Settings for Olympus C-700/720/730/740/750 models

[Leftseat86]

I've gotten alot of requests for the modes I use with my C-730, especially since they apply to almost all the -7xx series.
So here it is in detail...!

Aircraft Photography

Daytime (All Conditions)

Dial: P "Program mode" Unfortunatley, Aperture and Shutter are set for you, but the camera usually is not too stupid. You can adjust the exposure by pressing the up and down buttons on the back of the camera. In bright sun, -.07 is usually fine. Under clouds it varies between -.03 and 0.

The AF is not very fast on the 730, so you have to work around it. Give yourself time, wait untill the airplane is about 1-1.5 seconds from where you want it in the frame, and focus. By the instant the green lamp illuminates, the airplane will be where you want him, with a little room to spare. Take the photo. It's difficult and frustrating (Especially if you've tried a D60/10D) but with practice you can do it.

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You should know that I work very hard on my photos in post-processing to make them look nice. I don't do anything too fancy, but I'm carefull when sharpening and I do a good amount of mask/blur for the sky. I play with Saturation/Brightness/Contrast and Color Cast alot.

Night Photography

The camera has a very good night shooting mode, moon and star on the dial. It uses ISO64 and does a good job with the colors. Again, exposure via up and down buttons, but 0 usually works at night. In the Menu, under PIC, you will find White Balance. There are a few preselectable modes that are good, Sun, Clouds and Artaficial light. Use the latter if your subject is illuminated by yellowish lights. (although I had not used it for this BA744 pic).

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NOTE: Focusing at night is VERY difficult with this camera. 8/10 times the camera refuses to focus right. Your best bet is to find something very bright, same distance from your subject, over expose two or three clicks, and then bring your camera back to the subject while holding the focus locked with the shutter pressed half way and snaping the photo.
Ex: In the SIA pic, I focused on the tail and over-exposed 2 clicks then took the photo. While the tail is a little bright, the plane was not lit well, but over-exposing did the trick.



Other Notes

The 730 has a great macro mode which I think the other models share. You can focus down to 4cm, great for flowers and bugs, or both.
Its an okay all around camera, but I really want to upgrade SOON

Hope you all find this helpfull.

-Clovis

[JeffinDEN]

Well Done

[Leftseat86]

Yeah except my original goal of making this a sticky was lost somehwere while thinking up how to explain night focusing...

Gotta get Peter or Chris to do it...


-Clovis

[tommyalf]

Clovis thanks for the tips. I have the C4000, which for the most part is very similar, and I've been playing around lately with the exposure compensation and what a world of difference it makes in the quality of the shots. BTW have you seen the new C750, 4 megapixel with a 10x zoom? drooooool

[Leftseat86]

Yeah the 750 looks nice. I still want a 300D though...

-Clovis

[Chris Kilroy]

Re: Settings for Olympus C-700/720/730/740/750 models

I play with Saturation/Brightness/Contrast and Color Cast alot.

Surely not on that AA 757 photo over Maho Beach though...!

[Leftseat86]

No, I like all my photos to look a nice plain, grey dull color...

-Clovis

[Pacific]

I got a C-750.

Shutter speed does not auto-set to a fast enough speed for departures automatically. Got better results whn I did the shutter on manual 1/1000 and left the Aperture on auto, and of course adjusting the exposure using the back buttons.

Next time I go spotting, I might try doing "P" mode all day with noise reduction on. For some reason, noise reduction is not available on A/S/M mode of the 750. Another look on the manual before I go. I'm still new with the camera and trying new things every time I go spotting to try to find the best settings.

The quality is mostly pretty nice, pretty good camera.

One thing though, I got a guy on my MSN. He has an ancient Minolta SLR with 300mm lens. Apparently, this camera was the very first in the world to have A/F. He claims that the 300mm zoom on the Minolta outperforms the C-750 he got recently. Now the C-750 claims 10x (380mm) zoom. Anyone have any comments on the truthfulness of the guy on MSN or Olympus' claims?

[JeffinDEN]

Depends on what you mean by "outperforms". I am sure the 300mm Minolta lens can focus faster then the Olympus, and is more then likely optically faster as well. Your 10x is nothing more then the optical range of the camera. Equal to a 38mm to 380mm on a 35mm camera body. 10x is not a measure of performance.

[pbateson]

Should I get C-720 or C-740?

[b777]

Thank you Clovis for the night photography tips .


pbateson, I would get the C-740 between the two but I suggest you look at the C-730 if you plan to get the C-740. They are nearly identical except the C-740 has slimmer body (harder to hold in my opinion) and ED lens (to reduce purple fringing). The C-730 takes both Smart Media and xD memory cards whereas the C-740 only take xD cards (SM memory is usually cheaper than xD). The C-730 can record video with sound but C-740 can't. The C-750 is your best bet if money is not a concern .

James

[Cool_Flyer]

With all the money saved up, i just bought myself an Olympus C-750 for $780 CDN which is quite a good bargain. The camera itself is an excellent perfomer even though i'm a beginner when it comes to digital photography. I'm still workin on my techniques to avoid the blur by controlling the shutter speed, but other wise, its an excellent camera! Come on, with features like 4MP, 10X Optical Zoom, Remote Control, and so on and on and on, how could you resist such a thing. Well, thats pretty much it. I just have one question though, what size do you usually submit into jetphotos.net at the SHQ quality?? 12?? X ???.

[jonathan]

Thanx Clovis

I gut the C-750, still learning the camera.

most of the pictures i have taken are on auto mode. and few of them sharpened or leveled.

check out my pics.

Jonathan.

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[Leftseat86]

Jeff the lens on my C-730 is 38-380 f/2.8-3.5....pretty fast.

Next time I go spotting, I might try doing "P" mode all day with noise reduction on. For some reason, noise reduction is not available on A/S/M mode of the 750. Another look on the manual before I go. I'm still new with the camera and trying new things every time I go spotting to try to find the best settings.

Noise Reduction doesn't do anything for daytime shooting. Only long exposures at night. The only way to reduce noise in the daytime is to lower the ISO to 64. (AUTO)

-Clovis

[Derf]

Hey Clovis, I have the 3X zoom Oly C-4000 and it is great, similar to yours but without the much needed zoom. Question: Why when you take pictures in high speed mode, the pictures look much darker.

Had the same thing with my Oly D-510 2.1mp.

the mode that I am using is the high speed where the F-stop, ISO, Focus are all the same from the first shot to the last. My D-510 was a point and shoot.