Customer Reviews

Olympus C765 4MP Digital Camera with 10x Optical Zoom

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is my second digital camera, first one was Olympus C-750 (which I used for abt 1.5 yrs) and after i lost it, I was determined to buy its next version C-765. This camera is simply awesome. It has all the things anyone would want in a camera: Optical Zoom, Small Compact Size, Great quality pictures & movies with sound, lots of modes & easily customizable, ease of menu and fast pictures.

Olympus has decreased the size (compared to C-750 which has same features) mainly by changing from standard 4 AA batteries to small Li battery. They have removed the hot-shoe , which usually slips & fall down. Turbo PicPro helps to take real fast pictures like in football game. (That was my first photo session with this new camera). I have compared my results with other comparable cameras and found this one better than others.

Sometimes there could be some problem of focussing at higher zoom, but it can be dealt easily by waiting for a few seconds once you increase the zoom before taking picture. It gives the time for enough light to enter. For better pictures, its aperture and shutter speed can be adjusted as well. Night mode picture quality is good and panoramic quality is really great. For self-timer photos, it gives you about 12 seconds before taking the picture.

Overall, I will recommend this to everyone, be it a beginner in digital photography or an enthusiastic like me.

Updated: June 14, 2005

I have been using it now for about 8 months and have used it in almost all the different geographic locations and at different times e.g. Blizzard in boston, desert and stony terrain, tennis courts at late evenings, football game, capture stage-shows, fireworks, babes at beaches, breakdancing events. I observed that this camera can be customized for almost any condition and it gives the best results. recently someoen asked me to suggest a camera cheaper than this and with approximately same quality in pictures. Frankly, I couldn't find one.

Update: July 5, 2006
This camera is doing really very impressive job. Apart from doing travel photography for landscapes and cityscapes, I have used for sports events like football games, horseraces and catching fireworks. Results are really impressive. These days, most cameras are in 5-6 MP range and create bulky files, more than 1 MB each. This camera is 4 MP and the file size is 600-800 kb with quality still very good.

We recently purchased the C-755, which is essentially the same camera as the 765, it just came from a different store, thus a different model number. Costco.com had a great deal and we decided to go for it and replace our old digital cameras with this one. I haven't had a chance to learn EVERYTHING as there are many many features available, but it has been wonderful so far. When using the auto feature, it takes beautiful pictures and the quality is top notch.

There are two things, both related to the flash, that caused me to rate it a 4 rather than a 5 (and I'd go 4.5, if I had the choice available to me). First, if you don't remember to put the flash up manually, there is no flash. Of course this is a good thing when you don't want the flash accidentally going off like in a museum! The second thing is that when you use the auto function you cannot force the flash ON manually. When it says AUTO, it means AUTO. There are so many features like the ability to program personal settings to be accessed later and the ability to use it for short video that are awesome and the zoom is amazing for a camera at this price.

I highly recommend this camera!

ADDENDUM: This camera requires the X-D memory chips which is newer technology, thus a little pricey. We were disappointed that the chips for our old Olympus digital would not work. We purchased a new chip at Costco for around $70 and it holds over 200 pictures. Sorry I forgot to mention this initially. It's still a great camera and the chips are likely to come down in cost as time passes.

In addition, I had no difficulties loading the software into my Sony Vaio Computer. It was quick and painless and all I have to do is plug the cord from the camera into my USB port and the software starts right up. It asks me what I want to do and I can quickly download my pictures.

Other than a cheap point and shoot camera, this is the first real camera that I have owned. I decided to go with a digital camera that way I would practice my photography skills without wasting a whole lot of money on film. Overall, I have been very impressed with this camera. I recently got back from a trip to London and everyone was very impressed with the pictures that I got. For the beginner, you can set the camera on Auto Mode on and get great shots. For the more advanced photographer, the camera offers enough creative control over things such as aperature and shutter speed. I experimented with the camera in the Sport Mode and was able to freeze an acrobat in the middle of a flip. This camera is not for a professional, but for the beginner to an intermediately advanced photographer, it makes a great camera. My only real complaint with the camera is shooting pictures at night or extremely low light situations is somewhat difficult. I recommend using a tripod or some other way to stabilize it for best results. It is possible that there is something that I haven't figured out yet since I feel like I am still learning a lot about this camera. Other than this though, I highly recommend this camera to anyone looking for a solid, reliable camera that takes excellent photos.

The C765 is my first digital camera after years of shooting pictures with 35mm SLR'S. I've owned the 765 for about 5 months now and have taken hundreds of pictures that range from hummingbirds in flight to floral still lifes. The camera has been an absolute joy to use and the results have been excellent. I take all my pictures at high resolution (2288x1712) and still get almost 300 shots on a 256MB card.

I feel so happy taking pictures with this camera. The 10X optical zoom is critical for the stile of pictures that I like to take: portrait, detailed pictures, lots of deep. Pictures are so good that it reminds me my old SRL film camera that had an 80-380mm zoom. Colors are vivid, details are excellent, supports 512MB media.

Flash is OK but I was expecting more of it, the C-770 has better flash.

Don't install the software. If you are using Windows XP you won't need the software. It is good for nothing, shame on Olympus!!!. If you don't want to spend more money download one from Internet, ie: free Adobe photoshop album.

If you want to have the best pictures, you will need editing software that works well like Photoshop Elements 3 that is the one that I recently bough.

My final advice: what ever camera you buy, learn to use it well, study the manual, practice taking lots of pictures. The combo that I have is excellent: C-765 (see also the C-770) and Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.

I've had this camera for about 3 months, and I love it. There are a bunch of professional review websites up(dcresource.com), so if you want to know all about this camera, then go there. As far as an amateur/for fun review, then I have to give it 4 stars. I would give it 5 but I must say that in low light situations, it's sometimes hard to get the camera to focus. But, the overall ease of use and picture quality of this camera is great. The only other camera I even thought of getting was the Cannon S1, but didn't like the 3 megapixels and the fact that the camera would not focus correctly at max zoom....(verified this fact by playing with one at my local camera store...If cannon would only fix this little problem...then I will get the next generation of this superb camera). Great little introductory camera for those of us with little knowledge of picture taking.

I shoot thousands of close up pictures per year of American Indian jewelry for my website (most at a distance of 8" to 24"). See Chacodog.com for real examples of close up photos from this camera. I'd been using an Olympus C3020 for the last three years and liked it very much, both for ease of use and the true color it produced. All such shots are taken outdoors and everything is taken on auto settings in macro mode. It was time to step up and I was favorably disposed to Olympus cameras (I have a Canon SD10 ELPH and, while it's okay, it's not as easy to use the menus as on an Olympus and it seems to yield colors that are a little more vivid than what you shoot). I chose this camera because there was no point going beyond 4 megapixels for web photos (most people reduce their photos in size to send them via e-mail, etc. and throw out half or more of the pixels, so anything beyond 4 megapixels is for the thin air crowd, i.e., pros). Cutting to the chase: I was stunned by shots I got effortlessly with this camera. Particularly, it was easier to shoot in several different light conditions with it and the C765 would adjust automatically for conditions and create a great shot whereas my old C3020 could produce a great shot on auto but the light had to be within much narrower perameters for success. This camera also has super macro, which I needed because I sometimes shoot objects that are too small for the C3020 to focus on properly at 8" and beyond (which is the closest it will work). The C765 will get you to within 1 1/2" on super macro. Okay, granted, this is very specialized as a need, but someone out there needs this for the same reason--shooting close ups for eBay, for example, if you're running in eBay's hamster wheel, on their treadmill, working in their salt mine. I found that this camera produced much less noise than the C3020 and I still prefer Olympus colors to those produced by my Canon ELPH. I may shoot thousands of photos per year, but it's wash and wear photography. It has to be true for color, but I don't have time to do much more than crop, re-size and re-name photos. I can't take hours touching up photos (which wouldn't necessarily yield a true photo, just a pretty one). I need a camera that does most of the work automatically and permits me to shoot up to 200 photos in a session with a high rate of success and produces honest shots which don't need tweaking. This has a vastly improved speed on focusing and just knocks out the photo right. I make a living with this camera and it carries its weight and more. My only regret? That I spent too long shooting with the C3020 before upgrading. I just figured that any problems with my pictures were my fault and eventually I got to where I had a 90+% rate of success with the C3020. Who cares if it was my fault--moron or not, I can shoot great pictures faster, more consistently and effortlessly with this machine.

I was also intrigued by the zoom power on this camera and hoped that getting all these features wouldn't bugger the most important one for me--close ups. Anyway, I've used the zoom at outdoor track meets and gotten great, clear shots from 50 or 60 feet. And I've used the high-speed sports setting coupled with sequential shooting at track meets to get crystal clear shots of track events with runners at full speed (100 meters finish, coverage of all eight lanes in the curve on the 4 x 100).

Had I paid a little more attention when buying this, I would have bought the C770 to get the MPEG video and the remote control (though I might never use either one). I find the battery life on a charge is wholly acceptable and I always have a spare battery charged. Likewise, I prefer having two xD cards of 256--it's plenty of pictures to shoot without uploading to the computer and a larger card just isn't necessary for me. Great deal on the 256's, so no sense in buying 128's. In short, buy an extra battery and two cards (the one they give you has zero capacity, it's just so they can say they gave you a card with the camera). I bought the bullet proof case for ten bucks or so and it will fit the camera and extra cards and batteries and is good enough while keeping the size small.

I don't see how you could go wrong with this camera.

I really like this camera. The biggest bonus to the camera is how adaptable it is. If you are a novice, it can be used as a simple point-and-shoot camera, and it has several scene selections (portrait, landscape, sport, night, etc.). If you are a more advanced user, this camera is great too. It has several levels of customizability: choose one function and allow the camera to determine the rest, or you can select ALL the settings yourself.

The camera has threads on the lens, so it is essentially upgradeable, with more advanced telephoto (not that you need it with a 10X optical zoom built in), macro and other lens attachments available through Olympus. Or you could attach filters. It is as close as you can get to an SLR without paying an arm and a leg.

The C-765UZ has an electronic viewfinder. Many people don't like EVFs, but I love it. I have some visual difficulties, and sometimes can't really see through an optical viewfinder. The EVF is very bright and clear. It is even manageable in low light settings. It was the brightest EVF of any camera in its class that I tested.

Many people may say that the C-765UZ is a little pricey compared to other 10X zoom cameras. However, those other brands are usually 3MP instead of the 4MP of the C-765UZ. In addition, the optics on the Olympus C-Series is generally superior to those other camera. Remember you get what you pay for!! Plus the C-765 is the SMALLEST 10X optical zoom camera on the market today (Spring 2005).

The only complaints I have are with the packaged accessories. Olympus only provides a 16MB xD card, so you need to add a 256MB card to your initial purchase. Also, Olympus provides the Li-10B rechargeable battery, but the "replacement" 12B battery has a higher capacity. It would have been nice to get the better battery in the initial bundle. Oh, and speaking of batteries, the C-765UZ ONLY takes the rechargeable Li-10B/12B batteries, so if your battery is running low you can't just throw in a few AA's to get by until another charge. It keeps the size and weight down, but trades convenience.

just like the rave reviews given, this is a very good camera to have. the best feature for me is the 10x zoom which just blows away the 3x zoom which other similar priced cameras have.

now for the sad part. if you happen to upgrade to a 512 mb xD card, your battery just won't be able to keep up. according to olympus the battery can only average 175 shots per charge for typical use. if you're a typical user then you have no problem. a 512 mb card can manage around 500 shots. the battery will be dead before you can fill up the memory card. you'd better buy an extra battery or two especially if you're going on long trips where there are no electrical outlets available.

* if the C765 uses typical AA batteries all you have to do is stock up on those but unfortunately it uses special ones which are expensive.

I've had an SLR most of my life and several point and shoot models, plus an inexpensive digital. This is the best camera I've ever owned! It'll take me 6 months to figure out all the things it does do!

One GREAT thing about this camera...it is NOT HP! I had an HP digital and then bought and HP 3 in 1 printer thinking they'd compliment each other. WRONG! HP makes nice hardware but they have the BUGGIEST software going! The camera's software actually conflicted with the Printer's software and both were HP!

Now, no worries and no ugly "dock" to stick it in (that only works about half the time too). This camera just plugs directly into the computer and download away with NO conflicts! The Camedia software is nice, if rudimentry. I would advise a Print Shop Pro type program to REALLY work with your pictures, particularly if you do any web hosting/posting.

I took a picture of our black german shepherd at dusk, sitting in a shadow covered corner of the house and did NOT use the flash, just to see what would come out (the HP camera would have rendered a black screen). With no flash I got a GREAT picture of our dog without that possessed look that you get when your dog looks directly into the flash. Just amazing pictures. I took another one of the flowering bush outside out house THROUGH the window and there is no way you could tell! My daughter commented that the picture was nice enough to put on a calendar. And she's right.

For less than $300 this camera takes fantastic pictures. Of course you have to have an eye for your photo taking too. I have a friend who bought a $1200 camera and his pictures stink because he thought a more expensive camera would make him a better photographer....WRONG!!! hahahahaha!!

You can macro set this camera (ultra close ups) or shoot sports or shoot in just about no light at all. If you want one camera that'll last you for years to come, this is it!