Olympus Camedia C-4000ZOOM

There are a number of players in the 4-megapixel market, and with the entry of Nikon's Coolpix 4500 (see Reviews, issue 96, p115) and the new Olympus Camedia C-4000ZOOM it's starting to get crowded. The C-4000 has the looks and handling familiar to the Camedia series. It may be a little boring and boxy by today's standards, but Olympus' proven design could help it stand out from the crowd.

The C-4000's maximum optical resolution is 2,288 x 1,712, although Olympus also offers an interpolated resolution of 3,200 x 2,400, which is better adjusted for printing. There are plenty of other options for altering compression levels and resolutions too. Images are saved onto a supplied 16MB SmartMedia card as TIFF or JPEG files. Olympus recently announced that it plans to support the new xD format, which offers greater capacity in a smaller package, meaning the days of SmartMedia could be numbered.

Moving to the optics, the C-4000 has a 3x optical zoom lens with an f/2.8 aperture. The lens covers a range of 6.5-19.5mm, which equates to 32-96mm on a 35mm film camera. This isn't the best type of lens for shooting close up or in cramped conditions, or for focusing on distant objects, but it's perfect for general picture taking. By this, I mean shots of people, from quick snaps to portraits or small groups - in fact, any type of social photography. The aperture stops down to f/11, which will give a good depth of field and is particularly useful for shooting landscapes. A 3.5x digital zoom can also be applied, roughly approximating to a maximum 10x range, although the quality suffers even with four megapixels to play with.

I had no qualms about the lens quality, which gave sharp results with no significant distortion. This is partly a result of the moderate lens range. You can also attach a number of optional units to the front of the lens for effects such as telephoto, wide angle and macro, which is always a welcome touch.

Autofocus (AF) was quick enough for most situations, although the slight lag will mean that moving objects might be trickier subjects. That said, the C-4000 is still faster than many cameras we've seen. The Full Time autofocus option keeps the camera focusing as needed without half pressure on the shutter release, but this will drain the batteries more quickly so should be used sparingly. AF can be fixed for a sequence or adjusted between exposures, which shows the thoughtful nature of the design. There's a manual focus option too, but its implementation is limited.

With an excellent 1/1,000th second to 16-second shutter speed range depending on exposure mode, this camera has plenty in its armoury. Many will shoot with program mode and Digital ESP metering. This gave a high number of accurate results. But, with aperture and shutter priority or manual exposure modes plus spot or multispot metering, this is a compact camera to suit the dedicated photographer who wants control for creative reasons as well as point and shoot for simplicity. If you need the same basic settings, My Mode can be customised to use them automatically. A small amount of flexibility comes from the 100/200/400 ISO range, and noise wasn't a major issue at any setting. Part of the reason for this is a noise-reduction facility for long exposures, which certainly does help. There are also specialist program options - modes designed for specific subjects such as portraits or landscapes. This is, perhaps, a little redundant on a prosumer-type camera like this.