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| Date Reviewed: 09/10/2006 |
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Strengths: Macro ability. Extensive exposure/camera settings. Image quality. CF and xD card capability. Size and weight.
Weaknesses: Manual focus on distant objects. Battery meter. Menu system.
Summary: This is the most awesome camera you can buy for the price. I have the highest praise for this camera, and in almost two years of ownership have only had one issue (exposure sensor went bad), which was very quickly fixed under warranty by Olympus. The only real negative thing I have to say is regarding the battery meter. There's no graduated indicator like you have on other cameras, cell phones, or other electronic devices that tell you there's 60% left, etc. On this camera you have a green indicator for the battery, then, suddenly, it turns red and starts blinking that battery is almost dead. That can be a real pain when you're engrossed in photographing something and aren't mentally keeping track of either how long the camera has been on or how many photos you've taken, and like Murphy's Law the battery WILL die at the most inopportune time. At any rate, overall that's still a small issue and I absolutely love this camera. I highly recommend it to any serious photographer who wants to go digital.
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| Date Reviewed: 12/09/2004 |
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Strengths: Solid feel and build quality. Great night shots. Superb picture quality (i.e. color and resolution). Easy to use in auto mode. Has every type of manual setting for the serious camera bug.
Weaknesses: 5x optical zoom is a tad on the short side for this type of camera. However, I would rather have a 5x and great pictures vs. a larger zoom and average pictures.
Summary: 2004-12-17 14:01:48 I researched Canon, Nikon, Sony and Olympus for weeks before settling on this camera. I purchased the Olympus for 2 reasons: a.) I have owned a 35mm Olympus OM-2S SLR camera for 20 or so years and have been very happy with it. To me Olympus has always been perceived a "notch below" the other top brands by most people, however, I think they're a "notch above"...their cameras have always been very innovative and a great value. I believe they have to be this way due to the perception of Olympus relative to other top brands b.) I read expert after expert reviews of the competing cameras along with "user" reviews. When I added up all of the reviews the Olympus C-8080 seemed to edge the others in overall picture quality, value, and overall ratings. Even my monthly PCWorld magazine rated it a “Best Buy”.
After my research I went price searching on pricegrabber.com. I purchased the camera from Buydig.com for roughly $640.00. I previously purchased a digital camcorder from this same company without any difficulties. This a great price when compared to the other cameras. In fact, I purchased a 3-year additional warranty for $99. Thus, for just over $740.00 in total I have a great camera with a four year warranty (1 year from the manufacturer + 3 additional years) for equal to or less that the camera price alone of the competing brands.
I have not been disappointed in the least bit. I would suggest anyone interested read some of the expert reviews linked to from this site and form your own opinion. In the mean time I’m having a lot of fun taking pictures and trying out different settings, filters, etc. It’s great when you can experiment and see what you took right on the super high-resolution camera LCD screen. If you don’t like it you delete it and move on. I doubt I’ll ever use my old Olympus camera again.
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| Date Reviewed: 05/21/2004 |
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Strengths: Very well build solid camera. Great lens. A lot of features with easy access. Outstanding picture quality
Weaknesses: Optical zoom is marginal for cameras in its class. Very awkward positioning of ON/OFF button. A bit noisy. No manual zoom ring.
Summary: The camera isn't perfect (very few things in this life are :-), but I believe that at the present time is the best value for the money. I bought it at 6ave.com at $755 including shipping and was very happy with the transaction. At the end of the day after all "games" with features and performance you are left - with the end result - your pictures, and the quality of pictures is superior to what you can do with the competition from Sony, Minolta or Canon. I think that it is due to the new generation lens specifically designed for the new 8MP digital censor. I found flash adequate. Features are plentiful and access is easy and "makes sense" although dealing with custom modes can be confusing (keep in mind that I was used to Olympus 750C with similar controls). I love the ability to choose between 3:2 and 4:3 ratios. The camera has the fast ON time I've ever seen, but interval between shots is average. I would highly recommend to use Olympus xD 512MB card (found the best price at MemorySuppliers.com - they are very good) because it is very fast and enables you to take panoramic pictures. I also tried with 4GB Hitachi Microdrive - very fast and plenty of room, but it tends to get warm and drains the battery a little faster. Also buy a spare OLYMPUS battery (the best price I could find at TangoShop.com - very smooth transaction). Although the battery is very good, you will have to re-charge it eventually, but if you have a spare, you won't miss any shots. As I mentioned before positioning of ON/OFF button is very annoying - you will trip it by accident more than once, but considering that camera turns ON/OFF in less than a second it is not a major problem. The absence of manual zoom ring is a more serious shortcoming, and after being spoiled by 10x optical zoom of 750C I found 5x zoom to be restrictive. Overall the camera is great for novices and enthusiasts alike. I can sincerely recommend it.
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| Date Reviewed: 09/12/2004 |
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Strengths: 1) excellent picture quality
2) auto focus, faster than others
3) excellent battery life
4) looks bulky, but surprisingly handy
5) well constructed body, magnesium alloy
6) low noise level
Weaknesses: 1) control buttons all over
2) looks bulky
3) optical zoom, only 5x
4) buldled xd card is a joke
5) still pricy
Summary: purchased canon powershot pro1 with greater expectations, which neve met..auto focus function was terrible, without assist lamp for $1,000 camera?? took forever for focussing @ low light..returned & got oly 8080 instead, and the difference was a night & day..picture quality was about the same, bright & alive..auto focusing was fast & accurate in most of times..clearly gives you an edge on sport mode with fast shutter speed..looks a lot bigger, but is is well designed, which fits perfectly in my hand no matter how small your hands are..only drawback is recording times @ some modes, and it does not get helped by cf speed..not sure about reliability due to short ownership, but on one seem to complain..overall, an excellent camera among 8 mp group..
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| Date Reviewed: 11/16/2004 |
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Strengths: Wide angle; comfortable, secure grip; CUSTOMIZABLE BUTTONS!; minimal shutter lag; sequence setting; remote control
Weaknesses: Lack of manual focus ring; least zoom of competing 8MP cameras; not the size of a credit card =)
Summary: 2 1/2 months actually, I've had it since the end of August. I bought it just before I left on a trip to Chile and did take a lot of pictures. As the camera should have, everything is manual. EVERYTHING. When it comes to taking pictures, I'm often a control freak. Of course this isn't the PERFECT camera, but its most definitely a wonderful camera. The ONLY reason I bought this camera instead of a digital SLR is because its much more manageable in terms of size and transportation, and I'm not read to deal with multiple lenses quite yet. The only other 8MP camera that I've heard competes well with this one is the sony dsc-f828. But that camera is HUGE and if you put out just a little more money you can buy an SLR and they'd be the same size. Also, SLR's don't do video, which comes in handy for me at times. Anyway, I'd recommend this camera (I'd actually give it 4 1/2 stars, but that wasn't an option). Probably even a batter camera for the price now, I'd recommend this camera above the other 8MP cameras.
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| Date Reviewed: 10/16/2004 |
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Strengths: Great pictures, easy to use,battery good for 400+ pictures,help line to Olympus toll free,full info on all shots in viewfinder or screen,camera fits naturally into hand ,works well in low light
Weaknesses: The USB 2.0 conection to the camera is tight, I had several issues but they were all resolved by the toll free call to Olympus
Summary: The camera by today standards is on the large side but it fits well into your hand and the controls are easy to use. It is well constructed using excellent materials. The quality of the picture will say it all. The zoom is short for the price range but once you get use to the camera you can work around the short zoom. The pictures per continous shooting is 1.6 and others are up to 5 fps the quality of the picture makes up for the frames as you can blow this up and not lose the integrity of the shot. Downloading pictures the software that comes with the camera is good but the Pro version is better at extra cost. Since the camera uses both CF and xD-picture cards this a BIG plus for us with a lot of CF cards.
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| Date Reviewed: 04/26/2005 |
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Strengths: Good picture quality, long lasting battery, good grip on camera
Weaknesses: The on/off buttons, optical zoom and manual focus ring
Summary: I use it for 8 months and for wedding photgraphy, It has superbs result especially ini low ISO. Great camera and all my customer agreed with that
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| Date Reviewed: 09/28/2004 |
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Strengths: Beautiful picture quality, fully automatic and full manual control, dual picture cards, LONG battery life, amazing color, rugged feeling, feels great in your hands
Weaknesses: Absolutely nothing.
Summary: If I had to be nit-pickey and find something wrong, I'd have to agree with what some have said about the power button being in close proximity to the shutter button. I did accidently turn it off a couple of times when I went to take a picture. However, this was just part of learning the camera and I don't do it any more. Again, to be nit-picky, when ejecting the compact flash card, it doesn't come out very far. This doesn't make it too hard to pull out, though. Neither of these things should discourage anyone from buying this camera.
Before buying this camera I also seriously considered the Canon EOS Digital Rebel and was able to take it on a trial run. However, the C-8080 has additional features that the Rebel did not, like shooting movies with sound, the dual camera cards, color modes, and longer battery life. Everyone takes pictures differently and I just felt the C-8080 worked better for me and fit better in my hands (I'm a woman so have smaller hands) though they both took amazing pictures.
I highly recommend this camera to anyone who wants to take beutiful pictures that can be blown up to poster size. Even if you're not 100% up to par on all the manual adjustmetns you can make, the automatic settings will provide more than you could hope for. You can always grow into all of the settings, especially if you are into photography.
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| Date Reviewed: 12/19/2004 |
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Strengths: Best quality pictures, low noise in high ISO setting, high color accuracy.
Weaknesses: Battery charging time is quite long. Menu confusing sometimes.
Summary: I have used this camera for one month. I really satisfy with the picture quality. Color and sharpness of pictures are really awesome for this camera. The fully manual control is pretty good, although sometimes I am confused about accessing menu. The picture with high ISO is great. It provides pictures with really low noise.
The life of battery is good. However, the time to charge battery is quite long, so you might need to prepare backup battery for a trip.
Anyway, I love this camera. It is awesome. Did I say awesome? It is really awesome.
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| Date Reviewed: 06/24/2004 |
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Strengths: Excellent pic quality under iso200. Very sharp lens. Fast start-up and focus. Battery life.
Weaknesses: A little bit too bulky. Zoom range is relative short. Some buttons' position are odd.
Summary: The picture quality is the most important thing for me and I am not disappointed for choosing this camera. Very good auto exposure and white balance under most of circumstances. Fast response can make me capture what I want. The picture is stunning sharpness with very natural color. In fact, I more like the skin color tone from Canon pro1, it make people look more vivid and healthy. But Oly C-8080's color is more natural. Lots of advanced function, such as multi-metering, is very useful in some difficult exposure conditions.
This camera will take 2-3 seconds to perform auto focus under dim light, much slower than under the bright. But I believe some more expensive DSLR also have this "problem". It's also very hard to use super-macro setting to auto focus on a very small object, such as small bud, even this object locate at the center of focus frame. The manual focus setting is useful at that time.
Overall, it's a great camera. It deserve a 5 star at its class.
90% of People (72/80) found this review helpful. Was this review helpful or unhelpful for you?
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| Date Reviewed: 11/05/2004 |
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Strengths: this camera has fabulous resolution. I am no pro, but get great results 95% of the time.
Weaknesses: Low light focus is not terrible, but is not the best either. I have taken my share of blurry shots due to AF not working properly.
Summary: This is my first digital camera, and I love it. Like I mentioned, the low light AF could use some work, and the write time of the RAW files are long (12-14sec.)....but otherwise, this camera has captured our first baby's birth wonderfully (initial reason of purchase). Definately rec. this camera.
89% of People (25/28) found this review helpful. Was this review helpful or unhelpful for you?
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| Date Reviewed: 01/04/2005 |
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Strengths: Picture Quality (and that is the point isn't it?)! Point and shoot performance. Abitlity to customize modes and access them immediatly.
Weaknesses: Optical zoom and weight.
Summary: We took over 200 shots in the first 3 days and close to 400 by day 8. Wow! I started in the point and shoot mode and it worked about 99% of the time. Being able to adjust flash intensity, shutter speed, aperture or just change modes means 100% of the time I can get the shot I want. It takes black & white, sepia and panoramic, which are fun to play with.
The true test was printing the photos and having the picture quality equal to or better than a 35 mm. This camera does it. We even blew some up to 8 X 10 and there is no degradation. We compared it to the Nikon 8700, this camera blew it away on picture quality. I haven't accidentally hit the power button either.
P.S. Print your pictures on a Fuji machine. We compared Fuji to Kodak and the Fuji looks so much better.
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| Date Reviewed: 06/06/2004 |
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Strengths: built like a tank, numerous features, high quality lens
Weaknesses: some what heavy, power button to close to mode wheel ocassionally causing accidental power offs. need to keep iso levels low to decrease noise.
Summary: After careful research, reviewing numberous web sites, magazines and in store handling i decided on this camera.
My main concern was for image quality, not features, while the other 8 megapixel cameras (canon, sony, nikon, & minolta) had greater zoom ranges, the had in my opinion picture quality failures. The Olympus, while not perfect seemed to made the best compromises in favor of picture quality. In my short time using this camera i have been very pleased in the quality, in terms of sharpness, low noise (providing you set the iso below 200) and ease of use. I would have liked for the LCD to be more adjustable like the 5060. all in all a high quality prosumer camera
88% of People (61/69) found this review helpful. Was this review helpful or unhelpful for you?
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| Date Reviewed: 06/26/2004 |
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Strengths: A great camera that exceeded my expectations. The pictures are the best I have seen . The only thing thing it doesent do is bake bread.
Weaknesses: There are none that I could find.
Summary: 2004-06-26 23:23:29 I spent four years looking for the best digital camera at a price I could afford. The 8080 met my specifications and has lived up to my expectations in every way. The instructions provide flexability beyond anything I had expected The camera is fast and the battery is long lasting. I have been taking pictures all my life but now find I am at the beginning of a new learning and satisfying experience. I am completely satisfied with this camera and would recommend it to anyone wishing to extend themselves to the SLR threshold.
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| Date Reviewed: 06/15/2004 |
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Strengths: This camera has excellent picture quality even at the default settings.
Weaknesses: Location of power button. Also had a problem with the zoom for a couple of hours one day. The camera would not even come up it just kept beeping and saying "zoom error". Luckily it corrected itself
Summary: Overall I love this camera. I did a lot of research before buying a higher end digital camera and I am very please with my purcahse. The only other drawback that I would add is that it's not an SLR. It would be nice to be able to change the lenses.
87% of People (39/45) found this review helpful. Was this review helpful or unhelpful for you?
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