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Advanced Cameras

Top 10 Digital Cameras

1. Olympus C-4000 Zoom

At $499, the C-4000 Zoom is the least-expensive digital camera on our advanced chart, but it doesn't skimp on features. Besides offering manual control of aperture and shutter speed, the camera can shoot in black-and-white, and it has a multiburst mode. We liked the option to take TIFFs at most resolutions, and the handy virtual-dial menu made switching among shooting modes and four sets of user-saved settings easy (though the menu disappears quickly when you're trying to make a selection). A dedicated button on the back jumps you to Digital Print Order Format (DPOF) settings.

The C-4000 Zoom outshone its rivals in our image-quality tests, with the second-best overall score in the group, after the Canon PowerShot G2. Photos looked good on-screen and in print--only slight overexposure and loss of detail in flash mode brought its score down. The C-4000 Zoom's battery life of 700 shots on two CRV3 disposables is extremely impressive, though well behind the astounding 1100 shots managed by the fifth-ranked Olympus C-720 Ultra Zoom. Alas, replacement CRV3 cells cost about $10 apiece, so most photographers will probably opt for less-durable but far cheaper rechargeable batteries. (You can also use standard AA batteries in a pinch.)

The Olympus C-4000 has some rough edges, including a stubborn diopter wheel, stepped playback zooms, and cryptic menu labels. It also has an awkwardly placed thumbpad: Situated above the right top corner of the LCD, the thumbpad's directional arrows are hard to reach while you hold the camera with one hand. The camera's manual focusing mode is difficult to use, requiring a lot of button pressing to set and then cancel the setting, but the autofocus mode gives you the option of moving the center-of-focus brackets to any part of the screen.

Upshot: The C-4000 Zoom is an inexpensive choice for hobbyists who seek a feature-rich camera that takes excellent photos.

2. Canon PowerShot G2

When we first tested Canon's PowerShot G2 last year, it produced some of the best-looking photos we'd seen. This year we pitted the G2 against newer models and it won again, turning in the best photos in our tests, with rich colors and sharp details.

Although solidly packed with features and weighing just over a pound, the G2 manages to keep a fairly small footprint. The numerous buttons that sprinkle its two-tone case take time to learn, but they save trips into the menu. One of the camera's best features is its hinged 1.8-inch LCD, which can swing open like a camcorder display and point up, down, or in the same direction as the lens to allow easy self-portraits. The G2 offers all the control you could want, with an array of picture-quality settings, including a RAW mode (which saves photos without extra processing, so you can uncompress them), settings for creative shots (for producing black-and-white, sepia, and other effects), and a complete range of exposure modes, including aperture-priority, shutter-priority, and full- manual settings. For help with focusing manually, you can press a button that enlarges the center of a picture.

Because it can focus in macro mode at 2.4 inches, the 4-megapixel PowerShot G2 is also a good choice for close-up photography. Canon bundles a roomy 32MB CompactFlash card, Adobe's popular Photoshop LE, and a wireless remote.

Just a couple of gripes with this camera: The mode dial seems difficult to turn, and you have to reenter some picture settings when you switch from manual to some automatic modes. The camera's rechargeable lithium-ion battery pack saw us through 373 photographs--about average for the 16 cameras we tested.

Upshot: The $799 PowerShot G2 remains one of the best choices for photographers who value flexibility and top-notch image quality. But you may want to wait for our review of the G3.

3. Nikon Coolpix 4500

Nikon's 4-megapixel, $699 Coolpix 4500 produced some of the best prints we saw in this roundup. Our outdoor shots appeared sharp and realistic, while our indoor pictures showed only slightly oversaturated colors. The camera lost just a little detail in our still-life shot of items on an office desk, and pictures darkened somewhat--though not excessively--when displayed on a monitor.

The 4500's swivel lens, its highest-profile feature, is capable of pointing in any direction along a vertical axis, making it easy to take shots from almost any angle. Though we found manual focusing difficult, Nikon's five autofocus brackets should help--especially if you're taking close-up photos with a tripod. The 4500 shoots beautiful macros at less than an inch away and works with the widest range of add-on lenses here, including a fish-eye.

You use a toggle instead of a button to turn the Coolpix 4500 on and off, which makes booting up the camera smooth and quick. And though this is an advanced model, beginners will appreciate the 16 preset scene modes for matching a wide variety of exposures. Less friendly initially are the slightly arcane hardware controls and Nikon's confusing menu tabs. Once you get the hang of holding down the camera's buttons while turning the command dial, however, it's a snap to tap into the 4500's lode of manual settings. We also had to get accustomed to using the unit's menu selection button. It took a little practice to remember to nudge--instead of press--the button in the direction we wanted to go, but we warmed to the task.

The camera's rechargeable lithium ion battery lasted for 300 shots--below the group average of 383. And its automatic pop-up flash is located where fingers often block it.

Also disappointing was the Coolpix 4500's 1.5-inch LCD, which gets too dark outdoors for easy use. Nikon bundles its limited NikonView viewer software with the camera.

Upshot: The midsize and midprice Coolpix 4500 is ideal for novice and advanced photographers looking to share a camera, or for beginners seeking a model they can grow into.

4. Fujifilm FinePix S602 Zoom

With its film camera-like shape, Fujifilm's FinePix S602 Zoom is a professional-looking unit. Its large grip makes the 1.3-pound camera easy to hold in one hand--even while you work the top-mounted controls for flash, exposure compensation and autobracketing. One standout feature is its 6X optical zoom lens (along with a 4.4X digital zoom). The camera houses dual media slots, one for a SmartMedia memory card (a 16MB card comes bundled with the unit) and a second slot for a CompactFlash card or a high-capacity IBM Microdrive.

Five preset scene modes give novice photographers (or advanced shooters who want to take quick shots) a range of exposure options. Loads of buttons scattered over the case help you change modes, set the exposure, and accomplish other advanced tasks fairly quickly. A few controls are placed on the left side of the barrel, but memorizing them by touch isn't difficult. Focusing manually is relatively easy, thanks to a silky focusing ring and a focus-check button that can enlarge the center of the electronic viewfinder's image. If all else fails, a cancellation button quickly focuses the picture.

The S602 Zoom's electronic viewfinder shows all of the same settings as the 1.5-inch LCD. When it's too bright outdoors to read the LCD, you can perform your work in the viewfinder--a valuable convenience. You can view a just-taken shot on the LCD for as long as you want, and you can pan and zoom within it, but you'll have to laboriously delete the rejects one by one.

The camera's long list of features includes a hot-shoe sync for an external flash; a supersensitive, top-end ISO of 1600; and sound movies. You can take photos interpolated to 6 megapixels, but in our tests of image quality, we found no difference between photos taken with the interpolated resolution activated and those taken with the effective resolution of 3.1 megapixels. Fujifilm rounds out the S602 Zoom with a thorough manual (marred only by lack of an index) and a software bundle that includes Adobe PhotoDeluxe and a videoconferencing program.

The S602 Zoom ranked in the upper half of our cameras in photo quality; it captured shades and details well but gave our mannequin slightly pink skin. With four AA batteries (rechargeables are optional), it took an above-average 425 photos.

Upshot: Though low on megapixels compared to the competition, the FinePix S602 Zoom compensates with a professional feel and lots of exposure, focus, and navigational features.

5. Olympus C-720 Ultra Zoom

Heads up, nature paparazzi: A long zoom lens and longer battery life highlight the $599 Olympus C-720 Ultra Zoom. The camera's 8X optical lens is equivalent to a 320mm lens on a traditional 35mm film camera. Powered by two disposable CRV3 batteries, the Ultra Zoom held out for an amazing 1100 shots--or about 6.5 hours--in our tests, three times longer than the average. Admittedly, replacing the CRV3s at $10 a pop would be expensive, but the long-lived option might come in handy for extended outdoor photoshoots.

Unfortunately, the results of a marathon picture-taking session may not meet your expectations, unless you tweak your shots with image editing software. The 3-megapixel C-720 did a nice job in automatic mode with no-flash portraits in well-lit rooms, but it washed out flash scenes and took dark pictures outdoors.

Aside from lacking manual focus, the C-720 Ultra Zoom offers the expected options for novices and pros alike, from preset scenes on the mode dial to panorama shooting. You can access the settings for most commonly used functions via buttons or dials, a couple of which you can assign other tasks (such as white balance) that you may use more often.

Of the C-720's many features, we especially liked its ability to turn color photos into monochrome ones after taking a shot (we turned a color picture of the Golden Gate Bridge into a moody black-and-white), and its two-in-one mode, which stores two shots as one, placing half of one shot on top of the other--this could be useful for a side-by-side comparison or a before-and-after shot.

On our Annoying Features list: The stepped playback zoom lets you enlarge previously taken shots in the LCD only by fixed increments; you can't mark specific photos for deletion; and the picture information disappears after only a few seconds. The C-720's confusing picture settings improve little on those of past Olympus cameras. Unintuitive labels, such as SQ1 and SQ2, represent combinations of resolution and compression, and the LCD and menus do a poor job of helping you recall what they stand for. In fact, you must consult a chart in the user's manual on CD to determine how much compression each label represents.

Upshot: The Olympus C-720 Ultra Zoom is a nice option for users who want additional telephoto capability; but photo output could be better, and it's not the easiest camera to use.

Nikki Echler McDonald is a freelance writer in the San Francisco Bay Area. Carla Thornton is a contributing editor for PC World. Richard Baguley is a senior associate editor at PC World.

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