Olympus Camedia C-770 Zoom

High resolution with strong detail, nearly accurate color. Contrast adjustment helps with the harsh lighting. (Could help more though.)

The extreme tonal range of this image makes it a tough shot for many digicams, which is precisely why I set it up this way, and why I shoot it with no fill flash or reflector to open the shadows. The object is to hold both highlight and shadow detail without producing a "flat" picture with muddy colors, and the C-770 Ultra Zoom did a pretty good job with it, with its contrast adjustment dialed down, although I'd still like to see better preservation of detail in the strongest highlights.

The shot at right was taken with a +1.0 EV exposure compensation adjustment and the camera's lowest contrast setting. (The default contrast setting produced very high contrast in response to the deliberately harsh lighting.) Midtones are good in the shot at right, but the highlights are very bright, with limited detail. I chose the Auto white balance as the most accurate overall, as the Daylight setting was a hint reddish, and the Manual setting looked a little yellow.

Overall color is quite good, despite a very slight yellow cast. The slight cast leaves Marti's skin tones just a tad on the yellow side, but the blue flowers in the bouquet are rendered almost perfectly. (Many digicams have trouble with this blue, but the C-770 handles it very well here.) The strong reds and greens are pretty accurate, and saturation is good, even with the low contrast setting. Detail is good throughout the frame, even in the shadows, and resolution is very high, but the anti-noise processing does appear to flatten out the more subtle detail in Marti's hair. Perhaps because of this though, image noise is low to moderate, even in the shadows.

To view the entire exposure series from zero to +1.3 EV with the low contrast setting, see files C77OUTAP0LC.HTM through C77OUTAP4LC.HTM on the thumbnail index page.

Contrast is very high with the camera's default contrast setting, under the deliberately harsh lighting of this test.	Setting the C770's contrast adjustment to its lowest level knocked down the strongest highlights somewhat, while simultaneously opening up the shadows, though the highlights are still quite bright.

Excellent resolution and detail, and good exposure.

Color balance is similar to the wider shot above, with a slight yellow cast from the Auto white balance. As is usually the case, this close-up shot required much less exposure compensation than the wider shot, actually needing a -0.3 EV exposure compensation adjustment. The C-770's 10x zoom lens does a great job of preventing geometric distortion here, an important factor in close-up portraits like this. Detail and resolution are much higher here, with excellent definition, and once again very good detail in the shadow areas with low to moderate noise.

To view the entire exposure series from -0.3 to +1.0 EV, see files C77FACM1.HTM through C77FACP3.HTM on the thumbnail index page.

Normal Flash +0.7 EV

Slow-Sync Flash +0.3 EV

Good coverage with the built-in flash, and good color. Strong color cast with the Slow-Sync flash mode.

The C-770's built-in flash illuminated the subject very well here, and the C-770 seemed to require a bit less exposure compensation on this shot than do most cameras that I test. I got good results with a +0.7 EV exposure compensation adjustment, where many cameras seem to require +1 EV of adjustment. (The default exposure was quite dim though.) Color looks good, with a good blue in the flower bouquet, and good skin tones. The fairly strong household incandescent lighting results in a slight orange cast, mainly visible in Marti's hair and parts of the white shirt, but it isn't too bad. I also shot with the camera's Slow-Sync flash mode, which required only a +0.3 EV exposure compensation boost. The longer exposure time allowed more ambient light into the image, resulting in this case in a stronger orange-yellow cast from the incandescent lighting.

Auto White Balance

Incandescent White Balance

Manual White Balance

Good color with the Incandescent and Manual white balance settings, good exposure as well.

This shot is always a very tough test of a camera's white balance capability, given the strong, yellowish color cast of the household incandescent bulbs used for the lighting. The C-770's Incandescent white balance did the best job here, though the Manual setting produced nearly accurate results (just slightly cool). The Auto white balance had some trouble though, producing a very noticeable reddish cast, although the result is still better than many cameras manage in Auto mode. The main shot was taken with a +1.0 EV exposure compensation adjustment, about average for this shot. Skin tones look good, but the blue flowers in the bouquet are dark and purplish (probably to be expected under this light source).

ISO Series:
The C-770's noise performance as a function of ISO rating is fairly typical of the current crop of 4-megapixel digicams. That is, there is noise present even at the lowest ISO (64), although it isn't really visible until you reach ISO 200, at which point I'd say that most users would notice it, but not find it particularly objectionable. At ISO 400, the noise takes a noticeable jump, to the point that I personally wouldn't consider the camera to be usable at that level. That said, while the C-770's noise at ISO 400 is pretty obtrusive, it isn't quite as in-your-face-ugly as that of many competing 4-megapixel models. Overall, a pretty decent job, by current standards.

Auto White Balance

Daylight White Balance

Manual White Balance

High resolution with good detail, but very slight color casts, and some softness along the edges and in the corners of the frame.

Though slightly warm and reddish, I felt that the C-770's Auto white balance setting produced the best overall color here, with the most believable color (though the white house trim had a slight reddish tint). The Manual setting resulted in nearly accurate color as well, but was a bit too cool for my taste. The Daylight setting resulted in a warm, yellow cast. Resolution is high, with a lot of fine detail visible in the tree limbs and front shrubbery. (Even though this poster was made from a 500MB scan of a 4x5 negative shot with a tack-sharp lens, the C-770's four-megapixel CCD is close to extracting all the detail that's to be found here.) Details are reasonably sharp with good definition, though the edges and corners are somewhat soft.

Excellent resolution and detail, though a slightly limited dynamic range from the high contrast.

This image is shot at infinity to test far-field lens performance. NOTE that this image cannot be directly compared to the other "house" shot, which is a poster, shot in the studio. The rendering of detail in the poster will be very different than in this shot, and color values (and even the presence or absence of leaves on the trees!) will vary in this subject as the seasons progress. In general though, you can evaluate detail in the bricks, shingles and window detail, and in the tree branches against the sky. Compression artifacts are most likely to show in the trim along the edge of the roof, in the bricks, or in the relatively "flat" areas in the windows.

This is my ultimate "resolution shot," given the infinite range of detail in a natural scene like this, and the C-770 captures a lot of detail. The tree limbs over the roof and fine foliage in front of the house have a lot of fine detail, although the very bright sky in the background leads to some loss of detail, apparently due to lens flare. Details are pretty sharp, though there's a little softness in the corners of the frame. The camera just barely holds onto detail in the strong highlights of the white paint on the bay window in the front of the house, a difficult area for many digicams. Detail is very good in the shadow area above the front door, however. Overall color looks good with the Auto white balance. (For comparison, here are sample images with the Daylight and Manual white balance settings.) The table below shows a standard resolution and quality series, followed by ISO, sharpness, contrast, and saturation series.

Resolution Series:

ISO Series:
As with the indoor shots above, the images here show generally low to moderate image noise, with a fairly tight, fine-grained pattern that makes it less objectionable than it might be otherwise.

Sharpness Series:
The C-770's options for in-camera sharpening cover a good range. At the lowest setting, the images take strong sharpening in Photoshop very well. (Try 250%, with a radius of 0.3 or 0.4 pixels.)

Contrast Series:
As we also saw earlier, the C-770 has somewhat high default contrast, but a very effective contrast-adjustment option that does a good job of controlling the contrast for harshly-lit subjects like this one. - The low contrast adjustment does seem to by pull down the highlights more than it pulls up the shadows. This works well, but has the effect of cutting the exposure along with the contrast. I personally prefer to see a contrast control affect the highlights and shadows equally, but the control on the C-770 works well all the same.

Contrast Series
-5	-3	-1	Normal	+1	+3	+5

Saturation Series:
The C-770's color saturation control also offers a useful range of adjustment with small steps between settings. This is just the sort of color adjustment I like to see on a camera, one that lets you adjust the camera's response to exactly match your own preferences.

Saturation Series
-5	-3	-1	Normal	+1	+3	+5

Lens Zoom Range

Excellent 10x zoom range.

I routinely shoot this series of images to show the field of view for each camera, with the lens at full wide angle, at maximum telephoto (10x, in this case), and at full telephoto with the digital zoom enabled. The C-770 Ultra Zoom's lens is equivalent to a 38-380mm zoom on a 35mm camera. That corresponds to a moderate wide angle to a very substantial telephoto. In addition to the 10x optical zoom and 4x digital zoom, the C-770 also offers a 14x Super Zoom setting. (Apologies, Super Zoom results aren't shown here. The "Super Zoom" mode is a bit of a trick, basically a variation on the Digital Zoom theme. It forces the resolution to 1600x1200, and then just crops that many pixels out of the center of the image area. So you get a two megapixel image, but one that's effectively "zoomed" another 1.4x.) Following are the results at each zoom setting.

	Wide Angle
	10x Telephoto
	4x Digital Telephoto

Auto White Balance

Daylight White Balance

Manual White Balance

Slightly cool color with the Manual white balance, but good results overall. High resolution with excellent detail.

This shot is often a tough test for digicams, as the abundance of blue in the composition frequently tricks white balance systems into producing a warm color balance. As is often the case with this shot, I chose the slightly cool color balance of the Manual white balance setting, as the C-770's Auto and Daylight settings produced warm color balances. The Auto setting resulted in a strong yellow cast, while the Daylight setting had more of a reddish tint. Skin tones are somewhat pale with the Manual white balance setting, but overall color is more believable. (As I've noted on other cameras, this is really up to personal taste, as many users might prefer the warmer skin tones of the Daylight setting and not mind the reddish background.) The blue robe looks about right, with only faint purple tints in the deepest shadows. Resolution is excellent, as the embroidery of the blue robe and the red vest show a lot of fine detail. Contrast is slightly high, and aids in detail definition somewhat. (Because the original data file for this poster was only 20MB, cameras like the C-770 are definitely capable of showing more detail than the poster has in it.)

Standard Macro Shot

Super Macro Shot

Macro with Flash

A very tiny macro area in Super Macro mode, with excellent detail, although somewhat high chromatic aberration.

The C-770 performed very well in the macro category, capturing a minimum area of 2.25 x 1.68 inches (57 x 43 millimeters). The camera's Super Macro setting produced even better results, capturing a minimum area of just 1.34 x 1.01 inches (34 x 26 millimeters). Resolution and detail are excellent, with strong detail in the dollar bill, coins, and brooch. Details are softer in the brooch and coins (especially in the Super Macro shot, from the very close shooting distance), but definition is good. As is often the case with digicam macro shots, all four corners of the frame are somewhat soft, particularly in the Super Macro shot, and the Super Macro shot shows considerable chromatic aberration as well. The position of the C-770's flash directly above the lens results in a dark shadow in the lower portion of the frame, and the flash severely overcompensated for the close shooting distance (likely tricked by the specular reflection from the brooch), so plan on using external lighting for your closest macro shots.

Auto White Balance

Daylight White Balance

Manual White Balance

Slightly high contrast, but good overall exposure. Accurate color with the Auto white balance setting.

I chose the C-770's Auto white balance setting as the most accurate here, though the Manual setting also produced good results (just slightly cool). The Daylight setting resulted in a strong warm cast. Exposure is about right, though contrast is slightly high, and the C-770 faintly distinguishes the subtle tonal variations of the Q60 target. The large color blocks look good, though a little bright from the exposure, but saturation is good. (That said, the large red and blue color blocks are a hint oversaturated.) Detail is moderately high in the shadow area of the charcoal briquettes, with low noise, and the last two steps of the vertical gray scales are just visible.

ISO Series:
Similar results to what we saw in other shots above. In terms of absolute numerical magnitude, the image noise here is higher than that of the best cameras out there, but its fine "texture" makes it less objectionable than that of many cameras with lower absolute noise magnitudes.

Contrast Series:
Contrast and saturation here basically just repeat what we saw earlier, but I repeat these examples because the standardized colors of this target will make it easier for quantitatively-minded readers to better see what the camera is doing.

Contrast Series
-5	-3	-1	Normal	+1	+3	+5

Saturation Series:

Saturation Series
-5>	-3	-1	Normal	+1	+3	+5

Color Series:

Color Series
Blackboard	White Board	Black / White	Sepia

Low-Light Tests

Good low-light performance, with pretty good color, at all four ISO settings. Autofocus was effective down to right around 1/8 foot-candle, 1/8 the brightness level of typical street lighting. EVF is usable to very low light levels. Somewhat more noise than with the C-765 model though, particularly at the lowest light levels.

The C-770 did pretty well here, producing bright, usable images down to the 1/16 foot-candle (0.67 lux) limit of my test at all ISO values except the lowest, 64. (The image at ISO 100 was dim, but probably 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. While by no means terrible, there's definitely more image noise here than I would have expected, based on the fairly low levels in the daylight shots from this camera. - For what it's worth, the C-770's image noise also seems to be noticeably higher than that of its lower-end sibling, the C-765. The noise reduction system does a good job of eliminating "hot" pixels, but in the process of cleaning up the image, it also boosts contrast, which has the effect of making the background noise more obvious, rather than less. The camera's autofocus works down to about 1/4 foot-candle, a light level about a quarter as bright as typical city street lighting at night, and the EVF is usable at levels quite a bit darker than that, so the camera should work fine for typical outdoor night photography. NOTE though, that AF times increase dramatically under very dark conditions, to the point that it can take 4-5 seconds for the camera to focus at the darkest levels it's capable of, with the lens set to the telephoto end of its zoom range. What's more, the camera has to be held absolutely still while it's focusing, or it won't be able to tell when it's achieved proper focus. - So plan on using a tripod if you have to shoot under very dark conditions. All things considered though, a pretty good job. The table below shows the best exposure I was able to obtain for each of a range of illumination levels. Images in this table (like all sample photos) are untouched, exactly as they came from the camera.

(Note: If you'd like to use a light meter to check light levels for subjects you might be interested in shooting, a light level of one foot-candle corresponds to a normal exposure of two seconds at f/2.8 and ISO 100.)

	1 fc 11 lux	1/2 fc 5.5 lux	1/4 fc 2.7 lux	1/8 fc 1.3 lux	1/16 fc 0.67 lux	1/16fc No NR
ISO 64	2.5 sec f3.2	5 sec f3.2	13 sec f3.2	15 sec f3.2	15 sec f3.2	15 sec f3.2
ISO 100	2 sec f3.2	4 sec f3.2	10 sec f3.2	15 sec f3.2	15 sec f3.2	15 sec f3.2
ISO 200	1 sec f3.2	2 sec f3.2	5 sec f3.2	8 sec f3.2	8 sec f3.2	15 sec f3.2
ISO 400	1/2 sec f3.2	1 sec f3.2	2.5 sec f3.2	4 sec f3.2	4 sec f3.2	8 sec f3.2

Flash Range Test

A powerful flash, virtually no falloff at the 14 foot limit of our test, even at ISO 64.

In my testing, the C-770's flash illuminated the test target all the way out to 14 feet, without any significant decrease in intensity. - This seems to be consistent with Olympus' own rating of the flash range as 17 feet with the lens at telephoto focal lengths. (Let's hear it for the dual-tube flash design!) Below is the flash range series, with distances from eight to 14 feet from the target.

8 ft	9 ft	10 ft	11 ft	12 ft	13 ft	14 ft
1/125 sec f3.2 ISO 64	1/125 sec f3.2 ISO 64	1/125 sec f3.2 ISO 64	1/160 sec f3.2 ISO 64	1/160 sec f3.2 ISO 64	1/200 sec f3.2 ISO 64	1/200 sec f3.2 ISO 64

ISO-12233 (WG-18) Resolution Test

High resolution, 1,100 lines of "strong detail." Lower than average barrel distortion at wide angle, virtually no distortion at telephoto. (Results essentially identical to those of the C-765, no surprise, as it's the same lens.)

The C-770 did a good job 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.

Geometric distortion on the C-770 is quite a bit lower than average at the wide-angle end, where I measured approximately 0.5 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 is 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.)

Resolution Series, Normal Focal Length (~50mm equivalent)

Wide Angle	"Fine" JPEG	"Normal" JPEG
2,288 x 1,712	C77RES2288F	C77RES2288N
2,048 x 1,536	C77RES2048	-
1,600 x 1,200	C77RES1600	-
1,280 x 960	C77RES1280	-
640 x 480	C77RES0640	-

Resolution Test, Wide Angle

Resolution Test, Telephoto

Sharpness Series:

Sharpness Series
-5	-3	-1	Normal	+1	+3	+5