Home > Consumer Reviews > Olympus C-750UZ Camedia Digital camera [4MP 10xOptical]

This is an excellent camera, more features and longer zoom lens than its predecessor the 740UZ. Excellent X10 zoom lens enables you to get just the picture you want, although I did think that the zoom could be quicker. Clear menus that are quick and easy to work through allow you to switch between autofocus and manual focus, lock the aperture etc. having a hot shoe and built-in flash gives you lots of choice when it comes to flash photography. The bad point is the only supply you with a 16Mb XD card when really they should of given at least a 64Mb XD card! Also they supply rechargeable batteries and charger, the charger is only a trickle charger! So it takes all night to charge 4 batteries. Fuji co-produced the XD card and they are a lot cheaper to buy than Olympus, you will need to buy a larger capacity card unless you want to keep downloading photos every few minutes. The UniRoss quick charger complete with 4X 2100 mha rechargeable batteries is well worth the money and will charge a set of batteries in two hours or less.

This is as close as you will find to SLR functionality in a compact. Why Olympus limited the manual shutter speed to 1 sec when it can manage up to 16 sec in night mode is a mystery. I've printed pictures at A3 and at photo quality, I suspect larger is possible. Fabulous zoom though it can be fiddly as there is a slight lag but you get used to that. Slight shutter lag is irritating but again you get used to it. The remote is great (means no touching the camera on a long exposure - eg no blur). If you aren't after a long zoom I'd look at the one up 5050 with an "average" 3x zoom but more features. Reviews generally only find fault with the design (not really eye catching but personally I'd prefer a camera to take good pictures rather than look pretty in other pictures) and the OSD/menu which you get used to and is fine. There is a lack of a standard thread on the aperture - you need an adapter to use cokin filters for example but with digital you can apply that later so it's a mute point really. 16Mb card is ok to play with out of the box but 128Mb or above is actually practical. There is a fast charger with higher capacity batteries which is well worth getting too. All in all it is a great camera - small-ish, very versatile and great results.

I've been researching for months on what digital camera to go for. I looked at all the cameras on the market (brand new and older), I considered all the factors that were most important to me.

A price bracket under £500, best optical zoom, pixels per £, memory type, battery type, extra features, size and weight, camera body, build quality, reputation of manufacturer, and how it looked and felt to handle.

After much hair pulling and deliberation I whittled the choice down to 2 cameras. The Olympus C750uz or the Cannon IXUS 400.
Both are excellent cameras but have different characteristics.

The IXUS 400's main advantage is that it small enough to fit in a shirt pocket. It takes cracking pictures, looks good, feels good, lithium battery. X3 optical lense, 4 million pixels, compact flash. good build, all common features in the newer cameras. the web reviews are 5 starrs.

The Olympus C750UZ's main big advantage is a whopping 38mm to 380mm 10x optical zoom,4x digital,(40X Total) anything bigger you have to go into digital SLR (£1000). It brings far distant objects right up close and captures them at 4 million pixels without any loss in quality that a digital zoom gives. It looks good, feels good. Has the new Xd memory (faster read & write times and smaller). Takes rechargable batteries, has a hot shoe for an external flash. In my opinion there is presently no other camera as versatile on the market that comes close for under £500. LOOK NO FURTHER!!

After 40+ years of 35mm Photography the C750 is my first venture into this Digital world. It is quite stunning!!
That such a compact piece of equipment can contain so much technology is absolutely amazing. The power of the Zoom is
truly magical -and intrusive - yet it looks so innocent!!
The overall package has to be recognised as being weak in the size of the card and the rechargeable batteries, but
I bought a 128 Xd Card and Uniross Fast Charger and spare 2100 Batteries at the outset, - and am delighted with everything.
The Macro works well for me and I'm getting used to the shutter lag.
To carry, it is a pleasure after some years with an EOS + telephoto!
Thank you Olympus for an amazing piece of technology.

Ok, so it's not an E20, but this is a good all rounder for the amature.

The menu does take a bit of getting used to but it's worthwhile playing around because it does give you alot of control. There's fully automatic, programme, aperture and shutter priority modes. On top of those, you can also programme in 4 personal modes, and of course full manual mode. There's also separate focus and exposure locks to help when framing shots.

The UZ stands for ultra zoom, and that's an apt title. The optical zoom is 10x and if you can be bothered to go through the menu, there is a 4x digital zoom - giving a massive 40x zoom in total. Because this is 4 magepixel camera, the quality in the digital zoom isn't bad.

The C-750UZ can also shoot movies with sound. Here again the quality is as good as I've seen on a compact without going for a dedicated video camera.

I'm still getting to know the full potential but my first impressions are not disapointing. Are there drawbacks? Of course there are - but I only paid 360 quid and at that price I ain't complainin'.

Pros:
Handles well
Excellent Quality
Hot shoe, sound and remote control are welcome additions over the C-740

Cons:
The menu system takes a bit of getting used to
It's power hungry - invest in some 2000 mAh batteries (It's supplied with 1700 mAh ones & charger)
As always, the supplied memory is pitiful.

Would I recomend it to a friend? - Oh yes indeed!