Our 1,850mAh nickel-metal-hydride cells (not pictured here) never even blinked. We gave up battery testing after we'd taken 1,125 photos with the LCD always on and the flash firing on about 20 percent of the shots. We also appreciate the ability to save uncompressed TIFF files, even though the bundled 16MB xD-Picture Card can hold just one TIFF shot. However, unlike with many models, you can zoom the lens while recording footage.
The camera can capture up to 33 seconds of silent, 15-frame-per-second video at a maximum resolution of 320x240 pixels. But the C-740's video capabilities lag behind those of some competitors.
If you wear glasses, you'll appreciate the eyepiece diopter.įour shooting modes-one-time autofocus, frame-based autofocus, high speed, and exposure bracketing-give you plenty of flexibility.
You can focus manually through the EVF or the LCD an enlarged view of the frame's center pops up as a visual aid. The C-740 offers two close-up modes: Macro is for objects between 2.8 inches and 2 feet away Super Macro lets you get within 1.2 inches of the subject but at a fixed focal length. The MyMode function lets you store up to four collections of parameter settings.
Along with the fully automatic modes, which include six scene presets, you get aperture-priority, shutter-priority, and manual exposure modes three metering selections exposure and flash compensation and a dynamic histogram. Olympus follows up with a broad array of features targeted at both point-and-shoot and hands-on photographers. The C-740's primary claim to fame is its 10X zoom lens, which provides a 38mm-to-380mm range, in 35mm-camera terms. Unlike the slightly upscale C-750, the C-740 lacks a hotshoe for an external flash. The fairly solid and firmly moored flash pops up for use otherwise, it folds down and lies flush with the top of the body, out of harm's way. After a bit of practice, we could navigate the options without looking away from the EVF. The display toggles between the electronic viewfinder (EVF) and the LCD unlike some cameras with EVFs, the C-740 can display the menus in either place. They're not buried in the menu system, but cycling through selections with dedicated buttons would require fewer steps. The virtual mode dial provides access to drive mode, resolution, white balance, and other frequently used functions. As with other C-series models, choosing settings is easy, though it takes a while to remember all the features and their locations.
A navigational pad encircles the menu/selector button. The controls are simply arranged and clearly labeled. Olympus could use the navigation pad more extensively to, say, handle the context-sensitive uses of the function buttons. We still dislike Olympus's A/S/M exposure control, which forces you to jump into the menu system to select aperture-priority, shutter-priority, or manual mode. If you need a slightly higher resolution or a flash hotshoe, climb half a step up the ladder to the 4-megapixel C-750, which delivers a lot more features for a relatively small increase in price. Improvements over its predecessor, the C-730, include the optical zoom's jump up from 8X to 10X, a beefed-up RAM buffer that permits continuous shooting of up to 11 frames, and six rather than four scene modes. A model example of evolutionary, the 3.2-megapixel Olympus Camedia C-740 delivers the solid performance, the broad feature set, and the respectable image quality of its ancestors, along with the long zoom that distinguishes the Ultra Zoom line from much of its competition.