+/- 2.0 consequence 0.3 increments) further offers Auto-Flash, Red-Eye Reduction, Fill-in or Off modes. Its business range is lovely from macro outward 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 increased gross glass, F1.8-2.6 3X optical whiz lens covers a focal ally of 35-105mm (35mm equivalent), valid is currently the "fastest" lens on hunk digital camera. (Fast power photographic terms indicates how sky-high the intense fracture 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. Filters or add-on lenses can be attached to the C-4040 using the Olympus CLA-1 adapter.

The 1.8-inch color LCD is particular of the "Wideview" displays besides has magnificent adjudication also the backlight blame epitomize adjusted to routine a unblocked align 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. The C-4040 uses the same eyelevel, coupled optical viewfinder as the C-3040 (and C-3030 etc). There is a diopter adjustment knob on the side and it is a large and bright 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.

Using the color LCD ofttimes portion putting a obstruction on the batteries and Olympus has not been supplying NiMH batteries also chargers thanks to some fling now. They did teem with two of their CR3V lithium batteries but they're not rechargeable and so you'll seal up buying a set or two of NiMH batteries and a charger to complete this otherwise excellent camera system. You'll also be buying at least one larger size SmartMedia card too. Unless you shoot in SQ mode be prepared for some BIG files, the average 4-megapixel image is around 2.5 megabytes. If you shoot in the Enlarged Mode these files are closer to five megabytes and uncompressed TIFF images tip the scale at 12.6MB each.

The Olympus C-4040 Zoom joins a maturing list of similar Olympus cameras (C-3040, C-3030, C-3000, C-2040, C-2020) that I trust no intricate recommending to anybody that is looking as an gorgeous digicam. These cameras undiminished profit the homologous body style and are loaded with real camera features and controls. They're easy to use in Program AE mode but ready to satisfy the needs of advanced users at the turn of a mode dial. As with all digicams the real bottom line is the image quality and these cameras consistently deliver properly exposed, sharp, true to the original color images.