Overview
The Olympus C-725 is a 3 megapixel digital camera with a 8x optical zoom lens. It is at people who are a little more serious about their photography and like the idea of the extended zoom and additional features. To give you an idea of the zooms capabilities I would describe a standard digital camera as having a 3x optical zoom lens.
The feature set available on the camera is very good indeed for a digital camera in this price range.
Having said that it doesn't take long to get to grips with the Olympus C-725 and I would say that this type of camera is worth considering if you would like to get a bit more out of your photography, but have a limited budget.
Image Quality
I was a somewhat disappointed with the quality of images produced by the Olympus C-725. This surprised me somewhat as normally the standard of images produced by Olympus digital cameras is very good indeed. My main problem with this camera was that the colours looked rather bland and lacked the vivid colours that you look for in the best cameras.
On the upside the images were sharp and the zoom lens does its job and you are able to get in close to the subject.
Features
The feature set splits into three sections, easy to use, intermediate and advanced.
Starting with the easy to use features the Olympus C-725 has three pre programmed scene programs portrait, sports and night. These help the camera to take optimum photos for the three different types of photographic conditions.
Another plus point is the range of the flash. The pop up flash covers a range of up to five and a half meters. That is well above the standard range for a camera in this price range. The available flash settings are always off, always on, automatic where the camera will decide whether or not the flash needs to fire, red eye reduction and slow synchronization which is useful at night.
You can shoot short movies of up to seventy 70 seconds
For those of you that like to get in the picture yourself there is a self timer with a delay of around twelve seconds.
There is a macro mode for close up photography. The camera can focus from 10cm away from the subject.
Effects are available that let you shoot black and white photographs or add a sepia tinge to them.
Moving on to the intermediate features you can control the camera's white balance levels. There are settings for daylight, overcast, tungsten light and fluorescent light. In addition exposure compensation is available and you can choose between Digital ESP and Spot metering. ISO can be set to either 100, 200 or 400.
Continuous sequence shooting is available at a rate of 1.2 shots per second for up to 5 frames in HQ mode (excluding TIFF).
The advanced features give you full manual exposure over the image. You can also select either Aperture Priority AE or Shutter Priority AE. Auto bracketing is also available.
As well as being able to save your images as JPEG you can save as TIFF too.
Ease of Use
Getting the Olympus C-725 up and running is a straightforward affair. Although the camera has a number of more advanced features you can ease you way into the camera by using the various automatic setting. As you become more confident you can start to use some of the more advanced techniques.
Cost
You can find the Olympus C-725 for between £180 and £200. That is considerably cheaper than other digital cameras with an extended optical zoom lens.
Style
The Olympus C-725 is styled more like a traditional SLR camera than a compact camera. Many people will like this and find that the shape of the camera fits well in the hand and the good grip that you can get helps reduce camera shake.
Dimensions are 107.5 (W) x 76.0 (H) x 77.5 (D) mm (excluding protrusions) and the Olympus C-725 weighs in at 315g.
Picking up the camera you immediately get the idea that the build quality could be better. The camera is made of plastic and it is very noticeable.
Batteries / Memory Cards
Power is supplied to the Olympus C-725 by either four AA batteries or, two lithium batteries LB-01 (CR-V3). With all digital cameras we strongly recommend that you consider buying rechargeable batteries and a charger when you buy your digital camera. It is likely that the batteries will pay for themselves many times over throughout the lifetime of your camera.
An xD-Picture Card is used to store images. I'm afraid the one supplied with the camera is only 16mb. This will soon fill up and you are advised to buy a much larger card with the camera.
Conclusion
Buying the Olympus C-725 will give you a digital camera with an extended zoom lens for a low price. The problem is that there are compromises that allow it to be sold at the price it is. I must admit that I wasn't terribly impressed with the overall quality of the image. At the end of the day the image quality is the most important factor when considering buying a digital camera in my book. It doesn't matter how long the lens is or how good the camera looks if the images don't stand up to close scrutiny then the camera is one to avoid. I can only recommend this camera to anyone who feels that an extended zoom lens is vital, but doesn't quite have the budget for the more expensive models.
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The Panasonic Lumix DMC FZ100 is an outstanding digital camera. It offers plenty of shooting options for both stills and videos and is one of the most powerful digital cameras you will find. The combination of picture quality and features is very hard to beat. The specification includes 14 megapixels and a 24x zoom lens. Recommended.
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Panasonic DMC FZ45 Rating 87/100
The Panasonic Lumix DMC FZ45 has a lot going for it. I thought picture quality compared very well against digital cameras with a similar specification. There is a wide range of features to get to grips with too. In my view this is one of the best super zoom digital cameras and offers good value for money.
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Related Pages
Olympus C-725 Review Olympus C-725 Specification Olympus C-725 Sample Images
