Olympus Camedia C-765 Zoom4.0 megapixels, a sharp 10x zoom lens, tons of features, and an affordable price!<<Video, Power, Software :(Previous) | (Next): Reference: Datasheet>> Page 12:Test Results & ConclusionReview First Posted: 06/16/2004 |
Test Images and "Photo Gallery"
These days, I'm trying to provide more pictorial "Gallery" photos, in addition to my standardized test shot images, as a way of giving more of an idea of how the cameras I test perform with more "natural" looking subjects. Accordingly, you can find my standard test shots from the C-765 on the standard Pictures Page, or a collection of more pictorial subjects (this collection shot by assistant editor Shawn Barnett) on the C-765's Gallery page.
Test Results
In keeping with my standard test policy, the comments given here summarize only my key findings. For a full commentary on each of the test images, see the C-765's "pictures" page.
As with all Imaging Resource product tests, I encourage you to let your own eyes be the judge of how well the camera performed. Explore the images on the pictures page, to see how C-765's images compare to other cameras you may be considering.
Not sure which camera to buy? Let your eyes be the ultimate judge! Visit our Comparometer(tm) to compare images from the C-765 with those from other cameras you may be considering. The proof is in the pictures, so let your own eyes decide which you like best!
- Color: Very good color: Good skin tones, good handling of incandescent lighting too. Overall, the C-765 produced accurate, pleasing color, under a wide variety of shooting conditions. Hue was accurate in most instances, saturation appropriate (although strong reds and blues tended to oversaturate slightly), and skin tones looked very natural. As is the case with most cameras I test, the C-765's auto white balance system had a hard time with the household incandescent lighting that's so common in the US, but its Incandescent and Manual white balance options did very well indeed. All in all, a very nice performance.
- Exposure: Good exposure accuracy. A contrasty tone curve, but an effective contrast adjustment to counter it. The C-765 handled my test lighting quite well, requiring less exposure compensation than average on the outdoor and indoor portrait shots, and generally producing accurate exposures on other shots I took. Like most consumer cameras, its default tone curve is somewhat contrasty, to produce the "snappy" photos most consumers prefer. As usual, this leads to lost highlight detail when shooting under harsh lighting conditions, but the C-765 differs from the run of the mill point & shoot models in that it has a very functional contrast adjustment control, accessible via its LCD menu system. Dialing the contrast down to its lowest level really helped to preserve highlight detail under the deliberately harsh lighting of my Outdoor Portrait test. Once again, a very good performance.
- Resolution/Sharpness: High resolution, 1,100 lines of "strong detail." The C-765 did pretty well on the "laboratory" resolution test chart, its 1,100 line resolution being pretty typical of four-megapixel cameras I've tested It started showing artifacts in the test patterns at resolutions as low as 700 lines per picture height, in both horizontal and vertical directions. I found "strong detail" out to at least 1,100 lines. "Extinction" of the target patterns occurred between 1,250 and 1,300 lines.
- Image Noise: Good noise performance at daylight and bright indoor light levels, higher than average noise under night shooting conditions. Image noise on the C-765 is a bit of a mixed bag. It does very well under bright to moderate lighting, with absolute noise levels that are a little higher than the best four-megapixel models out there, but with a nice, tight pattern to the noise that makes it less obtrusive than it might be otherwise. Under low-light conditions though, the noise creeps up a fair bit, and its noise-reduction option produces very odd results, eliminating "hot pixels" pretty effectively, but actually producing higher noise overall. (See my comments on the Night Shots portion of the pictures page.)
- Closeups: Great macro performance, especially in Super Macro mode, with good color and exposure. Flash is blocked by the lens, however. The C-765 performed pretty well in the macro category, capturing a minimum area of 2.20 x 1.65 inches (56 x 42 millimeters). The camera's Super Macro setting produced even better results, capturing a minimum area of just 1.37 x 1.02 inches (35 x 26 millimeters). Resolution and detail were excellent, with strong detail in the dollar bill, coins, and brooch. Details were softer in the brooch and coins (especially in the Super Macro shot, from the very close shooting distance), but definition was good. As is often the case with digicam macro shots, all four corners of the frame were somewhat soft, particularly in the Super Macro shot. The position of the C-765's flash directly above the lens resulted in a dark shadow in the lower portion of the frame, so plan on using external lighting for your closest macro shots.
- Night Shots: Good low-light performance, with good color balance. More noise than I'd have expected, based on the daylight shots from this camera though. Autofocus was effective down to 1/4 foot-candle, 1/4 the brightness level of typical street lighting, EVF is usable to very low light levels. The C-765 performed pretty well here, and produced clear, bright, usable images down to the 1/16 foot-candle (0.67 lux) limit of my test, at the 100, 200, and 400 ISO settings. (The image shot at 100 ISO was a hint dim, but still usable.) At ISO 64, images were bright down to the 1/4 foot-candle (2.7 lux) light level, though you could arguably use the image captured at the 1/8 foot-candle (1.3 lux) light level. Color balance was slightly warm, and the warm cast increased as the light level dimmed. Noise performance and the operation of the noise reduction option were a little odd, but too involved to go into here: See my comments on the Night Shots portion of the pictures page. A pretty good job, despite higher than expected noise.
- Viewfinder Accuracy: A very accurate electronic viewfinder. The C-765's electronic "optical" viewfinder (EVF) was very accurate, showing 99+ percent frame accuracy at wide angle, and about 100 percent at telephoto. The LCD monitor was also very accurate, since it shows the same view, just on a larger screen. Given that I like LCD monitors to be as close to 100 percent accuracy as possible, the C-765's LCD monitor is essentially perfect in this regard.
- Optical Distortion: Lower than average barrel distortion at wide angle, virtually no distortion at telephoto. Higher than average chromatic aberration. Geometric distortion on the C-765 was quite a bit lower than average at the wide-angle end, where I measured approximately 0.4 percent barrel distortion. The telephoto end fared better yet, as I measured approximately 0.02 percent barrel distortion (about half a pixel) there. Chromatic aberration was higher than average though, showing several pixels of pretty strong coloration on either side of the target lines. (This distortion is visible as a slight colored fringe around the objects at the edges of the field of view on the resolution target.)
- Shutter Lag and Cycle Time: Average shutter lag, decent cycle times, but limited buffer capacity. Long-zoom cameras are great for sports, but they're often plagued by slow autofocus systems, and the C-765 somewhat falls prey to this syndrome. With shutter delays on the order of 1.0-1.2 seconds, it's not the worst cm
- Battery Life: Good but not spectacular battery life, good to have a second battery. With a worst-case run time of almost exactly 2 hours, the C-765's battery life is pretty good, but not exceptional. - And, because it's an EVF-based camera, you can't save very much power by turning off the rear-panel LCD. I always recommend purchasing a second battery, but do so even more strongly in the case of EVF-based models like the C-765.
Conclusion
| Free Photo Lessons | |
|
Related Links
More Information on this camera from...
DCViews:
Olympus C-765 review
Follow Imaging Resource: