Olympus c740 - Any opinions?

Hi everyone. I'm interested into getting into underwater photography and would like to go digital. I've seen that the Olympus 3040 / 4040 range is very popular but would like to know if anyone has an opinion on the new c740? I like it's features for land photography, in particular the 10x optical zoom, and Olympus have released an underwater housing for it (pt-018 ?).

It has macro down to 2cm. Is that a big advantage u/w?

It has max aperture of f/2.8 (cf f/1.8 on the 3040). Is that a disadvantage u/w?

Thanks.

That looks good, maybe for surfing photography as well.

But underwater, you won't be using that zoom, you'll be getting closer to the subject and minimize the amount of water between the camera and subject.

Macro down to 2 cm, that will be very helpful uw.

Regarding aperture, I find that the 1.8 is great on land for portraiture but useless underwater due to shallow depth of field. You will probably set to f/5.6 or 8 anyway.

mars, although you answered his question you didn't!

the super macro is going to be useless unless you are in a couple of meters, crystal clear vis and it is brilliant sunshine

why?

because the flash dont work

I wouldn't bother messing around with manual settings keep it simple and leave it in auto until you become used to your camera and actually know what the settings will do!!!

I have the 3040 and have never set it to manual once under water and i have some great shots: The Deep Blue

the 3040 and the 4040 have the super bright lens which work extremely well in low light conditions (thats funny, thats kind of like diving).

I have just bought the 5050 and will get a case soon.

In a UK digital photography mag the 730 (same camera only 3 meg) got a really bad review as did the c50.

the 3040, 4040 and 5050 have all had excellent reviews, best of class and all that, so why mess around with a light weight, you will only upgrade again later (I have had my 3040 a year, and wish i bought the 4040)

I'll have to totally disagree with clivefrancis about the manual settings. I've only done one dive trip with my 4040, and I'm very pleased that I took the time to learn about aperture/shutter speed. There are some excellent guides on the internet on using Olympus cameras underwater, just do a search!

As a rough guide I always had my settings something like this:

Macro mode as default

shutter 1/125

aperture 7-10

flash -0,7

As the internal strobe is only good for macro(ish) shots, these settings work most of the time. Of course, if you want to take pictures from further away, set the aperture to a lower number, increase the flash, maybe a slightly slower shutter speed, and voila!

Like marscuba wrote, the point of higher f-stop numbers is depth of field (as far as I know anyway), so that makes the f1.8 useless (because only the head of the fish will be in focus, the rest blurry - if it is a macro shot).

If you're looking at the C-740, wait a month and get the 4MP C-750. Same camera, better res

Sorry for being stupid.

What housing would a person need for a C-750?

Patrick

PT-018