Olympus C-8080 digital camera, any thoughts?

[SoarEyes]

Looking for a new 8 mp digital camera. read some good reviews
about the Olympus C-8080. Does anybody have any experience (good or bad) with this camera? Or any thoughts on other camera’s. I’m looking to spend about a 1000,- Euro. Also does it make sense to buy a XD card, instead of compact flash? Be great to get some of your opinions!

 

[Solafaa]

What are you going to use the camera for?

 

[SoarEyes]

Hi Solafaa,

I’ll mainly use it as a point and shoot, so auto-mode needs to work well, also it be great if it handled well in low-light situations. I’m a designer and need at least 8 mp so I can use the photo’s in print.

 

[Solafaa]

How large will the prints be?

I can blow up my 3MP pictuers to A4 sizes and they look great, unless you will be making HUGE prints (3feet by 3 feet) they is no reason to buy that camera, at most for all kinds of work i would think a 4-5MP camera would do fine.

Try this www.cnet.com look under digital cameras, SLR.

 

[bousozoku]

What Digital Camera http://www.whatdigitalcamera.com/ had good things to say about the camera. You might be swayed by the ultra-long zoom lenses in that price range but it's likely you'll be pleased by the organisation and ability of the C-8080.

 

[SoarEyes]

solafaa and bousozoku,

well sometimes I’ll need to crop the image so any acces pixels
will come in handy. Any thoughts about the xd versus cf card?

thanks

 

[FriarTuck]

It's the only one of the recent crop of 8 megapixel cams that Phil at Digital Photography Review rated "Highly Recommended."

 

[vga4life]

I recommend a low-end Digital SLR like a Nikon D70 or Canon Digital Rebel if you're planning on dropping $1k on a digicam.

Better (and interchangable) lenses, better (lower noise, more light-sensitive) sensors, better image processing. The resolution drop is more than offset by these advantages in my experience.

-vga4life

 

[bousozoku]

solafaa and bousozoku,

well sometimes I’ll need to crop the image so any acces pixels
will come in handy. Any thoughts about the xd versus cf card?

thanks

Never, never buy xD cards. They're pretty much what I endured (easy to drop/lose, difficult to find) with SmartMedia cards, only they're more exclusive and therefore, more expensive. CompactFlash cards can be older technology, so you should buy SanDisk Ultra/Ultra II or Lexar 40x/80x cards. You'll also find that you need to buy larger sizes (512MB min.) to compensate for all those pixels. Buying older technology cards will end in frustration as you wait for your photos to be written to the card.

As vga4life said, you might want to consider a digital SLR if you want a lifetime committment. I went from an Olympus all-in-one camera, the C-2500L, to the E1 but I've had several SLRs. Such a committment is not for everyone and the C-8080 provides many people with a good experience without it--the ESP exposure control mode being one of those which resides on both the C-8080 and the E-1.

As far as what you can get out of the camera as far as beautiful photos, what I've seen are good, maybe even great. My thought is to try the 6MP mode alongside the 8MP mode to see what's actually better and cleaner.

 

[garageolympo]

c8080 camera has a serious design flaw. It cannot focus manually on distant objects or infinity. It is just normal in AF mode but defefective in Manual Focus mode. Many users are complaining about this flaw nowadays in some forums. Many noticed it when they test it. I do like manual control even I do not use it.

 

[Dave00]

Any thoughts about the xd versus cf card?

I use CF cards with my Canon S400. They are considerably larger than the xD picturecards, and at least feel much more durable. The big advantages of CF are that they are cheaper and much more widely available. For instance, if you're in Portugal and you run out of space on your cards, you can easily find a corner store that'll sell you a CF card. Not so with xD cards. The main advantage of xD is smaller size (if you consider it an advantage) and possibly quicker transfer speeds. There are also more card-readers for CF, although there is an xD-CF adaptor that ameliorates this.

Lots of CF cards advertise 40x or 12x or whatever transfer speed, but whether this translates to faster write speeds varies based on the camera, and sometimes the "ultra high speed" cards are actually slower. Plenty of reviews on this are available at dpreview.com.

I would take a good close look at how well your potential new camera does in low-light situations. This is really the achilles heel of digital cameras. Most digital cams have a LOT of noise at low-lighting, and the flash tends to make things appear washed-out. Some of this can be corrected by lengthening the shutter speed, but then you either need a tripod or very steady hands.

--Dave

 

[Mechcozmo]

Or, just use an iPod adapter and you will never run out of space (unless you can burn 10GB of pictures..smallest iPod with a dock connector, btw)

xD cards feel flimsy but they are, so far, done really good here. They seem to write pretty fast, are nice and small, and have a neat logo. CF cards are nice too but they are bigger and for the very-large ones you have to worry about them dying on you (I have a friend who is a professional photographer. She dosn't buy anything >256 for fear that it will die and lose pictures) and they cost a fair amount of money. Now, xD cards are not cheap either but they are coming down slowly. Remember Smart Media? Those old flimsy things? Well used to cost a lot for a 16MB card...now you can pick one of those up for a song and 5 bucks...

 

[kant]

http://www.steves-digicams.com/2004_reviews/c8080.html

I want one of those myself.

 

[plutnicki]

compatible with iPhoto

I was looking at this camera as well as it's new cousin, the C-7000...

Neither are listed on Apple's webpage as being compatible with iPhoto?

There are actually a number of Olympus cameras missing from the compatibility webpage mostly newer.

Is that webpage just not updated frequently. Anyone comment on Olympus compatibility with iPhoto?

Thx,

...Jim

 

[Rocksaurus]

I've had no problems with xD, though I still would recommend CF because it's a lot cheaper. With any of these cards I worry about data loss/breaking so I wish my camera used CF, in case such a thing ever does happen.

 

[vtprinz]

also it be great if it handled well in low-light situations.

Sorry, but if you want good low-light capabilities, you're going to have to go with a Digital SLR. Quite a few new ones just came out, including a pretty cheap Olympus E-Volt (smallest DSLR to date). I don't know much about that one, too new. The Canon Digital Rebel has great image quality, but it's dumbed down and plasticy. Although I have heard mention of a hack to open up all of the 10D features, which you can probably find through a quick google search. The best bet, I'd have to say, is the Nikon D70.

Oh, and if you think I'm full of it, I do have an 8MP digicam, though not the Olympus. It's the Sony 828, but they're all the same in regards to noise (high) and low-light capabilities (none). The photosites are just too small and crammed together. In order to get clean pictures you'll have to shoot at ISO 64 or ISO 100, far too slow for low-light situations. But you'll hate to boost the ISO because the noise jumps up FAST.

I know I sound like I'm bashing these cameras, but I do love my 828. It's a wonderful camera, but if low-light capability is important to you, save yourself a $1K dissapointment and go with a DSLR.

One more thing, check out www.luminous-landscape.com from a different review style. Michael Reichmann focuses more on usability rather than tech specs and pixel peeping. His results of the 8MP cams were far different than Phil Askey's at www.dpreview.com. Reichmann voted the Sony 828 and Minolta A2 as the top cams. In fact, he didn't like the C-8080 at all and said he wouldn't recommend it.


Hope this helps.