The Olympus C-750UZ pairs great telephoto grasp with a 4-megapixel CCD sensor for photographers, all in a fairly compact package.If you were a big fan of the previous UZs from Olympus, this 4-megapixel Camedia C-750UZ should appeal. Armed once again with a large 10x reach and several enthusiast functions, this Olympus rides on the same formula which orchestrated the manufacturer's earlier successes with the UZ line. However, if you're the finicky sort, the image quality, while decent, isn't something you'll want to write home about.
Besides shedding off about 10mm from its height and width compared to the older C-730UZ, this latest model retains virtually the same physical appearance. Though the brushed-silver plastic casing is slightly boxy, there are enough curves for a comfortable and firm grip. Don't let the plastic frame put you off: the unit feels--and is--solidly built.
Strangely, even with the reduced volume, there's no significant drop in the weight department. This C-750UZ clocks in at about 390g with both the xD-Picture Card and batteries installed. Nevertheless, Olympus crams in quite a lot under that sleek exterior. It's just a pity that a lot of the camera's functions aren't more accessible. For instance, setting the creative options of aperture, shutter or manual control requires a combination of dial and menu selections. This is clunky and hard to get used to initially. Once mastered, this unit can provide you with artistic freedom aplenty. We feel this model would have benefited greatly from a jog dial found on other units such as Olympus' own C-5050Z or Sony's DSC-V1.
An EVF (Electronic Viewfinder) takes the place of the conventional optical one. Hence, you'll get the actual view of the lens and have arguably more flexibility and accuracy in composing shots. Gone, too, are the parallax errors that occur with optical viewfinders in shots of close proximity. The optical variety tends to show the frame falsely and may thus cause inadvertent clipping of shots.
The biggest thing about the C-750UZ is undoubtedly its 10x zoom lens. This incidentally also leads to its largest shortcoming. There is no form of stabilisation--whether electronic or optical--found on this camera. As such, this unit is especially susceptible to camera shake and photographers will quickly find the tripod their best friend.
Besides the standard built-in flash, there's a hotshoe attachment for this particular Camedia, a sign that this digicam has its sights set higher than the regular consumer. Still, we expected functions to be more readily available or at least documented properly. We had difficulty locating the manual focus (MF) function and Olympus' user manual was of no aid! The auto focusing (AF) system, while adequate, gave us plenty of annoyances in challenging situations, and MF would have greatly alleviated our grievances (and time, too). In the end, only by way of a fluke did we manage to figure out this setting--you have to press and hold the "OK" button for more than 2 seconds. (The original review mentioned that there was no manual focus. This is incorrect and has since been updated.)
Other features worth mentioning are the real-time histogram; video recording with audio; and (a barely adequate) 32MB of xD-Picture Card media.
In our tests, we found the C-750UZ's image capturing performance to be good. The unit powered up in about 3 to 4 seconds, with the shot-to-shot interval at a snappy 3 seconds with flash on. Switching the flash off dropped the wait by only a fraction, to about 2 seconds.
The AF system, while slightly noisy, was quite decent, often taking less than 2 seconds for situations with enough lighting. However, the accuracy of the AF became questionable when we tried getting our subjects in focus during difficult circumstances or in areas of low light. In addition, the non-stabilised 10x lens made things a tad more arduous. But with some perseverance and improvisation, we managed to obtain good results with some rewarding pictures that only such telephoto reach can afford.
In general, metering with the flash enabled and disabled proved consistent and produced photos that were mostly well exposed. So much so that the common touchups (level tweaks) on editing software made the shots look less pleasing.
The LCD found on the C-750UZ is small and was barely adequate under bright sunlight. However, this wasn't an issue as we preferred to use the viewfinder to reduce the amount of camera shake anyway.
In terms of image quality, the unit delivered respectable photos. The pictures recorded were sharp with colours captured looking natural. However, they also exhibited some noisy shadows even when we set the light sensitivity to ISO 50. Furthermore, on bright highlights, we spotted a bit more purple fringing than we'd have liked.
Personally, we like the C-750UZ. However, we can't help but feel that it's let down by certain exclusions in its feature set--namely image stabilisation. But if you can live with the deficiencies of the AF system and image quality, this Olympus will provide you with many great photographic experiences with its existing range of controls and telephoto performance.
Olympus Camedia C-750UZ
Company: Olympus
Price: AU$1,199
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 1300 659 678
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