Olympus Camedia C-60 ZoomOlympus packs a 6.1-megapixel CCD into an ultra-compact body, with a host of advanced features too.<<Optics :(Previous) | (Next): Shutter Lag & Cycle Time Tests>> Page 6:Exposure & FlashReview First Posted: 06/10/2004 |
Exposure
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The C-60 Zoom offers extensive exposure control for a compact camera,
featuring Auto, Program, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, and Manual exposure
modes, as well as a handful of preset scene modes for shooting in specific situations.
The Full Auto and Scene modes make the camera easy to use for novices, while
the other options provide the flexibility demanded by more advanced users. Almost
all capture modes are set by turning the Mode dial on the top panel, which also
accesses the My Mode and Movie modes. (My Mode lets you create a custom setup
for the camera, including virtually every exposure and operating parameter.
Once configured, the My Mode settings can then be selected simply by rotating
the Mode Dial to the "My" position.) Several of the SCENE modes have
been removed from the dial, and bundled under the SCENE setting: To access Landscape,
Landscape portrait, Self-portrait, and Sports scene modes, you must enter the
LCD menu system.
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In Auto mode, the camera has complete control over the exposure parameters. You have control over options like zoom, image size, and whether to use a remote or self-timer, but no exposure adjustments at all (not even exposure compensation or white balance - this is truly a "point-and-shoot" mode). Program mode leaves the camera in charge of the aperture and shutter speed, while you control the remaining exposure options such as ISO, drive mode, metering mode, and white balance. In Program mode, you also have access to the exposure compensation adjustment, which lets you adjust the camera's automatically determined exposure setting by plus or minus two exposure equivalent (EV) units, in steps of 0.3 EV. (This is important for getting properly exposed photos of beach and snow scenes, where the high overall brightness tricks the camera into underexposing.) Aperture Priority lets you set the aperture from f/2.8-f/4.8 to f/8 (maximum aperture varies from f/2.8 to f/4.8 as the lens is zoomed from wide to telephoto) leaving the camera to automatically determine the appropriate shutter speed. In Shutter Priority, you can select shutter speeds from 1/1,000 to 4 seconds, with the camera selecting the corresponding aperture setting. The Manual exposure option lets you control both aperture and shutter speed yourself, and the bottom end of the shutter speed range is extended to eight seconds. An interesting feature of the Manual mode is that, as you scroll through the various exposure settings, the camera indicates whether or not your chosen setting will produce a correct exposure. It does this by showing the f/stop, shutter speed, and exposure differential (the difference between your settings and what the camera's metering system thinks is correct) in green up to a limit of +/- 3.0EV. If you exceed a range of +/- 3 EV from the nominal exposure, the readout numerals turn red and remain at the 3.0 indication. This is a very handy feature that I'd like to see implemented in the manual exposure modes of more cameras.
Six scene modes include Portrait, Landscape-Portrait, Landscape-Scene, Night Scene, Sports, and Self-Portrait modes, which set up the camera for specific shooting situations. In Portrait mode, the camera uses a larger lens aperture, reducing depth of field and letting you capture the subject in sharp focus against a slightly soft-focused background. Landscape-Portrait mode uses a smaller lens aperture, to help keep both the foreground and background in sharp focus, while Landscape-Scene mode also keeps foreground and background in focus, but intensifies any blue or green values for more vibrant foliage and sky colors. Night Scene employs a slower shutter speed, allowing more ambient light into the image, and extends the lower shutter speed to four seconds (although only via automatic control). Sports mode biases the exposure system toward faster shutter speeds, to help freeze fast-moving subjects. Finally, Self-Portrait mode sets close focusing so you can photograph yourself while holding the camera in front of you. Limited menu options are available in the scene modes, as their purpose is to simplify camera setup for novices. (A multitude of menu choices would only add complication to what are intended to be easy-to-use camera settings.)
The C-60 offers a variable ISO setting, which lets you set the camera's light sensitivity to 64, 100, 200, or 400 ISO equivalents, or to Auto mode, in which the camera will choose the best ISO. The higher sensitivity settings, combined with the camera's eight-second shutter speed, provide good low-light shooting capabilities. In my tests, the C-60 performed pretty well at low light levels, capturing clear images with great color, and moderate noise at the lower ISO levels, but high noise at the higher ISO settings. The higher ISO settings are also helpful when you want faster shutter speeds under normal lighting, to help freeze fast action. As with all digicams, the higher ISO settings produce photos with more image noise, much as higher-ISO film shows more film grain, but the C-60's sensor seems more noise-prone than many when you get to the ISO 400 level. This is an unfortunate consequence of the seemingly unending push for higher pixel counts in small cameras: The smaller pixels that result inevitably produce higher noise levels. In the C-60, image noise really limits the usefulness of its ISO 400 sensitivity setting, as the noise levels there are high enough that I personally wouldn't really considerable it usable. The real catch though, is that the camera's default Auto ISO setting will push the ISO setting up to 400 without your being aware of it, giving grainy-looking pictures when shooting in Auto mode under even moderately dim lighting. For best results under dim light, manually set the ISO to 200. (In fairness to the C-60, pretty much any consumer digicam with an ISO 400 setting is going to produce noisy images at that level, but the combination of small sensor and high pixel count in the C-60 makes it more prone to the problem than many cameras with lower resolution CCDs. - Hence, my focus on the issue here.)
Two metering systems are available on the C-60: Spot and "Digital ESP." Both are accessed through the Spot / Macro / DPOF button on the camera's back panel. (Note that the manual's reference to center-weighted metering is apparently in error: Olympus staff have assured us that the C-60 does indeed still use Olympus' multisegment ESP metering when not explicitly set to spot metering mode.) Digital ESP metering samples exposure information from a number of points across the frame, and then examines the distribution of brightness values, to determine the best exposure based not only on the subject's overall brightness, but its contrast as well.. Spot metering simply reads the exposure from the very center of the image, useful for times when you need to pinpoint the specific area of the photograph you want properly exposed. (Spot metering is very handy when you have a subject that's backlit, or that has a very different brightness--either lighter or darker--than the background.)
A Record View function, enabled through the Record menu, displays the most recently captured image on the LCD screen while the image is recorded to the memory card.
In situations where exposure compensation is necessary, simply press either the right or left Arrow buttons (in all exposure modes except Auto or Manual) and the EV value displayed on the LCD will increase or decrease in one-third-step increments, up to a maximum of +/- 2 EV. Or, you can use the Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB) function to automatically bracket an exposure as much as +/- 2 EV in either three or five steps, with increments of 0.3, 0.6, or 1.0 EV units each. The auto bracketing will center its efforts around whatever exposure you've chosen as the starting point, including any exposure compensation adjustments you've made. AEB is really handy for those times when you want to make sure you get just the right exposure for a critical subject, and need to do so quickly.
White balance options include Auto, Daylight, Overcast, Tungsten, and Fluorescent settings, to accommodate a variety of lighting situations. The C-60 Zoom also offers a 12-second Self-Timer for self-portraits or those occasions when you don't want to risk camera shake on a long exposure by pressing the Shutter button to trip the shutter. You can also use the included infrared remote control to trigger the shutter from a maximum distance of 16.5 feet (5M) in front of the camera. There are also options on the Record menu to set the in-camera image sharpening and contrast.
Flash
The
C-60 offers a built-in flash, with six operating modes: Auto, Red-Eye Reduction,
Fill-in Flash, Flash Off, Slow Sync, and Slow Sync with Red-Eye Reduction modes.
Auto mode lets the camera decide when to fire the flash, while the Fill-in mode
fires the flash with every shot. (Fill-in is useful for throwing light on backlit
subjects, keeping their faces from being obscured in deep shadow.) The two Red-Eye
Reduction modes fire a small pre-flash before firing the flash at full power,
making the pupils of your subjects' eyes contract, reducing the occurrence of
the Red-Eye Effect. Slow Sync combines the flash with a slower shutter speed,
allowing more ambient light into the background, producing more natural background
lighting behind a flash-illuminated subject. You can also adjust the overall
flash intensity from +/-2 EV through the Record menu.
Special Exposure Modes
Movie Mode
The C-60's Movie mode is accessible via the Mode dial on the camera's rear panel (marked with a small movie camera symbol). Once in Movie mode, you can record QuickTime movies (without sound) at either 160 x 120- or 320 x 240-pixel resolutions. The length of movie clips depends solely on the space available on the card, with both HQ-mode (320x240) and SQ-mode (160x120) able to record until the card fills. A number indicating the total available minutes and seconds of movie storage remaining on the memory card appears on the LCD monitor whenever you enter Movie Mode. Because the amount of compression can vary depending on the video content, this number is by no means an accurate representation of the time left for recording. Invariably after recording to the end of the estimated time available, there was still a sizeable amount of space left for more recording. For some reason, the lens is set to its maximum wide angle position when you enter Movie Mode, and neither optical nor digital telephoto is available during filming. (Quite often, cameras will disable the optical zoom while actually recording movies with sound, to prevent the noise of the zoom mechanism from affecting the sound track. Usually though, you can zoom the lens however you want before you start movie recording, as the zoom is only disabled during the recording process itself.) Spot metering, macro mode, exposure compensation, focus lock, self-timer, variable ISO, and white balance are also available in Movie mode, all of which are unusual features to find available during Movie recording. Both resolutions record at approximately 15 frames per second. Finally, an unusual "index" option is available while playing back movies, that lets you create an "index print" of a movie file, showing nine separate frames evenly spread throughout the movie. The index image is saved as a separate 640x480 image file on the memory card.
I encountered one issue with the C-60's movie mode, namely that the camera apparently produces a high-pitched "tweedling" noise (from the autofocus mechanism?) that is very clearly audible on a movie's audio track whenever the surroundings are very quiet. It's odd, because I couldn't hear the noise with my ears when the camera was recording, but it's quite obvious even when recording normal conversation.
Panorama Mode
Like most Olympus digicams, the C-60 offers a Panorama exposure mode only when using an Olympus brand, panorama-enabled xD-Picture Cards. In this mode, the exposure and white balance for a series of shots are determined by the first exposure. The Panorama function provides light blue guidelines at the edges of the pictures to help you align successive shots, leaving enough overlap between them for the stitching software to be able to do its job. Up to 10 shots can be taken in a panoramic series. Note that this function is only enabled by the built-in panorama firmware found only on Olympus brand memory cards. (A product decision that I personally think makes little sense for Olympus.) Images are saved individually and then assembled on a computer using the (included) Olympus software 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. This reminds us of the popular Olympus Pen F half-frame 35mm camera of days gone by (1963, to be exact). We're not sure what other purpose 2-in-1 Mode would serve.
Sequence Mode
The C-60 also offers two 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
setting and available xD-Picture Card space). Olympus rates the C-60's cycle
time as one frame per second, a very conservative figure, since I measured a
maximum of 1.6 frames per second in my own testing, regardless of resolution
or JPEG quality setting. As is usually the case, the number of frames you can
capture quickly is limited by the capacity of the camera's buffer memory at
higher resolution settings, but appears to be limited only by the capacity of
the memory card itself at the lowest resolution. Even at high resolution, the
C-60's buffer memory can store a minimum of shots before the camera has to wait
for the memory card to catch up. Sequence mode isn't available at all for the
TIFF (uncompressed) image format, and also won't work properly if the flash
is enabled, due to the time required to charge the flash between pictures. The
AF Sequence mode also captures a rapid series of images, but adjusts focus between
each shot, resulting in much slower shot to shot times. (The frame rate in AF
Sequence mode will depend somewhat on how easy the subject is to focus on, but
I measured it at 0.88 to 1.07 frames/second, depending on the image size/quality
setting.)
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 environments. Think
of a wedding reception, for instance: Use 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 following camera
parameters (see the subsequent section on camera modes and menus for explanations
of any settings which might not be obvious from the list below):
- P/A/S/M exposure mode
- Lens default aperture
- Default shutter speed
- Exposure compensation
- LCD default (on/off)
- Lens zoom setting
- Flash mode
- Macro/spot metering setting
- Self-timer or Remote Control mode
- Drive setting (single, sequence, etc)
- ISO
- Flash exposure compensation
- Digital zoom enabled/disabled
- File size/quality
- White balance
- Sharpness
- Contrast
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