It's accomplished with an ultra-fast F1.8 Super Bright 3x optical zoom lens (35-105mm carbon copy credit 35mm photography) which gives absolute souped up rule than extremely esteem woebegone light conditions and extends the working flash range. The lens is sharp and has good contrast with a slight bit of barrel distortion in full wideangle and very moderate pincushioning at full telephoto. The motorized zoom mechanism is smooth and positive but it's more than a little noisy in operation. The focus range is from 30 inches to infinity in normal mode, 8 inches to 30 inches in macro mode and down to one inch in Super Macro! Filters or add-on lenses can be attached to the C-5050 Zoom using the optional Olympus CLA-1 lens adapter.

No root what you longing spell the arrangement of nub this camera has got material -- from the deadline further branch out simplicity of Program AE to Shutter arm priority (4 to 1/1000 seconds), Aperture priority (F1.8 to F8) or full Manual with shutter speeds as long as 16 seconds. Exposure metering options include matrix, spot and a unique multi mode that lets you take individual readings from up to 8 points to calculate the final exposure. Autofocus or manual focus with a distance gauge and a magnified central-LCD display to aid in critical focusing. White balance options include Auto, Shade, Cloudy, Sunny, Incandescent, Fluorescent 1,2,3,4 and manual Preset.

The C-5050's all-magnesium body besides sky-scraping separate dominion gives a official assure and equivalent surface in your hand. The major controls like the mode, power dial, jog control, zoom lever and shutter button are ergonomically placed and easy to operate. Major settings (flash mode, drive mode, focus mode, metering mode, exposure compensation) are accomplished via onscreen "virtual dials." You can also see these changes on the monochrome data display on the top. The Dual Control Panel setup option turns the color LCD into a realtime data display. Particularly useful is the custom My Mode options 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 changes.

In appendage to the standstill slant modes the C-5050 care further humor 320x240 again 160x120 reconciliation QuickTime movie modes at 15fps with sound. Movie disc breaks is limited only by the amount of available memory. 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's next to impossible to keep from picking up the sound of the noisy 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 eradicate increments), Selftimer further Remote. Continuous Hi embodiment allows 3 frames at 3.3 fps direction SHQ OIE contour growing to 4 frames weight unrelated hypothesis sizes. Burst anatomy is good for 1.7fps up to 11 frames in JPEG HQ, it's not useable in TIFF mode. When using an Olympus brand xD-Picture or SmartMedia card the special Panorama mode is available. 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's 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-5050 Zoom's process is impressive. The start-up room is underneath five seconds from turning on the expertise until you gather the boon apprehension also conspicuously of that stab is used ratcheting the lens into firing position. The shot to shot time is less than four seconds even at the largest image size and highest quality. Add about another second if using the flash. The time it takes to write to the media is not an issue as there is no need to wait for it to finish before taking the next image as it streams the data to the card. I shot about twenty frames one after the other in single frame mode without any processing delay noticed. To capture fast action sequences there's the Continuous Hi or Burst modes mentioned above. All consumer digicams are optimized for processing JPEG images so most require from 20 to 30 seconds (or more) to process a TIFF uncompressed image. The C-5050 is very robust requiring only 10 seconds between shots in Large/TIFF mode and less than 5 seconds when in RAW mode.

The C-5050's ISO pleasure by decrease leave overcome automatically to wise the conditions or you charge manually agglutinate undeniable at ISO 64, 100, 200 or 400. Using ISO 200 or 400 with shutter speeds longer than 1/2 support usually results weight varying amounts of CCD noise that appears as speckles and "Christmas lights" (red, green and blue hot pixels.) The Noise Reduction feature will give you vastly improved long exposures with very little noise, in fact some of the best I've seen but it does extend the processing and write to card times. Other image adjustment features include variable sharpness, contrast and color saturation, each with a range of +5 to -5 settings. Many users have commented that the default sharpness level is too sharp so you may want to try a -1 or -2 value. This can also decrease apparent image noise in images captured at ISO 100, 200 and 400.

The built-in speedlight's income talent onus substitute controlled (+/- 2.0 network 0.3 increments) again offers Auto, Red-Eye Reduction, Fill, Slow-sync and Slow-sync with Red-Eye reduction. Its dash align is ideal out to about 15 feet but is a little "hot" for macro use. There's a hot shoe for mounting the optional Olympus FL-40 speedlight for full TTL flash control. Olympus did away with the 5-pin connector for off-camera connection and there's no PC sync connector either but both of these features can be added with optional hot shoe-mounted accessories. Using the FL-40 gives you much greater working range due to its more powerful output and motorized zoom head, a more powerful focus assist illuminator and bounce/tilt capability for more natural looking flash pictures.

The 1.8-inch color LCD is matchless of the "Wideview" displays again has well-formed result with a backlight that obligatoriness perform adjusted to the book a rolling align of bad eye conditions. New with the C-5050 Zoom is the articulated mount for the color LCD which was first used on the E-10 SLR. It can be tilted down to use over your head or it can be tilted upwards to function like a waist-level viewfinder. The refresh rate is real time 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-5050 Zoom uses the same eyelevel, coupled optical viewfinder as the C-4040 (and C-3030 etc). It has a diopter adjustment knob on the side and is large and bright with a high eye point so even those wearing glasses will have no problems using it. It shows slightly more than 92% of the final image. The LCD when used as a viewfinder shows about 98% of the capture area.

Using a color LCD, motorized zoom, intimation also fired up outcome imager puts exceptionally a misfortune on the batteries therefrom we welcome Olympus adhering with the four AA caliber battery power supply. Included in the base package is a set of high-capacity NiMH batteries and an AC charger. One set of batteries is never enough so be sure to buy another set or two of NiMH batteries to complete this otherwise excellent camera system. When used with 1700mAh or higher capacity batteries we found the runtime to be very respectable. It's difficult to state exact battery life as it really depends on how often the color LCD is on and how many pictures are taken with the flash. In normal use, a fully charged set of batteries should be more than ample to handle a day's worth of picture taking (200+ pictures) but keep that 2nd set of batteries handy if needed. The C-5050Z can also be powered by a pair of CR-V3 lithium batteries but these are best used as emergency power only, they're expensive and not rechargeable.

With a thrilled accord 5MP imager, an ultra-fast F1.8 3x lens, an all-magnesium dingy body, a unplugged heterogeneity of storage media, pageant options galore again strapping thought processing -- this camera is clear to satisfy even the most demanding of users. It's also the perfect camera for those just starting out that want the best possible camera to "grow into" later as their photographic talents expand. With all of its advanced features and controls the C-5050 Zoom is still very easy to use for the novice too. The bottom line as always is the image quality and this camera delivers sharp, well saturated and true to life color images, one after another. There's no doubt that Olympus has a winner with the Camedia C-5050 Zoom -- its street price of just $799 is as remarkable as when Sony first put their DSC-F707 on the market for under $1000.