Olympus C-3040 - new sample pics posted!
By
Mike Tomkins
(Friday, April 20, 2001 - 11:19 EDT)
First batch of photos from our new C-3040 now online...
After posting our Olympus C-3040 review, we received several emails from readers commenting on the pronounced corner softness apparent in many of the test images. We'd noticed this, but written it off to a new lens design that was (how to put it politely?) "less than optimal" in the corners. After several emails prompted us to go back and look at the shots, we concluded that a manufacturer with Olympus' long history of quality optics couldn't have produced a lens *that* bad, so we asked Olympus themselves about it. Their reaction verged on shock and horror: Eeek! (paraphrasing loosely) they said - That surely isn't right! They promptly shipped us another sample (both were full-production units in full retail dress), which we just laid hands on yesterday.
A brief time shooting with it showed dramatic improvements over the first model. We've posted the first sample images to replace the earlier Far-Field and Resolution Test Target images, and will continue to fill-in and replace the other test shots we did. (Given the hours it takes to collect all our test shots, you can imagine the hassle this is.) We'll be posting the replacement images as rapidly as possible over the next week, but have an unusually heavy shooting/review load at the moment, so it could well take till the end of next week to get fully caught up with this.
Meanwhile, we've inserted a notice in the carrier pages for all the original test shots, identifying them as having come from the unit with a lens problem. Thanks to those who wrote to inquire about the poor performance, prompting us to explore further! (As an aside, when we went looking at other sites to see if their cameras had similar problems, we were surprised to find how few images were published that really stressed image sharpness in the corners. Among other things, the exercise pointed out how rigorously the IR test suite exercises the cameras we examine!)
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