Olympus C-5050 Zoom Review

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. This can also be displayed in Record mode by pressing the Quick View button. The green "musical note" icon indicates that there is a voice memo linked to this image. The green "key" icon tells you that this image has been protected against accidental erasure.

From the menu you can select the INFO option and turn it on. You will now see the following information displayed on top of each picture. This picture was shot in RAW mode, the filesize is 2560 x 1920 pixels, the aperture value was F6.3, the shutter speed was 1/60 second, the exposure compensation was +0.3, the white balance was automatic and the ISO sensitivity was set at 64. Next line is the date and time and on the bottom is the folder and filename.

Or you can select the Histogram display mode

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. This display can be set for 4, 9 or 16 thumbnail images per page.

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

One of the Playback menu options allows you to edit RAW image files. Here you can alter the parameters (resolution, white balance, WB fine tune, scene mode, sharpness, contrast, saturation, function) or crop and then save this as a new TIFF or JPEG image.

You can crop a large image and then save it to a smaller size image.

This is a fullscreen playback of a HQ quality 320x240 QuickTime movie clip. The icons tell you that it is a movie file and that it was recorded with sound. On the bottom is the running time - we're at 2 seconds of a 17 second clip. Just like playback of still images you can enable the playback info to be overlayed on the screen to show the size/quality, white balance and the run time info.

You can edit the movie clips in the camera. You mark the desired start and end frames and then either overwrite the original file or create a new one.

You can also create an index file from a movie clip. You pick the desired images and a 1024x768 still image is created with nine frames from the movie.

Play mode shortcut MENU options:

- Slideshow playback start

INFO - Enable or disable the camera and exposure information shown in playback mode.

- Enable or disable the histogram display mode

MODE MENU - Go to the full menu, see next frame.

PLAY

- Play or Record sound clip for picture being displayed.

EDIT

RAW - Edit a RAW file, alter parameters and then save it as a TIFF or JPEG image

RESIZE - Create a 640x480 or 320x240 size image

CROP - Crop and save to a smaller image size

COPY - Copy images between xD/SM and CF cards

CARD

CARD - Delete images or format flash card.

SETUP

ALL RESET - Reset all settings to default.

- Menu language (English, Japanese, French, German)

PW ON SETUP - Picture/Sound effect for startup screen

PW OFF SETUP - Picture/Sound effect for shutdown screen

SCREEN SETUP - Select image to be used with PW screens

VOLUME - Adjust playback volume of internal speaker

- Beep sound: Off, Low, High

- Adjust LCD backlight intensity

- Set the time and date

VIDEO OUT - Set the video signal format to NTSC or PAL

- Thumbnail display: 4, 9 or 16 images per screen