Olympus C2020 2MP Digital Camera

Following in the tradition of the popular C-2000 Zoom, Olympus's C-2020 Zoom offers high-performance digital imaging in a compact, great-looking body.

The styling on the C-2020 is a sure winner. It looks like a miniature traditional SLR that fits in one hand, and its front grip makes it easy to hold. The C-2020's menu system is fairly easy to use, although you might have to refer to the manual to find out what the cryptic abbreviations, such as WB (white balance) and Q (quality setting) mean.

The C-2020 packs a powerful 3x zoom lens and offers an excellent resolution of 1,600 x 1,200 pixels. (You can also set it for lower resolutions.) Its large half-inch CCD produces incredibly sharp, colorful pictures. While most settings use the JPEG format, this camera also has an uncompressed TIFF format for high-end, ultradetailed photo work. You can save your images on compact SmartMedia memory cards.

Olympus manages to marry high-end manual controls with more consumer-oriented, popular features in the C-2020. This digital camera offers superb creative control, featuring traditional aperture- and shutter-priority modes, as well as a full manual setting. The C-2020 shows both aperture and shutter speed on the display in all modes, as well as a quick-adjust exposure compensation--one of the most useful displays we've seen. This lets you change settings more quickly and easily than even a traditional SLR film camera will allow. The C-2020 also offers a macro setting for close-up work. It gives you a spot-metering option for tricky exposures as well; its advanced TTL matrix metering worked very well for most of our scene exposures. In addition, the C-2020 has a new black-and-white mode and a new movie mode, which lets you take up to 60 seconds of QuickTime video (without sound).

Overall, we were very pleased with the Olympus C-2020's performance--while it offers high-end creative control, it's also easy enough for a novice to use. Its compact size and great styling were big plusses as well. The only drawback we experienced was its tendency, as with all digital cameras, to drain batteries very quickly--we'd recommend investing in a set of rechargeable AAs.

Pros:

• Extensive creative control
• Very compact
• Powerful zoom
• Records short movies

Cons:

• Drains batteries quickly

Based on the design of the award-winning C-2000 Zoom, the Olympus C-2020 Zoom digital camera is a range-finder camera with a high-resolution 3x zoom lens (equivalent to a 35 to 105mm zoom on a 35mm film camera) and a 2.11-megapixel capacity. Maximum picture resolution is 1,600 x 1,200 pixels. This camera includes a number of exposure presets as well as Digital ESP TTL matrix metering with image and spot metering.

The C-2020 Zoom is Olympus's first filmless digital camera to shoot color or black-and-white images. It's also the first Olympus camera that can shoot up to 60 seconds of QuickTime movie. This higher-end digital camera is for the photographer who wants to move beyond standard point-and-shoot quality without sacrificing a user-friendly interface.

Other advanced features include fully automatic and true manual controls for focus, white balance, and exposure; a new wide-view 1.8 LCD, for easy viewing at any angle, even in direct sunlight; a wireless remote control; a new power control dial and better power efficiency; and onscreen menus and controls. The built-in flash has five modes, including red-eye reduction, fill-in, and flash off to match any lighting situation. Also included are a 12-second delay self-timer and a date imprinting function.