Olympus Camedia C-8080
Wide Zoom Digital Camera
Review

Looking for a good enthusiast camera? The Olympus Camedia C-8080 is a very flexible digital camera at a reasonable price. The 8.0 megapixel resolution, 5x optical zoom, coupled with excellent features and optics, make this camera a hot seller in the market. The Olympus Camedia C-8080 has a couple of outstanding features. For one thing, it has support for both CompactFlash and xD memory cards and has a good and wide variety of professional-quality features.

The Olympus Camedia C-8080 digital camera

However, I also found that the it has very crowded buttons on the top right of the camera and has poor layout of control buttons, which places it at a disadvantage compared to other competing devices.

In any case, let’s now have a look at the features of the Olympus Camedia C-8080 in this article.


Design and Construction

The dimensions of the Olympus Camedia C-8080 are approximately 4.9" by 3.3" by 3.9" (WHD). It weighs about 1.46 pounds and has a nice black colored body. Handling this digital camera, I found that it has a sturdy, big body size, is pretty well-built and of an ergonomic design.
 

Optics and Resolution

The Olympus Camedia C-8080 comes with a 8.0 megapixel CCD and takes very nice pictures. The test pictures which I took for this
digital camera showed great color accuracy and brilliance.

The 5x optical zoom functions very well too - I was able to take distant objects with minimal fuss using the zoom lens.

Also, here are some details of the optical system within the Olympus Camedia C-8080 - it boasts an ISO range of Auto, 50, 64, 100, 125, 160, 200, 250, 320, 400, an aperture range of f8 (wide) - f2.4/f3.5 (wide/tele), as well as shutter speeds from 16 - 1/4000 sec. Setting the camera to auto mode allows these exposure settings to be set automatically. In my test shots, most pictures taken with the auto mode turned out excellent.
 

User Controls

Most photographers are very concerned about the user controls found in a digital camera. The Olympus Camedia C-8080 has manual controls to allow one to better control the exposure settings. There are comprehensive focusing options available if you’re more adventurous and want to play around with advanced manual camera options.

The 1.8 inch LCD screen is also easy to view, and provides a intuitive navigation system for accessing the various functions. This digital camera comes with a very functional movie mode. I enjoyed taking many small video clips using this feature.
 

Battery Life

The Olympus Camedia C-8080 makes use of proprietary lithium batteries and has a pretty decent battery life. The advertised battery life is about 350 images - a fact which I verified in various offline tests of my own. Don't overlook battery life - its one of the most important factors when purchasing a digital camera.
 

Storage and Transfer

The Olympus Camedia C-8080 stores your beautiful pictures in CompactFlash Type I/II and xD memory cards cards. Given the 8.0 megapixel resolution, my advice is to get pretty large memory cards - at least 128MB. This will allow you to take pictures without worrying about capacity. In terms of photo transfer, the Olympus Camedia C-8080 uses a USB interface. This enables you to make speedy uploads of pictures to the PC as and when you need to do so.
 

Shortcomings

Two shortcomings of the Olympus Camedia C-8080 should be mentioned here. The first problem is that this digital camera has very crowded buttons on the top right of the camera In addition, the Olympus Camedia C-8080 also has poor layout of control buttons Not really big problems if you look at it - on the whole, I'd still say this digital camera is a good buy.
 

Conclusion

Well, that concludes this review of the Olympus Camedia C-8080. You know understand the various characteristics of this digital camera - hopefully this knowledge will assist you in making an intelligent purchase decision. I think this digital camera takes pretty good pictures and on the whole, it ranks high in my books. Do check it out in your local camera store!

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If you've tons of digital photos to share and but are not sure which photo sharing site to choose, then do take a look at SmugMug. I've been a happy user of their photo sharing service for two years now and I've been most impressed by it. The service allows you to upload, arrange and share your photos, as well as buy prints or burn picture CDs.

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