Olympus C-720 UltraZoom Review

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Olympus C-720 Ultra Zoom



Features and Controls


Olympus C-720 Ultra Zoom

The C-720UZ employs an Olympus aspherical glass 8x optical zoom lens 6.4-51.2mm (equivalent to 40-320mm in 35mm camera). It has a Seamless 3x digital zoom and an aperture range of f2.8-f7.1 (adjustable in 1/3 steps EV).

The iESP multi pattern TTL autofocus system works from 23" to infinity in standard mode or from 4" to 6.5' in Macro mode.



Olympus C-720 Ultra Zoom

The eyelevel viewfinder is a 0.55-inch color EVF (Electronic Viewfinder) with full camera and exposure information displayed. It may be used for preview, review or menu operations the same as the large color LCD on the back. It does have a dioptric adjustment.



Olympus C-720 Ultra Zoom

The built-in popup flash has Auto (low and backlight), Red-Eye reduction, Fill-In, and Slow shutter sync modes. The working range in Wideangle is 3.9" - 18 ft. and in Telephoto it's 3.3 ft. - 14.8 ft at ISO 100.   The flash charging time is approximately seven seconds with fresh CR-V3 batteries.

The C-720 lacks the external TTL flash sync port that was found on the C-700.



Olympus C-720 Ultra Zoom

On the back is a 1.5" color TFT LCD monitor with 114,000 pixels of resolution, like the EVF it can be used for preview, review or menu operations. Control buttons: POWER turns the camera on and off, the AEL is the auto exposure lock or Custom function button in record mode, in Play mode it lets you rotate portrait mode images for proper display on a television set.

The 4-way selector is used to navigate the menus, change the shutter speed, aperture or exposure compensation values in record, in play mode it lets you select images for display. The button on the bottom controls the color LCD display, it is also used to quickly go from record to play mode for reviewing pictures. The OK button calls up the onscreen menus (see next 2 pages), accepts menu selections and enables the manual focus option.



Olympus C-720 Ultra Zoom

On the top is the Mode Dial (Play, AUTO, Landscape, Sports, Portrait, P/A/S/M, MyMode, Movie), shutter release with zoom control around it (which also functions as the thumbnail index and zoom control in play mode), to the left of the Mode Dial is the release button for the popup flash.


Olympus C-720 Ultra Zoom

The three buttons across the back are: DRIVE mode (single, sequential, sequential AF, selftimer or AE Bracket) it also serves as the Delete button during play mode. In the center is the Macro / Spot metering button, it functions as the Print Order button in play mode. On the right is the Flash mode button that doubles as the Protect / Unprotect button in playback.



Olympus C-720 Ultra Zoom

The I/O ports are on the side:


DC IN for optional AC power supply

USB 1.1 port for image downloads to the host computer

Video Out for connection to television set. Video format is NTSC (PAL in European models).



Olympus C-720 Ultra Zoom



Images and movie files are stored on 3.3v SmartMedia cards. The camera comes with a 16MB card and is compatible with all capacities up to 128MB cards. The cards must be physically pulled out, it does not employ any type of ejector mechanism.



Olympus C-720 Ultra Zoom

The C-720 UZ is powered by either two of the CR-V3 lithium batteries (supplied) or by four AA type NiMH rechargeable (highly recomended) or alkaline cells.





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