Labs

The C-350 is solid and silver but, alas, not that slim. Its rounded edges and squat rectangular shape make it look like a particularly posh brick. The trademark curvy sliding lens cover pulls back with a satisfying clunk, and the camera feels very solid.

The cluster of rubberised navigation buttons makes operating the camera a bit like playing Donkey Kong on one of those old-fashioned handheld computer games, but in a good way. The only annoyance is the zoom control, which sits next to the shutter, so you have to operate it with finger rather than thumb.

If you're not a miniature person from the Land of Small, you'll appreciate the fact that the LCD is a bit larger than average as well as reasonably clear, fast and smear-free with good colour balance. However, being right at the far left of the unit, it does tend to attract sticky thumbs. Because of this and the idiosyncratic telephoto button, you may need to give some thought to exactly how you hold the camera. Ironically, the optical viewfinder is

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tiny: so be prepared to squint to use it.

Though not quite as comprehensive as the Canon, the range of shooting controls is pretty good, with either average or spot metering, manual brightness adjustment, four white balance modes, and up to two seconds of exposure for night shots. The menus can be a bit fiddly, and some basic options such as picture quality are hard to find at first, but there are quick access buttons for macro, flash mode and timer.

Playback mode is accessed by pressing the Quick View button with the lens cover shut, but you can also double-tap it while shooting to switch straight to viewing shots without losing your settings. Pics appear quickly, even at high-res, and there's an option to jump through the list 10 shots at a time. While most cameras show nine thumbnails at once, the Olympus also offers four or 16.

When we saw the Olympus' outdoor shots we knew we had a winner. The zoom picked up detail such as brickwork where others captured only splotches, and foreground objects were richly textured. Colour balance was excellent, and it also took complicated exposure situations in its stride. Indoors, results were initially marred by dodgy auto white balance, until we switched to Tungsten mode.

You can preserve the full glory of your images by reducing compression. Low-light results were average, but the one disappointment was macro mode, which, at a minimum focusing distance of 20cm, isn't really much of a macro mode at all.

Apart from this, the C-350 is a cracking good camera and, at less than 150 quid a top bargain. A clear Top 50 winner.