Olympus C-211 ZoomHave your cake and eat it too! - 2 megapixels worth of digital photos, and a built-in Polaroid printer!<<Video, Power, Software :(Previous) | (Next): Reference: Datasheet>> Page 12:Test Results & ConclusionReview First Posted: 9/25/2000 |
Test Results
In keeping with our standard policy, our comments here are rather condensed, summarizing our key findings. For a full commentary on each of the test images, see the C-211' Zoom's "pictures" page.
As with all Imaging Resource camera tests, we encourage you to let your own eyes be the judge of how well the devices performed. Explore the images on the pictures page, to see how well the C-211 performed, and how its images compare to other cameras you may be considering buying.
Overall, the C-211 produced reasonably good shots, with good color balance the majority of the time. Color balance and tonal range were quite good overall, and noise was reasonably low in the shadows. Resolution was a little on the low side, with a few quirks in our resolution target image that we hadn't seen before: The in-camera sharpening appears to add an odd blue cast to fine vertical detail through a range of frequencies from 200 to 600 lines per picture height. This behavior didn't appear in any of our other subjects, but you could expect it to appear in any image with closely spaced vertical lines of the right dimension. Resolution is also quite different vertically than horizontally, with aliasing limiting vertical resolution to 550 lines per picture height, and discernible detail stopping at about 750 lines. Horizontally though, other than the odd blue hue shift, there is virtually no aliasing, and resolution extends to 800 lines per picture height. Overall, a good performance, but not the best we've seen for a 2 megapixel camera, and further marred by the odd aliasing and sharpening artifacts.
The C-211 Zoom offers limited exposure control, in the form of a +- 2EV exposure-compensation adjustment, in 0.5EV steps. Given digicams' general sensitivity to losing highlight detail, we much prefer a 1/3 EV step size for exposure adjustment. Other than exposure compensation and white balance adjustment, the camera is a pure Point & Shoot, with none of the advanced exposure modes (aperture or shutter priority) found Olympus' higher-end models. Image noise was fairly good, but the camera's low light capability extends to only about 1/2 foot-candle (5.5 lux). This is sufficient to shoot reasonably well-lit city night scenes, but stops short of the incredible low-light abilities of high-end 2 megapixel digicams.
We missed having an optical viewfinder on the C-211, which would have improved capture-mode power consumption quite a bit. To its credit though, the C-211's LCD viewfinder was exceptionally accurate, showing very nearly 100% of the final image area. The "sunlit" backlight option also proved moderately useful when shooting outdoors in strong light, although it still isn't the ultimate answer to making LCDs visible in daylight. (We have to say that it worked remarkably well when the sun was directly overhead though.)
The C-211 is about an average performer in the macro category, capturing a minimum area of 3.03 x 2.27 inches (77.03 x 57.77 mm). This will be adequate for photographing most small objects, but falls quite a bit short of the ultra-macro capabilities of some of the more advanced cameras on the market. The provision of filter threads in front of the lens does allow for the possibility of using auxiliary macro lenses though.
Overall, the C-211 Zoom performs moderately well for its 2 megapixel class, actually doing quite a bit better than we expected it to, given its hybrid camera/printer nature. While Olympus' "camera only" products handily outperform it at the 2 megapixel level, we felt that surprisingly little image quality was sacrificed in the process of adding the Polaroid printing capability.
Conclusion
The C-211 breaks new ground in the digicam marketplace, combining digital photography with instant printing via readily available Type 500 Polaroid film. As a purely digital camera, the C-211 Zoom takes good (if not category-leading) photos with solid two megapixel resolution and good color rendition and tonal range. It's in the instant-printing area that it really excels though, exploding the limitations of conventional film-based Polaroid photography, dramatically facilitating expanded use of a proven, decades-old color print technology. While something of a "niche" product, we see it breathing new life into the instant-print photography business, opening a range of commercial applications and personal usage patterns that weren't previously feasible. If you need both instant prints and digital copies of your photos, this camera is the one to get.
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