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Olympus C-3030 Olympus extends their high-end compact to 3.3 megapixels, adds sound to its movies! Select a topic Reference: Datasheet C-3030 Test Images --------------------------------- 1. Intro and Highlights 2. Executive Overview 3. Design 4. Viewfinder 5. Optics 6. Exposure & Flash 7. Shutter Lag & Cycle Time Tests 8. Operation & User Interface 9. Camera Modes & Menus 10. Image Storage & Interface 11. Video, Power, Software 12. Test Results & Conclusion --------------------------------- Print-Friendly Review Version Additional Resources and Other Links Reader Comments on C-3030 Review --------------------------------- Digital Camera Comparometer (TM) --------------------------------- <-- Digital Cameras (Home) <-- Digital Camera Reviews Index <<Camera Modes & Menus :(Previous) | (Next): Video, Power, Software>> Page 10:Image Storage & Interface Review First Posted: 5/18/2000

Image Storage and Interface
The C-3030 uses SmartMedia memory cards and comes packaged with a 16 megabyte card. You can upgrade to sizes as large as 64 megabytes. (From third parties, anyway: As of this writing in May, 2000, the largest card sold by Olympus themselves was a 32 meg unit. SmartMedia cards as large as 128 megabytes are planned by the end of 2000.) We like the C-3030's file naming protocol, which optionally numbers each image shot with the camera progressively, also including the month and day at the beginning of the file name. (This last is really handy for those of us who are organizationally-challenged: You can immediately tell when your photos were taken, even if you never took time to organize them by date or event.)
Entire SmartMedia cards can be write protected by placing a write protection sticker over a specific spot on the card. Stickers can only be used once and must be clean to be effective. (We're not wildly enthusiastic about the write-protect capabilities of SmartMedia cards.) Additionally, the C-3030 allows you to write protect individual images by pressing the MF/OK button on the back panel while in Playback mode. It's important to note that write-protecting individual images does not prevent them from being deleted when the card is reformatted, though.
The C-3030 comes with interface software and cables for both Mac and Windows computers, namely, a cable for the super-speedy USB interface, as well as a standard serial cable.
Following are the approximate resolution/quality and compression ratios for an 8MB card (compression numbers based on our own computations):

Image Capacity vs Resolution/Quality		Uncompressed	SHQ	Fine	Normal
2048 x 1536	Images	0	3	10	N/A
	Approx. Compression	0:0	4:1	12:1	N/A
1600 x 1200	Images	1	N/A	5	16
	Approx. Compression	1:1	N/A	4:1	12:1
1280 x 960	Images	2	N/A	8	24
	Approx. Compression	1:1	N/A	4:1	11:1
1024 x 768	Images	3	N/A	13	38
	Approx. Compression	1:1	N/A	4:1	11:1
640 x 480	Images	8	N/A	32	82
	Approx. Compression	1:1	N/A	4:1	9:1

And here's a more comprehensive list, showing capacities of different-sized cards. (Extracted from the C-3030 Zoom's manual.

Number of Still Pictures that can be Taken (without sound)

Recording Mode		Number of Pixels	File	Memory Capacity
				2MB	4MB	8MB	16MB	32MB	64MB
TIFF		2048 X 1536	TIFF	0	0	0	1	3	6
		1600 X 1200		0	0	1	2	5	11
		1280 x 960		0	1	2	4	8	17
		1024 x 768		0	1	3	6	13	27
		640 x 480		2	4	8	17	34	68
SHQ		2048 X 1536	JPEG	0	1	3	6	13	27
HQ		2048 X 1536		2	4	10	20	40	81
SQ1	HIGH (quality)	1600 X 1200		1	2	5	11	22	45
	NORMAL			3	7	16	31	64	128
	HIGH (quality)	1280 X 960		2	4	8	17	34	70
	NORMAL			5	12	24	49	99	199
SQ2	HIGH (quality)	1024 X 768		3	6	13	26	53	107
	NORMAL			9	18	37	76	153	306
	HIGH (quality)	640 X 480		7	16	32	66	132	266
	NORMAL			20	40	82	165	331	665