Probably, the companies that manufacture digital cameras will never cease to surprise us with the products of photographic art. The time brings new pleasant surprises.
You think camera C-5060 is simply provided with the 7-mega pixels matrix? It’s not so. Though, looking at the new model C-7070, you might not notice any differences at first glance, in reality they are different.
The successful design of case C-5060 has received further development. Battery compartment space is increased, and this additional relief has definitely gone on advantage. It has become as convenient to hold the camera in your hands, as to hold a reflex camera. Pleasant sensations are strengthened with the increased size of a rubber overlay.
Mode choice head is slightly decreased. There are no subject programs on the head, and it is possible to choose a concrete program only through the menu. Under the button of modes of viewing appeared the inscription Info. At the first sight, this is all. It seems that engineers of company Olympus consider the initially chosen design to be close to an ideal. Well, let's look it.
This compact camera cannot be called small. The ergonomic metal case is moderately weighty, and it promotes a firm keeping of the camera, especially at long endurance's.
You will not put this camera in a pocket, and the lovers of shooting promptly will choose something more stylish and elegant. The camera is more likely aimed at creative work.
The camera has rich functionality which is comparable with the functionality of many good reflex cameras. The shooting modes which are the most important for thoughtful work are located at separate operating buttons: exposure memory, exposure correction, flash power correction, modes of auto focus and exposure measuring.
Besides the total set of usual exposure measuring modes there is one more mode, which is not often met even in professional cameras. It is a multi dot gauging. Some (up to 8) individual dot gauging are done, and the result is averaged. In elementary cases it is possible to measure brightness, having laid a range of brightness of a picture on the photo breadth of a matrix.
Skilled photographers like to shoot using the RAW format; in fact this way gives many more opportunities to realize the potential of the camera. But, you see, it’s not very pleasant to convert even several tens of "crude" files only in order to get preview pictures in archive.
But in this camera there is a mode of simultaneous shooting both in formats RAW and JPEG/TIFF.
The lens has got to the camera by right of succession from model C-5060. It is often criticized for its low aperture ratio. Really, a diaphragm f/4.8 with a long focus is hardly possible to call "light". But a strong feature of this zoom is its short focus length - f=27 mm in a 35-mm equivalent. This is just this feature that attracts the interest of those who like to shoot with a wide-angle lens. First of all they use this feature in architectural and landscape shooting. Good news for landscape shooting lovers: the diaphragm now can be covered up to f/11. And let the real resolution fall at this aperture, but as well the depth of sharpness noticeably grows.
Hybrid auto focusing system. Besides the tool of basic estimation of contrast at the matrix, there is an external gauge working by the principle of phase-detection. With its help the camera is roughly, but quickly directed at sharpness, and the final focusing is made according to contrast value.
Certainly, the similar systems lose to digital reflex cameras in rapidity. But the camera is very good at work. It was confidently focused at night in a view of street lanterns; the light exposure of a shooting picture corresponded to a diaphragm f/4 and a 4 exposure (ISO 100). The object was at the distance of about 15 meters. Indeed, the main problem was how to make the contrast value sufficed.
A mode of predicative focusing (using the terminology of Oracle AF) appeared. If an object moves, the camera analyzes the direction and velocity of movement and carries out focusing.
The sensitive area of auto focusing has noticeably extended. Now within the borders of the picture it occupies a much bigger area. A modest square 3 x 3 and other 4 overlapped points in the central part supply approximately (linearly) 30 percent of the picture area in the camera C-5060. This area occupies nearly all the picture (visually about 85-90 %) and contains 143 (13 and * 1110; 11) overlapped points in the camera C-7070.
There is a curious, and in some situations extremely useful, way of focusing. If at the semi-pressed trigger button when the camera is automatically focused on object to press the button of auto focusing modes as a result the camera will be switched to a manual focusing mode, having fixed a focus length at sharpness.
It is a useful technique, isn’t it? Undoubtedly, it is. It is possible to focus the camera at a certain set distance, and then constantly shoot with this preliminary installation.
The monitor rotates by two axes. Nothing special, you will tell. Yes, but it does not lean aside as it does with the majority of cameras of this class. It rises upward on 180 degrees. At vising from a belt it is as convenient to hold this device as to hold a camera of Hasselblad type. And when shooting from the extended hands from above or from the ground level such elevating monitor is more comfortable than leaning sideways.
The monitor has done well in nature landscape shootings. There was, perhaps, no case when it would be impossible to group the picture. Naturally, in the brightest sun the details of picture vanished, the objects turned to spots, but the monitor kept an opportunity of vising.
However, it is always possible to switch to the mode with the optical view-finder. It may be small, but in fact it is not less than in previous cameras. As for me I would work mainly with this view-finder. I’m used to seeing a vivid bright and precise picture in any conditions.
Unfortunately, the view-finder has remained the same, as in C-5060 camera. It displays about 75-80 percent of the picture (by vertical and horizontal dimensions). Here is the inconvenience: in the picture there will be fixed more, than is visible in the view-finder. Certainly, it is possible to remove superfluous parts in the photo editor afterwards, but in fact there is a good rule - to draw up a good composition already at shooting.
Probably, a more exact view-finder would be more expensive, but it is not a pity to pay in addition for it. For the sake of justice it is necessary to note, that such feature many optical view-finders - to a greater or lesser extent possess.
The menu structure has changed. In pleasant gray-blue scale it externally became more elegant, reminding me of the style of the C-8080 camera. The structural changes have made it more logical. Now all the information about the auto focus adjustment, white balance and so on is not scattered about the menu. It is compactly gathered.
New processor True Pic Turbo is applied. Speed of record to a memory card got a 30-40 percent increase. For example, the RAW-file is written to card CF Transcend 45X 512 Mb in 6 seconds and is read at viewing in 7 seconds (in camera C-5060 - 8 and 9 accordingly). But the sizes of files have increased too, so the real speed of data transmission has increased even more.
About the Info button. In order to see the histogram at viewing a picture, in models C-5060 it was necessary to include this mode in the menu. However in this case the picture was displayed in the form of a miniature. It could be increased, but then only a part of image was displayed at the monitor. One of the modes is displaying with the histogram. Is it a trifle? Then it is especially insulting, since in other cameras it has been a standard feature for a long time already.
By the way, zoom at viewing now is 7x against 4x in a previous model.
In summary we shall note the following. Both by opportunities, and by the style of management the camera does not concede to a pseudo-reflex C-8080 camera and even, with minor reservations, to a reflex camera E-300. Given our results in the overwhelming majority of cases also don’t disappoint.
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