When you switch the Mode dial from record to Play you are shown a fullscreen review of the last image you captured like the one above.

If you want to know the details of your picture just press the INFO button and you will see the following display. This picture was shot in SHQ mode, the filesize is 1600 x 1200 pixels, the aperture value was F3.5, the shutter speed was 1/320 second, the exposure compensation was 0.0, the white balance was automatic and the ISO sensitivity was set at 100.

You also see the battery condition in the upper left and in the lower right is the file folder and file number information.

To quickly search through your stored images you move the zoom control lever to the wideangle position and it brings up a thumbnail index page. Using the 4-way jog switch you can select an image and then display it fullscreen.

While viewing an image fullscreen you move the zoom control lever to the telephoto position and magnify the image up to 3x. You can now move around the image using the 4-way jog switch to examine the picture for color, detail or focus.

Play mode MENU options:

- Slideshow playback start

- Record sound clip for picture being displayed.

FUNCTION - not sure what this is yet (no manual here)

CARD SETUP - Delete images or format SM card.

MODE SETUP - submenu with these options:

ALL RESET - Reset all settings to default

- Beep sound: Off, Low, High

SLEEP - Auto-Off timer: Off, 30s, 1m, 2m, 5m

- Thumbnail display: 4 or 9 images

- Adjust LCD backlight intensity

- Set the time and date

Steve's Conclusion

With all the other digicams I've had to review in the last month (and that's a bunch) the one that I've had the most fun with is the Olympus C-2100UZ. This camera performs wonderfully under every kind of shooting environment from indoor flash to outdoor sports. It has the same zoom capabilities as Sony's FD95 or CD1000 but in a smaller, lighter and faster camera.

The shortcoming of the Sony cameras is their inability to take more than one shot at a time. That and their viewfinder is frozen until the image is written to diskette or disc. This is not the case with the C-2100UZ, its RAM buffer lets you shoot one shot after another or continuously. And the viewfinder image remains active even while it is writing to the SmartMedia card. Of equal importantance to sports shooters is a fast autofocus system that can be further enhanced by enabling the fulltime AF function. The autofocus system works even in low-light conditions thanks to a focus assist illuminator.

The C-2100 uses an electronic viewfinder (EVF) which is essentially a tiny color LCD with a magnifying lens over it. It gives you true through-the-lens viewing with the added advantage of displaying important exposure and camera data. In fact, anything that can be displayed on the big color LCD can also be displayed on the EVF including the menus and your review images. This is important for two reasons, first it makes it very easy to access the menu system when outdoors in the bright light and using the tiny EVF instead of the large LCD increases your battery run time. There are drawbacks to the EVF, it's not the same as looking through a real SLR camera, the image is definitely "electronic" and as such the color suffers a bit. Because of its size and lower resolution the images played back on the EVF will look much better on the large color LCD. When you half-press to set the focus and exposure the image is momentarily frozen which can interrupt your concentration when following a rapidly moving subject. The new Fuji FinePix 4900 Zoom also uses the same type of EVF display.

The 10x stabilized zoom is great, once you use it you'll wonder how you ever managed to get by with a 3x or even a 5x lens. The stabilization system allows handheld shots at full telephoto that are sharp and clear. It also lets you capture shots at much slower shutter speeds than you'd attempt with other cameras. If you like candid shots, you'll love the ability to shoot family and friends from half a block away. They'll never even know you were there. Switch it into macro mode and capture closeup shots of flowers and small things from five feet away, or get so close that the lens just about touches your subject.

The iESP exposure system is nothing short of amazing. Olympus has always had an excellent exposure system on their cameras and that has now been taken to the next level. From closeup flash to extreme back-lit subjects it consistently yields properly exposed pictures. Working together with the iESP exposure system is the iESP white balance. Sharp and well exposed images mean nothing if the colors are wrong. I'd have to say that 90% of my pictures were taken using Program Auto and Auto white balance and I found very few that needed any post-capture tuning whatsoever.

When I go out shooting I always take along one or two sets of spare batteries. After filling a 64MB SmartMedia card and half of another one, the Olympus 1600mAH NiMH batteries were still going strong. Of course your mileage will vary if you use the big color LCD frequently. I don't see this as much of a problem as the electronic viewfinder tells you everything the camera is doing and you can even review your captured shots on the small screen. The viewfinder is not as resolute as the big LCD but once you realize that this camera rarely takes a "bad" picture, you won't be doing a lot of reviewing anyway. Unlike the Olympus D-500 and D-6xx SLRs, the C-2100 allows you to use the color LCD as a live viewfinder if desired.

The user controls are ergonomically laid out and clearly labeled. The most frequently accessed functions have dedicated buttons. On the top are the Macro, Spot Metering and Drive mode buttons and not far away on the back is the Flash mode button. Setting these options only requires that you press the button and watch the icons change on the data display. You can go from Record to Play quickly by just pressing the Monitor button twice or the usual way by switching the camera into Play with the Mode Dial. One annoying thing is the way the Power On / Off/ Reset switch is designed, if you slide it just a tad too far you end up resetting quite a few custom settings back to default. The myriad of advanced functions and features is accessed through the onscreen menu system. To avoid having to set and reset options you can tell the camera which ones to remember from power off to power on.

At the time of this writing (Aug 2000), the Olympus C-2100 is undoubtedly the best choice for a consumer priced (under $1000) sports digicam. Olympus just recently announced the E-100RS which is physically the same as the C-2100UZ and also has the 10x stabilized lens. It has a lower 1.5 megapixel resolution but a much faster burst and capture rate. For now, the C-2100UZ is the 'King of the Hill' for zoom focal length and image processing speed. The image quality is top notch and as I already stated, the camera is pure fun to use and that's really what it's all about. It should be available in early September at an MSRP of $999, the only problem will be finding one before someone else gets it first.