Olympus C-5050 ZoomTheir best camera yet? - Olympus introduces a top-of-the-line five-megapixel model with noise reduction technology, optimum image enlargement, an improved interface, and support for three memory formats.<<Optics :(Previous) | (Next): Shutter Lag & Cycle Time Tests>> Page 6:Exposure & FlashReview First Posted: 01/09/2003 |
Exposure
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In Program mode, the camera selects both the aperture and shutter speed, while you control the remaining exposure options such as ISO, Exposure Compensation, White Balance, and metering modes. Aperture Priority lets you set the aperture from f/1.8 to f/8.0 and the camera chooses the best corresponding shutter speed. In Shutter Priority, you can select shutter speeds from 1/1,000 to four seconds, and the camera selects the best corresponding aperture setting.
In Manual mode, you control both aperture and shutter speed with the addition of much longer shutter speed times (as long as 16 seconds). A helpful feature of the Manual mode is that, as you scroll through the various exposure combinations, the camera indicates whether or not the current setting will give you a correct exposure. It does this by showing the f/stop and shutter speed in green, and the exposure differential (the difference between your settings and what the camera meters as correct) in white, in exposure values (EV) within a range of +3 to -3 EV. If the camera disagrees with your settings, the exposure variables flash red in the display. Additionally, you can activate the live histogram display, which graphically shows any under- or overexposure.
The maximum shutter speed of the C-5050 is 1/2000 second, but it can only be reached when the lens aperture is set to its minimum opening of f/8.0. (This sort of limitation is fairly common, arising from the simple physics of how long it takes the shutter to traverse the lens aperture.) The upshot is that the camera can select speeds from 1/1,300 to 1/2,000 when it's in programmed exposure mode and the ambient light is bright enough. It will also automatically select these speeds in Aperture priority mode, when you've set the aperture to f/8.0 yourself. Likewise, you can select the 1/1,300 -1/2,000 speeds when in Manual exposure mode, if you've set the aperture to f/8.0. At all other times, the maximum shutter speed is 1/1,000.
At the other end of the scale, the maximum shutter time varies with the camera's operating mode and ISO setting. At ISO 64 and 100, the maximum shutter time is four seconds in Programmed, Aperture, and Shutter priority modes. It drops to 2 seconds when the ISO is raised to 200, and to 1 second at an ISO of 400. In Manual mode, there are no such ISO-related shutter time limitations, and the maximum exposure time is increased to 16 seconds.
For point-and-shoot convenience in what might otherwise be tricky shooting conditions, the C-5050 also features five Scene modes. Portrait mode keeps the subject in sharp focus but the background slightly blurred, by using a larger aperture setting to reduce depth of field. Two landscape modes (Landscape Portrait and Landscape Scene) instead use a smaller aperture, to capture sharp detail in the foreground and background. A Sports mode biases the exposure system toward higher shutter speeds, so you can "freeze" fast-paced action. Finally, a Night mode optimizes the camera for night shots and portraits, using slower shutter speeds to increase the amount of ambient light in the exposure. The C-5050 Zoom also allows you to apply specific Scenes to the Program, Aperture, Shutter, Manual, My, and Movie modes. Through the Shooting menu, the Scene option applies Portrait, Landscape, or Night presets to the current image, giving you the benefit of a preset shooting mode while maintaining full exposure control.
The C-5050 Zoom provides a fairly typical range of ISO settings, but the default ISO 64 extends the range lower than most competing models. The lower default ISO is welcome, as it will result in lower image noise when shooting under bright conditions. (Higher ISO settings are often useful for working in limited light conditions, but they can result in noisier images.) In addition, the available lower ISO is helpful when trying for motion-blur effects in more brightly list surroundings. (Note: When ISO is set to Auto in Program exposure mode, it automatically resets to 64 when you switch to Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, or Manual exposure modes. A specific ISO setting can be combined with any of the exposure modes via the "MyCamera" option.) To combat the higher image noise that results from higher ISO settings and slower shutter speeds, the C-5050 Zoom offers a Noise Reduction mode, which uses dark-frame subtraction to minimize image noise on long exposures.
Three metering systems are available on the C-5050 Zoom: Spot, Multi, and
ESP multi-patterned metering. All three are accessed by pressing the Metering
button on the top panel and turning the Command dial. Under the default ESP
multi-patterned setting, the camera takes readings from a number of areas
in the viewfinder, evaluating both brightness and contrast to arrive at the
optimum exposure. Spot metering reads the exposure from the very center of
the image, so you can pinpoint the specific area of the photograph you want
properly exposed and lock in on that exposure by depressing the Shutter button
halfway and holding it down until you recompose the scene. The Multi Meter
function lets you take up to eight individual spot-meter readings from the
center of the LCD monitor (inside the exposure brackets) by repeatedly pressing
the AE Lock button. Each reading is marked on a relative exposure scale across
the bottom of the LCD panel, and then averaged to produce the overall reading.
You can cancel the Multi-Spot reading by holding the AE Lock button down for
one second (the word "Memo" appears in the LCD display). This is
a very useful exposure option for advanced photographers.
Enabled through the Shooting menu (Setup sub-menu), a Record View function,
displays the most recently captured image on the LCD screen while the image
is being recorded to the memory card. This feature gives you the option of
deleting an image instantly by pressing the AE Lock / Delete button while
the review image is still on-screen. It's a great way to check your images
without wasting time switching back and forth between Playback and Shooting
modes. The camera's Quick View function also allows you to check previously
captured images in Shooting mode, by pressing the Monitor button twice, very
quickly. You can review the most recent image or scroll back through other
stored files until you return to the Shooting mode (by pressing the Monitor
button a second time).
In situations where exposure compensation is necessary, pressing the +/- button
on the left side of the camera and turning the Command dial increases or decreases
the exposure values (EV) in one-third-step increments, up to +/- 2 EV. If
exposure compensation is currently activated, the amount of adjustment appears
in the LCD information display, except in Manual mode.
The C-5050's Auto Bracketing (BKT) function is selected through the Shooting
Mode Menu (Drive submenu), setting the camera to automatically bracket each
exposure by as much as +/- 2 EV in either three- or five-step increments (0.3,
0.6, or 1.0 EV units each). The bracketing function centers its efforts around
whatever exposure you've chosen as the starting point, including any exposure
compensation adjustments you've made. This is a nice implementation of a useful
exposure feature. The 5-step option is particularly welcome, as the three-step
exposure bracketing offered by many cameras often forces you to choose between
a too-narrow bracketing range or too-wide exposure steps.
The C-5050 Zoom's white balance menu is an area that's been enhanced significantly
relative to that of the 4040, with a broader range of options than I've seen
on other high-end consumer digicams. No fewer than nine options are available,
including Auto, Shade, Cloudy, Sunny, Evening Sun, Daylight Fluorescent, Neutral
Fluorescent, Cool White Fluorescent, White Fluorescent, Incandescent, or One-Touch
/ Custom. One-Touch is the manual setting, where white balance is calculated
by placing a white card in front of the lens and pressing the Menu / OK button.
The Custom mode lets you pick from four previously-saved white balances, set
manually in similar fashion to the One-Touch option. (I really like
this ability to save up to four separate custom settings. This lets you switch
back and forth rapidly, without having to re-shoot a fresh white card test
each time.) You can also fine-tune the white balance setting with the "WB+/-"
setting under the Picture submenu. An adjustment bar appears on the LCD screen,
with options to increase or decrease the red or blue tones. (I've always appreciated
the ability to fine-tune the white balance. Most digicams tend to have slight
biases in their white balance systems under various lighting conditions. Once
you get used to how a particular camera shoots, it's very helpful to have
this sort of tweaking adjustment available to modify the color balance. The
5050's large number of adjustment steps provide very fine-grained control
over a surprisingly broad range of color adjustment.)
The C-5050 Zoom has a 12-second Self-Timer (which can be used with the infrared
remote) for self-portraits or those occasions when you don't want to risk
camera shake by pressing the Shutter button to make the exposure. You can
also use the IR remote control to trigger the shutter without the Self-Timer,
which gives you a three-second delay after pressing the remote's Shutter button,
before the shutter is fired. As useful as the 5050's remote is, this is one
of the few areas where I had a complaint about the 5050's performance: The
mandatory 3 second shutter delay when using the remote can be frustrating
when you're trying to capture a specific moment. I'd really like to
see an option to turn off the delay when using the remote. The remote control
is rated to work as far as 16.4 feet directly in front of the camera, or as
far as 9.8 feet when at a 15-degree angle from the sensor window. - My own
usage indicated that these ratings are conservative, although high ambient
light levels can reduce the remote's range.
The Function menu option enables you to capture images in Black & White
or Sepia modes, or to use the White and Black Board settings for capturing
text on white or black backgrounds respectively. (These modes appear to adjust
image contrast and default exposure levels to maximize contrast and force
the background toward the appropriate tonal value.) The C-5050 Zoom also features
sharpness, saturation, and contrast adjustments.
Flash
The
C-5050 Zoom has a fairly standard built-in flash unit, with five basic operating
modes: Auto, Red-Eye Reduction, Forced Flash, Flash Off, and Slow Synchro
modes. Flash range is rated to extend to approximately 18 feet (5.6 meters)
in wide-angle mode and to about 12.5 feet (3.8 meters) at the telephoto setting,
numbers that agree well with my own test results. The Slow Synchro mode combines
a slow shutter speed with the flash to let more ambient light into the background,
producing more natural lighting behind a flash-illuminated subject. When photographing
moving subjects, Slow Synchro will record some motion blur because of the
longer exposure time, with the initial or final image frozen by the flash
exposure. Through the Shooting menu, three Slow Synchro modes are available.
Slow 1 fires the flash at the beginning of the exposure (producing a blur
in front of the subject), and Slow 2 fires the flash at the end of the exposure
(producing a blur behind the subject). You can also opt to fire the Red-Eye
Reduction pre-flash in conjunction with a Slow Synchro exposure.
An
Olympus-configured hot shoe on top of the camera allows you to connect an
external flash for more powerful flash needs. Olympus offers the FL-40 external
flash as an accessory, which couples with the camera to allow flash exposure
compensation when using it. The internal and external flash units can be used
together or separately. Third-party flash units can also be used, though some
units may not be able to synchronize with the camera, and Olympus warns that
some flash units may damage the camera's circuitry. (Be sure to check the
voltage on your flash unit's hot shoe contacts, to insure that it doesn't
present more than a few volts to the camera's flash contacts. If you measure
more than 6-10 volts or so on the flash units contacts, don't risk connecting
it to the 5050.) Assuming that they use a low trigger voltage, most third-party
flash units should work fine with the 5050. - The main limitation will be
that the camera will have no control over the flash power, reducing you to
manual flash exposure control via the camera's aperture setting.
Another
nice feature of the C-5050 Zoom's internal flash system is its Flash Brightness
adjustment, which allows you to change the flash brightness from +2 to -2
EV in one-third-step increments. When using the built-in flash with an external
unit, you can use this feature to adjust the balance of light between the
two, by dialing-down the intensity of the internal flash while controlling
the power of the external unit manually.
The C-5050 Zoom's flash also has good support for external "slave"
flash units, letting it work with conventional slave trigger units. Like most
digicams, the C-5050 normally uses a small metering pre-flash prior to the
main exposure to set flash exposure. This pre-flash will falsely trigger conventional
slave units, causing them to fire before the 5050 actually opens its shutter.
Several third-party "smart" slave triggers are available that ignore
the pre-flash, firing the slave strobe on the second pop of the camera's flash.
The 5050 avoids the need for such special "smart" triggers, by offering
a special "slave" flash mode that causes its internal flash to fire
only once per exposure. Olympus showed some welcome forethought in designing
this flash mode, in that they give you a choice of ten different power levels
for the internal flash when firing in single-pop mode. This lets you balance
the amount of light coming from the 5050's internal flash with that coming
from the slave unit(s). Very nice! (If you want no light to come from
the camera's internal flash, you can tape a piece of exposed slide film over
the camera's flash window, which will filter out most of the visible light,
but let enough infrared pass to trigger a sensitive slave unit. - Be careful
not to cycle the 5050's internal flash too quickly though, as it could overheat
and possibly melt the slide film, making a mess.) The 5050's slave-flash option
is only available when the camera is set to manual exposure mode. As an added
bonus though, if you set the flash intensity in "slave" mode to
a low value, you can actually use the on-camera flash during continuous shooting,
although the maximum frame rate is limited to about 1 frame/second.
Special Exposure Modes
Movie Mode
The C-5050 Zoom's Movie mode is accessed via the Mode dial on top of the camera
(marked with a small movie camera symbol). Movies can be recorded in either
HQ (320 x 240-pixel) or SQ (160 x 120-pixel) resolution modes. Both record
at approximately 15 frames per second. Sound recording can be turned On or
Off in the Movie menu. Thanks to the C-5050 Zoom's huge buffer memory and
fast internal processing, the maximum recording time is limited only by memory
card capacity, apparently up to a 32MB file-size limit. The available seconds
of recording time appear in the status display panel (and on the LCD monitor
if activated), based on the quality mode selected and space remaining on the
card.
Sound recording with movies presents something of a dilemma for camera manufacturers.
The problem with sound recording is that any camera-generated noises will
be faithfully recorded along with the ambient sound, generally dominating
since they're so close to the microphone. To avoid this problem, most cameras
that offer sound recording in movie mode generally don't permit zooming of
the lens while recording is in progress, since the sound of the lens motor
would be so obtrusive.
With the C-5050's movie mode, Olympus has taken a very intelligent approach,
enabling or disabling lens zoom based on whether or not sound recording is
enabled. In all circumstances though, digital zoom is available, and the lens
zoom can always be adjusted to any position prior to the start of recording.
Olympus' movie mode implementation makes a lot of sense, offering as many
camera functions as possible, governed by whether or not sound is being recorded.
Beyond the sound/zoom tradeoff, a wide range of recording options apply to
Movie mode as well, including spot metering, exposure compensation, focus
lock, self-timer, ISO, and white balance, all of which are also unusual features
to find available in a digicam Movie option.
Two image resolutions are available in Movie mode, 320x240 and 160x120. Both
resolutions record at approximately 15 frames per second, and recording time
is limited only by the available space on the memory card.
In any record mode, you can record a short sound clip to accompany still images.
The Sound option in the record menu activates the mode, and you can record
a maximum of four seconds per image. Sound recording begins approximately
half a second after the shutter is released. You can also record sound after
the fact, through a menu option in Playback mode.
First seen in the Camedia C-3030 (February 2000), the C-5050 Zoom again offers
in-camera "editing" of movies in Playback mode. This capability
is accessed via the Playback menu, Movie Play submenu, and Edit option. Here,
you can scroll forward and backward frame-by-frame through the movie, and
set cut points at the beginning and end of the segment you're interested in.
Movie content between the two cut points will be preserved, the rest discarded.
In a nice touch though, Olympus allows you to choose whether to modify the
original movie file, or just save the selected portion in a separate file
- a feature that makes the Movie mode much more useful.
Audio Record Mode
The C-5050 Zoom's Audio Record mode records up to four seconds of sound to
accompany an image. Activated through the Shooting Menu (Camera sub-menu),
the audio recording takes place immediately after you make an exposure. A
status bar appears on the LCD monitor with the word "Busy" displayed.
Green dots light up along the status bar to indicate how much time you have
left until the recording is finished. You can also add audio clips after the
image is recorded by selecting the Audio option in the Playback menu (Play
sub-menu).
Panorama Mode
The C-5050 Zoom offers a Panorama exposure mode when using an Olympus brand
panorama-enabled SmartMedia card or xD-Picture Card. (The function is unavailable
when using a CompactFlash memory card, or any other brand SmartMedia or xD-Picture
Card.) In this mode, the exposure and white balance for a series of shots
are determined by the first exposure. The Panorama function is accessed in
the Shooting menu through the Camera submenu. When activated, it provides
light blue guide lines at the edges of the pictures to help you align successive
shots, leaving enough overlap between them for the stitching software to do
its job. Up to 10 shots can be taken in a panoramic series. Images are saved
individually and then assembled on a computer after they've been downloaded.
"2-in-1" Mode
Accessed through the Record menu, "2 in 1" photography mode records two vertically-oriented, half-sized images. After capture, the images are saved side-by-side as one full resolution image, giving a split-screen effect. As with Panorama mode, a set of guidelines appear in the LCD display, to help you line up shots.
Sequence Modes
Taking advantage of its large 32MB memory buffer, the C-5050 Zoom offers several Sequence modes that mimic the motor drive on a film camera, continually recording images for as long as the Shutter button is held down, or until the memory runs out (this varies with the image quality and subject, as well as available card space).
The 5050 has a total of three sequence modes, varying in the time between shots, and the maximum number of shots that can be recorded without pausing. High-speed sequence mode captures 5 frames (regardless of resolution/quality setting) at a rate of three frames per second. "Normal" sequence mode slows to about 1.3 frames/second, but permits much longer sequences to be captured. Depending somewhat on the speed of the memory card you're using, normal sequence mode can capture 50-60 full-resolution "SHQ" images, or upwards of 200-300 in minimum-resolution/quality "SQ" mode. In AF sequence mode, the camera pauses to focus between shots, further slowing the frame rate, but insuring that moving subjects will remain in focus as they approach or recede from the camera. The slowest shutter speed available in all sequence modes is 1/30 second, and the TIFF file format isn't available. A notable limitation of the Sequence mode is that the camera's internal flash cannot be used, at least not in an automatic-metering mode. However, if you have an external flash capable of recycling at three frames per second, and you shoot in Aperture Priority mode, the external flash may work just fine. Likewise, using the 5050's "slave flash" option (available only in manual exposure mode), you can set the flash to fire at a lower, non-metered power level when shooting in sequence mode. The maximum frame rate is limited to about 1 frame/second, but most consumer digicams don't allow any combination of flash and continuous shooting at all.
My Mode
Accessed by turning the Mode dial to the "My" position, this mode lets you save customized settings and then access them simply by turning the Mode dial. For example, if you consistently shoot in the same environment, you could save the exposure settings for those specific shooting conditions, so that they can be instantly recalled.(I can imagine this option being very handy for situations where you might have to switch quickly between two different settings. Think of a wedding reception, for instance: Standard "program" mode for outside shots on the lawn, etc, but a custom setup in My Mode to shoot the indoor scenes under incandescent lighting.) My Mode even lets you edit the Shortcut menu items, which appear when the Menu button is pressed, to reflect often-changed settings. The My Mode is very flexible, letting you preset the nearly all of the camera's parameters.
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