Product Reviews

The Camedia C-900 Zoom is a mid-range digital camera designed to meet the needs of users who want good-quality pictures but don't need the features or the high resolution of the C-1400XL (Reviews, Vol 14 No 25, p24 )

The Olympus C-900 Zoom is a 1.3-million-pixel device and boasts a 3x optical zoom as its main feature. This can be combined with the camera's 2x digital zoom to enable 6x zoom photographs.

Olympus has based the styling of the C-900 Zoom on its popular Mju range of compact cameras, and it certainly looks and feels like a standard camera. It's comfortable to hold and weighs just enough to suggest solid dependability without being heavy.

The camera is activated by sliding the lens cover to one side, at which point the lens mechanically pushes itself out. The lens cover mechanism feels solid and reliable, if a little stiff on the model we tested. However, the method of turning the camera off again is a little clumsy. The lens cover must be pushed back until it makes contact with the extended lens, at which point the lens retracts and the cover can be slid home. This is not ideal.

The top of the camera hosts the zoom operator - a lever-like device - the button for taking pictures, and a small LCD screen which provides information on the number of pictures left, the state of the battery, and the mode of the flash.

On the back there is a 1.8in colour LCD, the optical viewfinder and nine buttons for controlling operation of the camera. The viewfinder is a through-the-lens type and features a diopter adjustment dial. This is unusual on a camera at this price point and a nice touch. The nine buttons and the menu system for changing the camera settings let the camera down. Working your way through the menu and setting up the camera is far from intuitive, even if you're familiar with digital cameras. A

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thorough read of the manual is required to get to grips with even the most straightforward settings.

Reading the manual will also alert you to some of the features which make the C-900 Zoom a more versatile device than most in its price range. As well as the standard auto focus, the camera has a focus lock and a Quick Focus mode. The latter allows the user to pre-set the focal length, and can be used in conjunction with the rapid fire Sequence mode, which can take between six and 10 shots at two frames per second.

There is also a Macro mode and, when used with the supplied Smart Media card, a panorama mode, which allows sequential shots to be lined up so a panorama can be constructed. In addition to these features, the C-900 Zoom lets you adjust the exposure manually and offers four preset white points.

There are three quality modes available for taking pictures: standard, high quality and super high quality. Standard quality pictures are captured at 640 x 480 pixels, whereas high quality and super high quality shots are captured at 1280 x 960 pixels. The difference between the two higher modes is the degree of compression applied when the pictures are stored. Additionally, it's possible to capture images at super high quality without any compression. However, as only one of these images will fit on a 4Mb Smart Media card, it's not something you will want to do very often.

Downloading images from the camera is very easy with the supplied C30 software. Images can be viewed on screen as thumbnails and then downloaded individually or all together.

Image quality at high quality and super high quality was a pleasant surprise, comparing favourably with the C-1400XL. There was some loss of detail, but very little noticeable JPEG artefacting. At 640 x 480 pixels, images were reasonable, but with much less detail and more general 'noise'.

The camera uses four AA batteries and comes supplied with Olympus' own brand re-chargeables. Battery life was reasonable. The supplied storage media is a 4Mb Smart Media card with a panorama function. The camera will work with cards up to 16Mb.

The Olympus Camedia C-900 Zoom provides a range of useful features and good image quality at a reasonable price. The ability to manually adjust a wide range of settings will please some users. However, it's let down by the general unfriendliness of its control system and by the clumsy 'switch-off' mechanism.