Olympus Camedia C-840L

Getting your pictures out of the camera and into your PC can be achieved in two ways. If you're prepared to pay an extra £69.99, you can plump for Olympus' innovative SmartMedia floppy disk adaptor. All you have to do is take the CompactFlash card out of the camera, insert it into a silver floppy disk-shaped holder and slot the whole lot into your PC's 3.5in drive. You will, of course, need to install the relevant drivers but, once you've done that, picture retrieval is just a matter of dragging and dropping the files in question.

It is, however, a lot of money to pay for the convenience. Fortunately, the C-840L ships with a serial link if you don't fancy shelling out for the SmartMedia system. Although far slower than the high-tech floppy disk adaptor solution, it does have some advantages. It's very reliable, simple to set up and is succinctly managed by Olympus' own software, which is well-designed and extremely easy to use.

As we've seen, there's little to separate the DC260 and the C-840L when it comes to image quality, although the Kodak does feature a proper optical zoom, as opposed to the Olympus' digital image enlargement. What really makes the Olympus Camedia C-840L outshine its opposition is the price - the Olympus costs just £510. You may not feel like giving up your 35mm camera and buying one just yet but, while the DC260 remains a full £255 more expensive, the Olympus is well worth its Recommended award.

Author: Martin Cooper