Focussing issues with Olympus CAMEDIA C-470

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

I was able to get a Olympus C-740 at what seemed like a
pretty good discount, because 3.2 megapixel cameras are
now passe. I have been fooling around with it, and some
of my pictures have been coming out much sharper and more
detailed than I ever managed to get with 35mm film. (I
am not a photographer, and my 35mm camera was never anything
special.) So I know that the optics and the CCD are capable
of good detail, but here is the problem:

My landscape shots are never as sharp as my closeup
shots. Stranger still, it seems that zoomed in shots (what
I would call telephoto shots) are slightly less blurry than
non-zoomed-in distance shots. When you are holding the camera
by hand, telephoto should result in *more* blurring, not less,
due to maginification of the effects of hand motion.
The close-ups are extremely sharp, despite the camera
being hand-held. I would think that hand motion would result
in the same amount of blurring (measured as angular
resolution) regardless of how near or far the object was,
but I could be wrong about that.

Anyway, anyone have any idea why the landscape shots are
not as sharp as the closeups, and why the telephoto seems
to help rather than hurt sharpness?

I still think that I am getting better detail with the C-740
than I used to with film, but it is frustrating to know that
the camera *could* do even better.

Oh, one thing I am grateful to Olympus for: The default state
of the camera is to have so-called "digital zoom" turned *off*.
(Playing with the 10x optical zoom has been fun.)

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Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

"Paul Ciszek" <nospam@nospam.com> wrote:
>
> My landscape shots are never as sharp as my closeup
> shots. Stranger still, it seems that zoomed in shots (what
> I would call telephoto shots) are slightly less blurry than
> non-zoomed-in distance shots. When you are holding the camera
> by hand, telephoto should result in *more* blurring, not less,
> due to maginification of the effects of hand motion.
> The close-ups are extremely sharp, despite the camera
> being hand-held. I would think that hand motion would result
> in the same amount of blurring (measured as angular
> resolution) regardless of how near or far the object was,
> but I could be wrong about that.
>
> Anyway, anyone have any idea why the landscape shots are
> not as sharp as the closeups, and why the telephoto seems
> to help rather than hurt sharpness?

My guess is that the AF system is finding something in the foreground and
focusing on it. The AF systems in most (all?) P&S dcams are horrendously
bad. Not only are they glacially slow, but the area of sensitivity is much
too large, and they reliably find something nice and contasty to focus on
that isn't your intended subject.

If the camera has a manual focus function, use that to set focus to infinity
for your wide angle landscapey shots. Stop down to f/5.6 or f/8 and you
should get great images.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

"Ken Weitzel" <kweitzel@shaw.ca> wrote:
>>
>> If the camera has a manual focus function, use that to set focus to
>> infinity for your wide angle landscapey shots. Stop down to f/5.6 or f/8
>> and you should get great images.
>
> Hi David...
>
> The c-700 has manual focus; the c-720 lost it, so I'm not
> sure about Paul's 740.
>
> Regardless, we tried all kinds of tricks to get crisp
> landscapes with the 700 (playing with panorama's at the
> time) and nothing made them anywhere near as crisp
> as tighter shots.

That's too bad. I was able to get nice sharp images with both the Sony S85
and F707, when I could persuade them not to misfocus.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

In article <ZR8oe.1564497$Xk.483190@pd7tw3no>,
Ken Weitzel <kweitzel@shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>
>David J. Littleboy wrote:
>>
>> If the camera has a manual focus function, use that to set focus to infinity
>> for your wide angle landscapey shots. Stop down to f/5.6 or f/8 and you
>> should get great images.
>
>Hi David...
>
>The c-700 has manual focus; the c-720 lost it, so I'm not
>sure about Paul's 740.

The so-called manual is rather skimpy. It mentions that there *is*
manual focus, but doesn't say *how*. (I mean, there is nothing for
me to twist, it's all motorized, there is a lever that lets me zoom
in and out but nothing equivalent for focus.)

--
Please reply to: | "When the press is free and every man
pciszek at panix dot com | able to read, all is safe."
Autoreply has been disabled | --Thomas Jefferson

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

On Sat, 04 Jun 2005 12:58:56 +0000, Paul Ciszek wrote:

>
> In article <ZR8oe.1564497$Xk.483190@pd7tw3no>, Ken Weitzel
> <kweitzel@shaw.ca> wrote:
>>
>>
>>David J. Littleboy wrote:
>>>
>>> If the camera has a manual focus function, use that to set focus to
>>> infinity for your wide angle landscapey shots. Stop down to f/5.6 or
>>> f/8 and you should get great images.
>>
>>Hi David...
>>
>>The c-700 has manual focus; the c-720 lost it, so I'm not sure about
>>Paul's 740.
>
> The so-called manual is rather skimpy. It mentions that there *is* manual
> focus, but doesn't say *how*. (I mean, there is nothing for me to twist,
> it's all motorized, there is a lever that lets me zoom in and out but
> nothing equivalent for focus.)

If it's like my C-750, push and hold 'OK' (or the button in the middle
of the cursor pad) for a bit and you should get a distance indicator on
the left of the display, with AF selected. Select MF (by using the cursor
pad) then use up and down to focus.

The best thing to do is to print out the full manual on the CD (or the
website) and use that.

Best Regards,
Alex.
--
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