Editorial Review:Product Description:Reaching new performance heights in the ULTRA ZOOM series, the Olympus C-720 ULTRA ZOOM is the first model to feature three million pixels. The camera's sensational resolution is supported by a host of precision-metering systems and bright optical system. With its very compact, stylish form the cam features an 8x zoom lens. When used together with the 3x digital zoom, 24x magnification is possible. Shooting is easy thanks to full auto and scene program modes. The more adventurous user will also appreciate the many manually adjustable settings.
Amazon.com Product Description:The 3-megapixel Olympus C-720 Ultra Zoom digital camera boasts an outstanding 8x optical zoom lens (plus 3.0x digital zoom--equivalent to 40-320mm in 35mm camera) and an ultracompact size (4.2 by 3 by 3 inches). The impressive aspherical glass lens gives you excellent detail and sharp, clear pictures, plus the size of the camera makes it easy to bring along wherever you go.
The C-720 offers rapid-succession firing--just over half a second per shot--and QuickTime movie mode for short video clips. Additional features include multipattern TTL autofocus, built-in flash, diopter adjustment, 1.5-inch color LCD monitor, self-timer with 12-second delay, autoexposure bracketing (three or five images), auto white balance, and special image effects such as sepia mode and black and white.
The C-720 stores images on removable SmartMedia cards. The camera can be operated in several modes: in programmed auto mode the camera does everything for you. In aperture- and shutter-priority modes, you get to set the aperture or priority, and the camera does the rest. In manual mode, you have control over all camera functions, with shutter speeds as long as 16 seconds.
Images can be downloaded to either a Mac or PC via USB storage class connectivity, which means it can be connected to any USB-based Windows Me/2000/XP and Mac OS 8.6 or later computer without installing any software. The C-720 also ships with two CR-3V long-life disposable lithium batteries (four AA batteries can also be used), a 16 MB SmartMedia card, lens cap, strap, retainer cord, USB and A/V cables, and software.
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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
-
had this camera for 13 years and keep going back to it
To put it as simply as I can, this is the camera that I never get rid of, and brag about the photos. I am no great photographer, but with this camera I catch things that no other could come close to! Children playing in the water and it picks up even the smallest drops of water in the air! Red eye has never been an issue and the clarity is excellent. Ive had this camera for about 13 years (when my 1st child was born) and I will never give it up. Other smaller cameras come & go..but the C-720 will always be my 1st choice. Its one tough piece of technology too! Its been dropped, sat on, thrown, exposed to water & sand...notiing has killed it yet in my graveyard of cameras. I strongly recommend this daring to anyone.
Rating: 
-
Big and uncooperative
Don't waste your money...there are much better cameras out there. This camera is too big, doesn't always cooperate, and takes horrible indoor pictures. It has an eight time zoom but the more you zoom the more distorted your photo is...very disappointing.
Rating: -
LOVE MY OLYMPUS 720 - STILL GOING STRONG!
I researched carefully before buying my first digital camera. Prices were still up, but had dropped enough to afford a 3 megapixel. For my purposes that is plenty. I am not sorry I went for the Olympus 720. Two years later it is still working beautifully. On auto-mode it takes great pics, automatically adjusting for low light and finding the focus quickly. The controls are well-placed. Since most of my photos are for personal or online use, I rarely use the advanced features. I only hope Olympus continues to maintain the high quality of this product. If so, I'll be faithful for life.
User Tip: For those complaining of poor image quality, read your manual and learn how to use the camera properly. Try setting your ISO to 100 and changing the flash setting to "fill" if you're having problems with color or brightness.
Rating: 
-
A Wonderful Camera (but plan on a learning curve)
We purchased a C-720 in 2003 and are very pleased with it.
With proper training, anyone can take awesome pictures with it. There are several reviews here that criticize the camera's "slow" auto and sports settings. I've taken probably 10,000 pictures with this camera, and almost none of them were taken in either of those modes. I highly recommend using P mode for outdoor pictures, or pictures in good light, and shutter priority (S mode), with shutter speed at about 1/30 or 1/40 of a second, and the exposure compensation on +2.0, for indoor pictures. The results are great.
The good things about this camera include the wonderful 8x zoom (for outdoor pictures, with shutter speeds of 1/250 second and faster, even max zoom shots come out great), the vibrant colors it captures, its wonderful work without a flash (very dramatic pictures), and the nice effect in portrait setting (in which it uses depth of field to have a sharp target and blurred background). The menus aren't that difficult to use. Battery life is great; I typically get 200-300 shots on one set of freshly charged NiMH batteries. My 128 Mb SmartMedia card holds about 200 pictures in the mode I use most often, and they're large enough to print sharply as 4x6 or 5x7, even after I crop a lot out of them.
There are two things I don't like about the camera.
The first is that it has a tendancy to develop "hot" or "stuck" pixels when doing a lot of shooting in low-light situations. Pixel mapping (a built-in pixel repair function) fixes this, but it's still really jarring to see ugly red and green pixels in the viewfinder and LCD and images when this happens.
The second is a quirk with my camera, and, from what I've read, lots of Olympus cameras. The C-720 uses a capacitor to "remember" the date and time, even with no batteries in the camera. There is something wrong with the capacitor in the C-720 I own. The connection to the batteries, even a freshly-charged set, breaks quite often. When that happens, the camera won't turn on until I open the battery compartment and rearrange the batteries, and then half the time, the date/time (nothing else) has been lost and needs to be reset. Because the camera cleverly uses the date to name the image files, this lost date/time is a real headache to deal with.
Because of the battery/capacitor quirk, I'm docking the camera one star. I'd give it five if the date/time didn't reset way too often.
As more and more people buy digital cameras, that are usually higher-end than the film cameras they once had, the learning curve associated with camera like this will decrease. To anyone who finds themselves disappointed with this camera because of blurred pictures, read my advice above and try again. Once you know what you're doing - it won't take long - you will take great pictures with the C-720.
Rating: 
-
Olympus Camedia C-720
I purchased this camera 18 months ago from Best Buy (sorry Amazon, I didn't have my account yet). My first digital camera. With accessories and the price of the camera at the time (they are now selling for half??) we spent $600.00. From the start the camera on Auto and Sport settings produced pictures that were blurry and out of focus about 1/3 of the time. Best Buy and Olympus had me convinced, being new to digital cameras, that I was the problem and that I might have been better served with a more basic camera (really?). The camera has since been back for repair with Best Buy once already under their extra four year warranty (5 week turn around, I plan to use a $100 Kodak digital I carry on my motorcyle in the meantime) and is going to go back again as the problem is now worse. When it comes back the next two times I will take it out of the box, have them take a blurry, out of focus shot of me and hand it right back to them. After the first "repair" Best Buy did not report that anything was found in need of repair only that the camera was recalibrated. I expect that there is nothing to fix as the camera is fundamentally flawed. The shutter speeds at Auto and Sport settings are just too slow. Three "repair" tries with Best Buy and we get our money or credit back. Olympus now tells me, after their warranty has expired, to go to the manual settings and increase the shutter speed and shoot in the manual mode. In other words that their camera shutter speed at Auto and even Sport mode will continue to be slow (and ruin pictures). By this time I had already figured this out despite their condescending advice that I probably should not have such a complicated camera! I have read similar reviews re: this particular camera with these problems at several other consumer sites. Check it out for yourself. Stay away from the Olympus C series. Interesting that they are currently not available from Amazon(things that make you go hmmmm)??!! I am staying away from Olympus all together. Customer service is a run around with a product they are unwilling to recognize as defective. Customers experiencing problems with these cameras (it seems from other reviews that not all are troublesome) should be offered a replacement or a trade toward something that works (maybe something simpler for those of us thought of as digitally challenged). We are extremely disappointed. Wake up Olympus. Time to cut the manure and reach out to make this right with your customers. I would love to retract this review.
