Color me blue Under ideal conditions the C-3030’s colors are vibrant, as in these tulips (right). Here (left), however, the inclusion of an overcast sky gives the same flowers a bluish cast.
It moves mountains
Under just the right conditions the image quality of the C-3030 is commendable, but there were many times that the automatic mode failed to judge the exposure correctly. In one instance, I took a picture of snowcapped Mt. Hood in broad sunlight against a hazy sky at a distance of 20 miles. When I reviewed the image, the mountain was completely gone! I had no trouble capturing the same scene however, with the Epson and Nikon cameras in automatic mode.
Moving Mountains The C-3030 inexplicably removed Mt. Hood from this shot (left). By comparison, the Nikon CoolPix 990 (center) and the Epson PhotoPC 850Z had no such problem.
Colors were generally vibrant, but I found that the C-3030 had a tendency toward excessive contrast. In shady forests for instance, bright areas such as waterfalls, sunny patches, and white flowers were often overexposed and “burned” around the edges. Manual compensation can fix this, of course, but the Nikon CoolPix 990 fared much better under the same conditions without any intervention needed.
When high contrast is desirable the C-3030 does a fine job of bringing out color, as in these columbine flowers.
No photo finish
Olympus once captured my heart with the D-340, a camera I recommended to friends and family for years. (It’s still a good consumer-level camera.) But the prosumer-targeted C-3030 misses the mark. While it shares some shortcomings with the rival Nikon CoolPix 990 — losable lens cap, battery usage — its deep-sixed menu options and other ergonomic issues put it even further behind. There are better options than the Olympus C-3030 Zoom available for a similar price.
Contributing editor Marty Beaudet is a freelance writer and graphic designer in Boring, Oregon. Read more of his work.
This article was last modified on January 6, 2023
This article was first published on May 5, 2000
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