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Olympus C-3000 Zoom Olympus develops a slightly slower, but lot cheaper version of the C-3030 Zoom. (Looks like a great bargain!) Select a topic Reference: Datasheet C-3000 Zoom Test Images --------------------------------- 1. Intro and Highlights 2. What's Different With the C-3000 Zoom? 3. Executive Overview 4. Design 5. Viewfinder 6. Optics 7. Exposure & Flash 8. Shutter Lag & Cycle Time Tests 9. Operation & User Interface 10. Camera Modes & Menus 11. Image Storage & Interface 12. Video, Power, Software --------------------------------- Print-Friendly Review Version Additional Resources and Other Links Reader Comments --------------------------------- Digital Camera Comparometer (TM) --------------------------------- <-- Digital Cameras (Home) <-- Digital Camera Reviews Index <<Viewfinder :(Previous) | (Next): Exposure & Flash>> Page 6:Optics Review First Posted: 5/30/2000

Optics
The C-3000 Zoom comes with a 3x, 6.5 to 19.5mm, all glass aspheric lens (equivalent to a 32 to 96mm lens on a 35mm camera) with eight elements in six groups. This appears to be physically the same lens as in the C-2020 Zoom, with the wider-angle coverage being due to the larger size of the 3000's CCD sensor. Further evidence of the tight fit between lens and CCD is the set of small notches cut into the bezel around the lens' front element, to avoid vignetting in the corners of the final images. Despite the cutouts in the lens bezel though, we did notice a slight vignetting (darkness in the corners of the images) when the lens was set to its widest angle. This disappeared fairly quickly as we zoomed toward telephoto settings, but was noticeable in shots of flat-tinted subjects at full wide angle zoom settings. (We confess to being puzzled though, by the smaller f/2.8 maximum aperture of the 3000's lens, compared to the f/2.0 of the 2020.) Apertures can be manually adjusted in both Manual and Aperture Priority mode from F/2.8 to F/11, in 1/3 f-stop increments. The contrast-detect TTL autofocus system covers a range from 31 inches (0.8 m) to infinity in normal mode and from eight to 31 inches (0.2 to 0.8 m) in macro. The green LED next to the optical viewfinder lights solid when the autofocus system achieves a lock on the subject. Low light focusing performance is fairly good, with the camera able to achieve focus down to about 1 footcandle (11 lux, or about the brightness level of a well-lit nighttime street scene). Below that level, you'll need to resort to manual focusing.
A manual focus option is available by simply pressing the MF button on the back panel which displays a small distance readout to help you gauge distance (in meters or feet). The screen shot at right shows the focusing scale in manual focus mode. The up and down arrow buttons adjust the focus along the scale and pressing the MF (or OK) button again cancels the mode. We liked the fact that the distance scale displayed is split into two segments, one ranging from 2.6 feet to infinity, the other from 8 to 31 inches. This provides the necessary resolution to focus accurately, without forcing you to squint and guess at single scale ranging from 8 inches to infinity. One nice feature of the 3000's manual focus operation is that the LCD viewfinder display enlarges by about 2x whenever the manual focus setting is changed. This is very helpful in deciding whether you've achieved good focus or not. (Although it's still difficult to judge critical focus from an LCD panel.) Here's a trick though, for further improving your focus accuracy using the LCD screen: Activate the digital zoom function, to get an additional 2.5x magnification of the subject. Once you're focused, you can back the lens off to frame the picture accordingly. (Actually, we're not certain that the C-3000 Zoom's lens doesn't change focus as you zoom it, but this technique seemed to work fairly well for us.)
As with other Olympus cameras in this series (the C-2000 Zoom and C-2020 Zoom), the C-3000 Zoom has body-mounted threads that accept an accessory lens adapter, the CLA-1. This adapter is a small cylinder that gives you a set of 43mm filter threads just flush with the furthest forward extent of the lens when it telescopes out. NOTE though, that we said "just flush" - If you by chance were able to obtain an accessory lens or filter with 43mm threads on it, it wouldn't fit: You need a millimeter or so ahead of the adapter before the glass starts. This usually isn't a problem, since you'd almost always have a thread adapter tacked on the front of the CLA-1 anyway, the 43mm being such an odd size. Still, you can find 43mm accessories out there, so we thought we should at least mention this...
While the C-3000�s lens provides up to 3x optical zoom, an additional 2.5x digital zoom can be activated through the Record menu, albeit with noticeable quality degradation in the resulting images at the larger image sizes. (The "digital zoom" options on all digicams simply crop into the CCD array to reduce the angle of view. They thus directly trade resolution for "magnification.") Note that the digital zoom cannot be used with the uncompressed TIFF mode and is only accessible with the LCD monitor on.
With a measured visual resolution of 850-900 lines per picture height in our resolution tests, the C-3000 Zoom is just a hair off the highest we've seen to date (May, 2000). Olympus deserves credit though, for not trying for a snappier-looking picture by over-sharpening the image in the camera. Our philosophy on image sharpening is that the capture device (camera, scanner, whatever) should do the bare minimum, compensating only for the blurring tendencies of its sensor. Once an image has been over-sharpened, detail is irrevocably lost and objectionable artifacts appear. To our eye, the C-3000 Zoom gets it about right, applying some sharpening, but not too much. Even at that, it offers a "soft" image-sharpening option that provides images without any in-camera sharpening, for those times when you need to perform critical manipulations on the image in Photoshop(tm) or other editing program post-capture.
The lens appears to be of good albeit not unusual quality, turning in fairly typical distortion and aberration numbers for lenses at the higher end of the consumer digicam spectrum: Geometric distortion on the C-3000 was moderate at the wide angle end, as we measured a 0.76 percent barrel distortion. The telephoto end showed a smaller, 0.29 percent pincushion distortion. Both numbers are about typical among digicams we've tested, but we do prefer to see lower distortion at the wide angle end. (Just to be clear, roughly 0.8 percent is pretty typical among digicams we've tested, we'd just like to see *all* digicams have lower barrel distortion.) Do note though, that there's an excellent, easy solution to barrel or pincushion distortion available, in the form of the optional "dewarp" plugin for our favorite image tweaker, PhotoGenetics. Read our review of PhotoGenetics for more details. Chromatic aberration was fairly pronounced at wide angle settings, with several pixels of color showing at the edges of elements in the corners of our resolution test target. At the telephoto end of the lens' range though, chromatic aberration was essentially invisible. (This distortion is visible as a very slight colored fringe around objects at the edges of the field of view on the resolution target). The chromatic aberration was more severe at the wide angle end than the average for cameras we've tested, while it was much better than average at the telephoto end. We also noticed some slight vignetting of the image in the very corners, at the widest-angle lens setting. This last disappeared pretty quickly though, as we moved the lens out of the wide angle position.