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Olympus Camedia C-8080 Wide Zoom
Review Date: 24th May 2004
Image Quality
All of the sample images in this
Review were taken using the SHQ 3264x2448 mode, which gives
an image size of between 2.5-3.5Mb and allows around 130 images
to be stored on a 512Mb Compact Flash memory card.
Noise
The Olympus C-8080 Wide Zoom has a massive number of different ISOs,
10 in fact, although the ISO range itself is only 64-400.
Here are some 100% crops which show the noise levels for each
ISO setting:
One of the biggest criticisms leveled at the recent crop
of 8 megapixel digital cameras has been the presence of noise
at quite slow ISO speeds, and as you can see the Olympus C-8080 Wide Zoom is no exception. At ISO 50-100 noise is virtually non-existent.
At 100-160 it starts to appear and at ISO 200-400 it is very
apparent in the image when viewed at 100%, so much so that
if I owned this camera I would avoid using anything above
ISO 200 if possible. That leaves a useable range of 64-200,
which is fine if you like landscape photography or use a tripod
for most of your shots, but not so good if you want to shoot
indoors, in overcast conditions or if you want to set fast
shutter speeds for action photography.
Sharpening
Here are two 100% crops which have been Saved as Web - Quality
50 in Photoshop. The right-hand image has had some sharpening
applied in Photoshop. As you can see, the out-of-the camera
images, which were taken at the default Sharpening setting
of 0, are a little soft. You can either change the in-camera
setting (there are 10 different levels of sharpening available)
or use Photoshop or a similar program to sharpen the image.
File Quality
The Olympus C-8080 Wide Zoom has 4 different JPEG quality settings
and also supports the TIFF and RAW formats. Here are some
100% crops which show the various file quality settings. Note
that the RAW image was opened in Adobe Photoshop CS and converted
using the camera default settings:
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SHQ
(3,264x2,448) |
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TIFF
(3,264x2,448) |
RAW
(3,264x2,448) |
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Chromatic Aberrations
The Olympus C-8080 Wide Zoom coped admirably with high contrast situations,
with virtually no chromatic aberrations, or purple-fringing,
in any of my sample images. The two sample 100% crops below
are examples of the kind of photograph that would traditionally
exhibit chromatic aberrations, but as you can see the Olympus C-8080 Wide Zoom has produced almost no noticeable fringing.
Overall Image Quality
The Olympus C-8080 Wide Zoom produces very large file sizes that
will enable you to create A4 prints at 300dpi, and A3 prints
at a very acceptable 200dpi. If you want to print at A3 without
having to interpolate your images, then an 8 megapixel camera
like the Olympus C-8080 Wide Zoom will allow you to do so. What it
won't allow you to do is take photos that require high ISO
speeds. Indoor, action and sports photography all spring to
mind as subjects that aren't well-suited to the Olympus C-8080 Wide Zoom, simply because of the already limited highest ISO speed
of 400, and the fact that noise is very apparent in images
taken at ISO 200 and faster. The default sharpening level
of 0 is a little soft, but you can increase the sharpening
by up to 5 levels if you wish, or just use a photo editing
application on your computer. The Olympus C-8080 Wide Zoom excels
at controlling chromatic aberrations, with one of the best
performances that I've yet seen from a digital camera. Overall
the Olympus C-8080 Wide Zoom produced a vibrant set of images with
saturated colours, little noise at the slow ISO settings and
very few unwanted image effects. The only downside is the
limited effective ISO range.
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