Olympus C4040z digital camera resource

Last update: May 14th, 2005 May 14th: Technical data and user manuals section updated Apr. 5th: Remote control section updated Oct. 18th: FAQ section added May 23rd: Infrared section updated Mar. 16th: RAW file section updated - now 4040 RAW files can be processed with Photoshop Mar. 10th: Underwater photography section updated

Technical data and user manuals

• Olympus Europe specifications
• The basic manual is available for download here.
• The complete reference manual can be downloaded here.
• Here you will find a PDF with a complete list of parts of the 4040, with part numbers and detailed exploded parts diagram. Here is a price list with the parts prices (the prices service shops centres).
  

Reviews

• Steve's digicams review
• Digital camera resource review
• Imaging resource Olympus review
• Megapixel.net review

General tips

• Exposure, flash control and white balance are fine. Usually only indoor shots require some EV adjustment, while the camera seems always to choose the best exposure for outdoor shots.
• The 4040 excels at producing pictures which require no post-processing. In my Thailand gallery for instance all pictures except for a few sunset ones are unprocessed, just resized.
• The camera (at least mine) sometimes fails to focus properly in low light conditions. I cope with this by taking two shots of the same subject, one with the autofocus and the other with manual focus. Later I select the properly focused one.
• Some tips from Kevin McMurtrie:
  
• For best indoor flash results, use a manual exposure with the longest exposure time that doesn't give you motion blur.  1/30 sec is good for me.  Activate the SLOW2 flash mode and it will fill in light as needed.  This minimizes flash use and so reduces the blue flash glare.
• Dry sunny days, especially at high altitudes, can produce harsh lighting.  Turn on the flash and maybe turn down the contrast too.
• Don't leave on noise reduction by accident.  It disables many features and makes the camera extremely slow.  You can set noise reduction as a menu shortcut.

iESP vs. spot autofocus modes

• The Olympus 4040 has two autofocus modes: iESP and spot (not to be confused with the spot light metering mode).
• iESP uses the whole image to focus, spot only the central part. Thus in theory, spot autofocus should provide reliable and precise focusing when the scene contains several parts at different depths. Several people have recommended to set the camera to spot autofocus by default.
• I checked the performance of iESP and spot in a variety of situations. Here are the test results.
• My conclusions:
• Overall, I don't see any big sharpness advantage of one autofocus mode over the other.
• In general iESP seems to have a slight advantage over spot (the macro shot,image 7 and image 8 are sharper in iESP than in spot).
• However in difficult focusing situations such as in image 10 for instance, when there is a near big object and the actual subject is far away, spot will do a better job.
• Personally I'd recommend to set the camera to iESP autofocus by default and to use spot in situations like image 10.

White balance settings

This is highly subjective, but I recommend the following white balance settings for the best results:

• For daytime outdoor shots use sunlight WB (clouds WB if the sky is overcast)
• For sunset shots and shots in the hour before sunset, use auto WB
• For night shots and indoor shots use auto WB (or manual WB, see the next section)
• In some cases you might get a slight blue cast in outdoor shots with sunlight WB. You'll have to edit it away with a photo editor. Unfortunately the 4040 is not perfect.
• See the report by Moshe Ronen "White Balance Settings" for some test images with different WB settings and interpretation of exif data.

Manual white balance

• The Olympus C4040z offers the option to manually set the white balance. To do so select manual white balance in the menu and point the camera to an area which is either white or grey (with the area  filling the frame) and do the metering. See the following images:

Auto white balance	Manual white balance from the camera

• In the auto white balance picture the house looks yellow, because the street illumination is yellow.
• In the manual white balance picture the camera applies a blue colour cast to neutralise the yellow illumination. The areas around the street lamps now are blue because due to the high light intensity they were white in the initial image (i.e. the R, G and B components are saturated). In the final  image the blueish areas have been edited away:

Manual white balance after editing

• The 800x600  size images are available in the Portugal photo gallery, in the East Algarve section.

Enabling the Panorama function on non-Olympus Smartmedia cards

• Olympus Panorama Smartmedia feature

Firmware

• The firmware of the Olympus 4040 (and this holds for all Olympus cameras since at least the C2000 which was launched in 1999) can be upgraded by the user.
• The procedure is very simple:
• First of all you need the firmware file. The firmware files are not available for download in the Internet - only Olympus has them.
• Take a Smartmedia memory card and format it in the camera.
• Create a "firmware" directory in the root directory of the card (the one containing the DCIM directory).
• Rename the firmware file to "firmware.bin" and copy it to the firmware directory in the memory card.
• Set the camera into playback mode and insert the memory card.
• Switch on the camera.
• A menu will appear, showing the current firmware version and giving you two menu options ("yes" and "no").
• If you choose "yes" (use the arrow buttons) the camera will update the firmware.
• IMPORTANT: MAKE SURE THAT THE BATTERIES ARE FULLY CHARGED OR USE AN A/C ADAPTER. If the camera loses the power during the flash operation, you'll have to send the camera to Olympus for servicing.

RAW file format

• Thanks to Denys Sakva for reporting that it is possible to obtain RAW files from an Olympus C40X0 (what follows is the post he made in the Olympus 4040 users group):
  

  Today I was experimenting with my Olympus C-4000 and found that it is possible to receive the RAW matrix data. It's not an ORF file. Just RAW data from matrix, which can be processed later. Here is how to do it: 1. Set camera mode to PC-controlling by opening card holder door and pressing menu and Quick View button simultaneously for a few seconds. 2. Connect camera to USB and run Cam2Com or PTC Camera Controller (http://www.pinetreecomputing.com/camctl.asp) 3. Go to Camera info and change "OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA" to "DIAG RAW" 4. Disable PC control mode. 5. Take picture :-) Camera will save 2 jpg files. One is real jpg, another one is 5800 Kb RAW.

• To convert this 4040 RAW file into a RAW file which can be processed by Photoshop:
• The 4040 RAW file has exactly the same format as the RAW file of a Nikon Coolpix.
  
• So go here: http://e2500.narod.ru/raw2nef_e.htm
• Get This: http://e2500.narod.ru/raw2nef_v0.10.zip
• Do raw2nefw.exe -auto -v -c file.jpg
  where file.jpg is the RAW file you get from the Olympus 4040
• The result is a 7319 KByte .NEF file which can be processed with Photoshop 7 and the Adobe RAW plugin or with Photoshop CS.
  
  

Shutter lag

• In virtually every digital camera there is a delay between the instant when you press the shutter and the instant when the camera takes the picture. This is called shutter lag.
• To minimise the shutter lag keep the shutter half pressed before taking a picture.
• See the detailed test results
• Without flash the minimum shutter lag is 240 milliseconds.
• With flash the minimum shutter lag is 570 milliseconds.

Chromatic aberrations / Purple fringing

• There has been a lot of discussion about this issue, but the fact simply is that only in a few % of the pictures some chromatic aberration is visible. Generally this is the case when there is a strong backlight coupled with sharp edges. In general chromatic aberration is not too high (see  these sample images).
• Before the fact:
• To reduce chromatic aberration simply shoot at F4 or F5 instead of F1.8 (set the camera to aperture priority). See this test page in which a 'worst case scenario' photo is taken at F2 and F4. You'll notice that in the F4 image the chromatic aberration is substantially lower.
• Others have suggested to avoid shooting at wide angle, but I haven't found this to be particularly useful.
• After the fact:
• It is very simple to remove chromatic aberrations from an image. Simply use a photo editor and set the saturation level of magenta (also green where this makes sense) to the minimum. In some images you might have to set the saturation level of red to the minimum. It might also make sense to limit the processing to the affected area (i.e. select the affected image area and only process that).

Macro techniques

• In the macro world it is not relevant how close you can get to the subject - what matters is what the minimum area is which will fill the entire picture frame.
• To make this clear consider the following: some cameras (email me if you want to know which one) can get as close as 6 cm to the subject, but only at wide-angle (at full zoom they cannot focus at that distance). The smallest area which fills the frame at wide angle and a distance of 6cm is 8 cm.
• The Olympus 4040 instead can focus in macro mood at 20cm at full zoom capturing a minimum area of about 7.5cm width.  Even if the 4040 cannot get as close to the subject as the other camera, it still manages to capture a smaller area - and this is what matters, especially if the subject is very small (an insect for instance).
• If you set the 4040 not to full zoom (i.e. 3x), but to 2x zoom (14 mm) you can get much closer to the subject and get a minimum frame coverage of 52 mm (but that's difficult to achieve, 56mm is more realistic). See this test image.
• Also see Jeremy McCreary's page Macro envy relief

Polariser filter and other filters

• A polariser filter helps to obtain deep blue skies and to remove unwanted reflections. Consider the following example (both images taken with the polariser filter):

Perhentian island image

Same image with polariser rotated by 90 degrees

• See the difference ? In the picture to the right, the polariser filter substantially reduced the amount of light reflected by the water surface making the sea ground more visible and made the sky more dark.
• Polariser filters are also useful when the lower part of the image is dark and the top (the sky) too bright.
• I'm using this 43mm polariser filter. It is relatively small, causes no vignetting and fits directly on the CLA-1 adapter without touching the lens.

• For indoor shots don't use the polariser, as the filter will reduce the amount of light which reaches the camera.
• Have a look at Darwin Wigget's page on filters for further information on polariser, blue-yellow polariser, graduated neutral density and other filters
• See also Jeremy McCreary's page on filters

Infrared photography with the Olympus 4040

• Generally speaking the Olympus 4040 is less sensitive to infrared radiation than the Olympus 2000. As you can see in the following images the infrared LED of the camera remote control is much brighter in the Olympus 2000 image. Probably there is an infrared-blocking filter in the 4040, as silicon CCDs in general are quite sensitive to infrared radiation.

Oly 4040 photo of the remote control  (no infrared filter used)

Oly 2000 photo with the same exposure time  (no infrared filter used)

• Here are some recommendations from Michael Klemmer:

• The trick is to manually set the ISO to 100 ASA, with the noise reduction on for good measure. Using auto-ISO, the 4040 would set the camera to ISO 200 or 400 and the resulting images would be always too noisy looking.
• The shutter speeds are still slow, about 1/4 - 1/8 sec at ASA 100 wide-open. I've been using a tripod and aperture-priority around F4 to widen the depth of field a little. As long as you are using a tripod, you may as well go for long shutter speeds, but don't go longer than a second and a half or you'll start to see your hot pixels shining through like photo-acne.

 
• Here is a picture Michael took with the 4040 using a Hoya R72 filter at ISO 100, F4 and about 1 sec. exposure time, noise reduction on:

© Copyright Michael Klemmer

• The site Infrared photography with your digital camera contains interesting information about infrared photography with Olympus cameras and an overview of infrared filters with their spectral characteristics.
• Have a look at Jeremy McCreary's very informative page on Infrared basics for digital photography.
• These sites contain useful information about infrared photography with digital cameras:
• Echeng.com: Digital infrared photography - site devoted to digital infrared photography with image galleries, information about filters and equipment and links.
• Wrotniak's Infrared Photography page - excellent information resource devoted to infrared photography with Olympus cameras. Information about infrared filters, exposure settings, focus, post-processing, sample images and links.
• Also see the Infrared photography page of the Apogee magazine: this is an interesting general introduction to infrared photography with digital cameras.
  

Auxiliary lenses

• A comparison of the B-300 vs. the TCON-17 teleconverter is available here (test images with an Oly 2100 however).
• Some comments of Olympus 4040 users (interesting links follow at the bottom of this section):

• Olympus B-300
• I'm using the B-300 by Olympus.
I have a 49 to 55mm step-up ring permanently attached to it. On the camera I have an extension tube by Tiffen, 41 to 49mm and a UV filter.
I used to take off the filter and screw on the lens, but I don't do it any more, I leave the filter in place and screw the lens onto it (some people will say it's not recommended, but I didn't see any ill effects, it does not make vignetting worse).
The lens can be used only at full zoom, or else you get vignetting.
The optical quality is very good, although you get some pincushion distortion as you move away from center. In practice it is not a problem, and if needed it is easyly corrected in Photoshop.
I didn't notice that it effects CA, I think CA at fool zoom is not a problem, anyway.
Overall, I'm quite satisfied with it.
Moshe, Olympus 4040_5050 Yahoo Forum
• Olympus TCON-14 and Tiffen Megaplus 2.0x
• I use two telephoto converters.  I mount them on CLA-1 either with a 43->46mm step up or a 43mm empty filter ring.
1.  Olympus TCON-14 1.45x (1.35x actual).  Bought used in March 2002.  Sharpness is almost as sharp as without using it - very impressive!  No noticeable increase in CA.  No vignetting above 2x zoom.  Satisfaction 4 from scale of 1-5 where 5 is most satisfied.  I wish Olympus rate this accurately as a 1.35x so it doesn't mislead people.
2.  Tiffen Megaplus 2.0x (2.0x actual).  Bought used in July 2002.  Center sharpness is comparable to TCON-14 but edges are softer.   No noticeable increase in CA.  Loss 1 stop of light.  No vignetting using full zoom.  Large profile making it not suitable to use with internal flash.  Satisfaction 4.  Lens is very heavy, thanks to metal barrel.  Must use an empty 43mm filter ring before mounting to avoid lens crash.
ttwkam, Olympus 4040_5050 Yahoo Forum

• Olympus Wide Conversion Lens .8X
• Brief description : 55mm rear thread only, includes step-up ring 43-55mm for CLA-1
• Picture quality: Better than I've expected regarding sharpness and CA. However it has lots of distortion, which I fix with PS spherize filter, parameter -7.
• Image sharpness: Doesn't worsen the given 4040 image sharpness. I must add that I shoot with sharpness and contrast set to -5 and do the sharpnening in PS.
• Level of chromatic aberration (if the lens increases it): I haven't noticed any increase so far. However my sharpness and contrast settings affect (lower) CA too.
• Vignetting: No vignetting at all.
• How satisfied you are with it: I'd prefer a .68X conversion giving an equivalent of 24mm.
Alien


• Tiffen wideangle Megaplus 0.75x
• I recently bought a Tiffen wideangle. The megaplus x .75.
I took it on a recent trip to Luxembourg, the first time I'd really used it, and despite that, I got some pleasing results.
It was as sharp as normal, and I didn't notice an increase in c.a. (although thats not to say there wasn't one - it was very sunny however so plenty of opportunities for it to show up!). Didn't really need to stop up much, but as I said it was bright weather.
I ended up keeping it on the camera for much of the [day] time, arounf and about the city.
Its compact and seems robust, and I must say is positively tiny when put next to the Oly effort! screw thread - unlike the Oly quick release though.
No vignetting. Slight at full w.a. if put on front of a filter, which I don't do anyway.
So I'm very satisfied with it. After buying I though maybe I shouldn't have bothered as I was in 2 minds as to whether I needed it, but then after using it I like it.
I have the Tiffen tube too. Looks nice, feels strong. Haven't taken it off since I bought it (with a couple of filters too).
JulesUK

• Raynox  wideangle 0.72x and 0.33x
• I use raynox ones for wide angle. They have 52mm thread and i have an adaptor tube from raynox to fit them. I' ve got a raynox that is 0.72x and another one that is 0.33x. I'm saving up for a 180° fish eye lense now. Their telephoto lense also works fine. A 52mm tube is better than a 43mm tube by the way as you can have more filters on it and less vignetting. You can stack two filters easily that way or a filter then a lense. There are also more 52mm filters for sale than 43mm.
James N., Olympus 4040_5050 Yahoo forum


• And here some interesting pages:
• Gandalf's page on teleconverter lenses contains a detailed overview of teleconverter lenses available for Olympus cameras (magnification between 1.4x and 5x, thread size 43mm - 62mm). It also rates these lenses according to the quality. The page also contains several links to tests performed with these lenses.
• Michael Meissner's page on wide angle lenses for the Olympus C-2100UZ camera contains an overview of wide angle lenses with different thread sizes (43 - 62 mm). Although I can't confirm it, these lenses should also be usable with the Olympus 4040 with an appropriate adapter.
• The page of Jeremy McCreary  Auxiliary lenses for Oly Camedias contains an in-depth analysis of the topic.

Olympus C4040 flash and the preflash

• To measure the timings and the duration of the Olympus 4040 flash I performed a test. The detailed results are available here.
• The results are:
• Flash duration varies between 60 and 160 microseconds.
• The peak intensity only changes slightly between preflash and main flash; what changes is the flash duration.
• In the long range image the camera realises that the subject is far away and increases the flash duration.
• In macro mode the camera selects automatically a small aperture.
• However the main exposure control mechanism seems to be the aperture. The flash itself plays a smaller role.
• What does all this mean in practice? Well, since the minimum exposure time with the 4040 is 1/800 s - too long to freeze a rapidly moving subject such as a hummingbird for instance - you can use the flash to achieve an effective shutter speed of 1/10000 s.

External flash

• The Olympus BK01 bracket is needed as a base to mechanically connect the flash to the camera.
• To connect a conventional studio flash you need the FL-CB04 cable which converts the proprietary jack on the camera to a standard pc female jack. The CB04 cable has an X-output.
• To connect any other flash use the FL-CB01 cable (together with the BK01 bracket). The CB01 cable has a five pin output, to connect a flash you'll need the BK01 bracket which acts as a mechanical base and has a flash hotshoe. If you use a non-Olympus flash you have to set the flash manually (aperure and ISO).
• Important note: you can't just connect any flash to the 4040. Check the manual (Chapter 11, page 179) for the specifications of compatible external flashes.
• FL-40 - some Olympus 4040 user comments:

• " I quickly found a need for an external flash so gave arm and leg for the FL-40 but I am really happy with it also. I even use it outside in the sun to eliminate some of the harsh shadows. The thing that I find outstanding in the Olympus line is the very good color. The flesh tones seem better than anything that I have seen from other Digital's. "
Bill Shell, Olympus 4040 Yahoo forum

• "I have noticed that the auto-focus assist lamp on the FL-40 flash greatly helps the c-4040 obtaining perfect focus in difficult low-light situations. The camera has to be placed closest to the flash on the bracket in order for the assist-light to be within the intended field to be photographed.I am very pleased with this discovery,as I was somewhat disapointed of the focussing capabilities of this camera in low-light prior to that.I use also the 1.4x teleconverter made by Olympus and this allows me to be farther away from my subject and thus permiting the assist beam of the FL-40 to be more easily included in the field to be photographed. I use the iESP focus mode in these situations since the assist-beam does not always shoot in the dead center of the picture.Sometimes you have to auto-focus lock on the beam and then reposition a bit your camera to take your picture."
J.F.Mercier, Olympus 4040 Yahoo forum


• Have a look at this interesting site on the FL-40 flash:
Disabling the FL-40 Pre Flash by Dave Weikel
• Moshe Ronen wrote an interesting report about using an FL-40 flash with an Olympus E20. The report is also applicable to the Olympus 4040. See here - TTL Flash Principles Applied to Olympus E-xx.
• For test pictures taken with the Olympus 4040 and the FL-40 flash have a look here.
• Jeremy McCreary deals in depth with this topic in this page

Controlling the Olympus 4040 with a computer

There are a few software packages which allow you to control the camera with a computer (haven't tried these myself, so maybe first check the website):

• SDK (Software Development Kit)
To control the 4040 with a computer (for instance to do time-lapse photography) you can use the SDK package. You will need the Camedia SDK 3.0 Gold to control the C4040. It will cost you a nominal fee of $15.
• Cam2Com (By Sergei Menchenin)
Cam2Com allows to control Olympus digital cameras from a computer and to take pictures directly onto the hard drive. Users can control all exposure settings, camera setting, zoom and focus, take multiple pictures, rotate them (using lossless JPEG rotation), compare the pictures to select one with the best quality and save pictures to files.
It also has a few other useful features, like automatic taking of multiple pictures over a period of time and downloading existing pictures from the camera in somewhat more streamlined process than Camedia Master does.
At this time it is free to download.
• Camera Controller (from Pine Tree Computing)
Camera Controller is software that can be used to control an Olympus digital camera from a PC. Camera controller lets you set up your camera and take both single frame and time lapse shots directly from your camera to your PC. Also included is a fast download utility.

• Akond.ru are developing a software for camera control. It's not free, but you might give it a try.

Travelling and storage

• Update 09.06.03: new portable storage devices (do a Google search to find the manufacturers' sites):
• the Archos Multimedia Jukebox w/photo attachment 20 gb - also plays mp3s. Costs more.
• SuperDigibin - includes ac charger / car charger - 30 gb
• Disc Steno - burn cds from flash card
• Nixvue Vizor (not out yet) - burns cds from flash cards, spans discs for large cards, playback on tv.
• Tripper - similar to digibin
• Flashtrax from smartdisk (not out yet) - 2.5 inch lcd, plays mp3s, image playback on device, costs more.
• EZ DigiMagic: burns CDs directly from the memory card (but how do you know that the burning process was successful? ...)
• When travelling I use a Toshiba subnotebook (P1 133MHz with 64 MB RAM) to store, catalog and process  the images. There are also portable storage devices, but the advantage of the subnotebook is that all image processing (i.e. deleting bad ones, sorting them etc.) can be done while travelling. That's especially relevant on long trips. The disadvantage is that a subnotebook is bulkier and heavier than a portable storage device.
• Portable storage devices:
• Digital Wallet - a portable HD with a card reader with 3 - 20 GB capacity
• ImageTank - a portable HD with a card reader with up to 40 GB capacity
• Nixvue - same as Digital Wallet, ImageTank etc. but has a small colour LCD screen to view the pictures - up to 20 GB capacity
• Reto's Image Tank review  has a comparison of these different solutions

The camera bag I'm using

It's a relatively compact bag from Cullmann (next to it a CD to get an idea of the size). The bag can also be carried with a belt.	The inside of the bag with the 4040 with CLA1, polariser filter and lense cover; next to it a transparent plastic container (originally this was the container of the polariser filter) in which I put the Smartmedia cards. The smaller side bag (with a zip) contains two sets of spare batteries, the remote control, a lens cleaning stick and a tiny tripod.

Underwater Photography

• Be careful about using an Olympus PT-010 housing. Here is what happened to a user (message posted in the Yahoo 4040 forum):
"I just come back from a dive trip . My friend and my Pt-010 housing both leakage. My friend just dive to about 25M to 28M and he found his  4040 inside the housing is 1/4 sea water so he go up as quick as he can. After he found his 4040 on top dis. was full of sea water. My 4040 is better ,after a 30M dive cause the houeing limit is 30M still nothing happen. Next a 25M dive I found some drop of water inside the housing. Both of as have check the O ring and clean all the parts before and after every dive. So becareful to use it. Hope anyone can share his experience and the price of a metal housing .I think it is much more safe and where tobuy it. Thank you all.   "
• The Olympus Underwater Housing Online Manual contains in-depth illustrated instructions on how to prepare the PT-010 housing for diving.
• The site Digideep.com is an online directory for digital underwater photography.
• Interesting forum for underwater photography: DigitalDiver.net

Data recovery / Smartmedia problems

• 21.10.03: perhaps the best software tool now available to recover images from a corrupted memory card is Convar's PC Inspector Smart Recovery tool. It's freeware.
• Check this site: Digital image recovery
Christian Grau has some software tools to fix damaged Smartmedia cards. The software used to be free, now costs $39.
• Datarescue also has a software tool (Photorescue) for repairing damaged Smartmedia cards, although it's not free.
• Also have a look at PC Inspector's File Recovery. It's free.
• Jpegdump, by Kurt Stege, is a free tool to recover deleted images from a memory card.
• Photorecovery is another tool. Price is $39.95.

Lens resolution at different aperture and zoom settings

• Here the question is how the lens resolution changes at different aperture and zoom settings.
• Generally speaking the lens performs best in the centre and worst at the edges, so that at smaller apertures the resolution should be higher than at larger apertures. In addition to this the smaller the aperture the larger the depth of field (DOF), i.e. the range of distances at which the camera focuses properly.
• However diffraction limits the resolution at small apertures.
• Concerning the zoom level in general the DOF decreases as the zoom level increases (i.e. tele having less DOF than wide angle).
• Keith Jackson performed an interesting test to measure the performance of the Olympus 4040 lens. His conclusions:
• Overall the 4040 lens is very consistent in his resolution.
• At large apertures (i.e. F1.8-2.0) the lens performs well in the centre and less well in the edges. The best results are achieved around F4 - at F10 there is decidedly less resolution, except when shooting at the tele end of the zoom (105mm equivalent).
• All this means that for the best results you should shoot at F4 whenever possible, i.e. if there is enough light, otherwise the long exposure times and the consequent camera shake limit the resolution.
• The complete test results are available in his page Olympus C-4040Zoom and the Sweet-Spot.

Exposure information data (EXIF)

• The picture files of the Olympus 4040 contain the complete exposure information (aperture, exposure time, focal length, white balance and so on).
• This data is usually lost when you edit the pictures; but some modern image editing software packages keep the data intact when saving the processed intact.
• To read this data you can use these software tools:
• ExifReader, by Ryuuji Yoshimoto. Haven't tried the software myself, but it looks interesting. Freeware.
• Exif Image Viewer, by Michal Kowalski. This is the one I'm using. Quoting from his homepage:
"EXIF viewer is a simple image viewer application for photos taken with digital cameras. It's capable of reading EXIF information embedded in photos as well as little thumbnail. Because small thumbnail is already present in most photos displaying it is really fast.
EXIF viewer can also provide detailed information about photos (shutter speed, aperture, etc.) and conveniently list them for comparison purposes.
EXIF viewer also displays image histogram. It also features copying/moving and deleting of selected photos. Single photograph can be displayed in separate window or in a full screen mode."
• Exifer, by Friedemann Schmidt. I'm using this one too. It can rewrite EXIF data to images which lost it due to processing with a software package which doesn't support EXIF. Quoting from his site:
"Exifer is a nearly free software (you only should send me a postcard if you're using Exifer frequently) with which you can manage the metadata (EXIF/IPTC) of pictures taken by digital cameras.
Because many image processing software destroys this metadata when saving such files, the idea was to create a backup of the metadata before editing it in any software, and then, after that to restore it back into the processed file. With Exifer you can do this very easily. "

Astrophotography with the 4040

(by Juan Rodriguez-Torrent)

• Olympus 4040, Meade ETX 60 ($98 at Costco) and this adapter
• A couple of pictures of the moon are available here.
• Or better yet this guy took exceptional pictures with a 4040
• BUT if you want to see really impressive stuff and talk to the experts start here:
• http://www.weasner.com/etx/astrophotography/olympus.html or
• http://www.weasner.com/etx/astrophotography/gallery.html#web
• If you read Italian these guys have done a lot of pioneering work with a 4040
• Astrophotography users's group here
• This may be also a good source.
• And last but not least this site has enough links and information to keep you plugged for several lifetimes.

 

Linux and the 4040

• The page Using the Olympus Camedia C-3040 Zoom Digital Camera with Linux and USB by Micheal Schubart contains a description on how to download photos from an Olympus 3040 to a computer running Linux with USB. The procedure described there also applies to an Olympus 4040.

Links

• MyOlympus.org photo sharing site: similar to Photosig, here Olympus 4040 users can upload images and give/get feedback
  
• Olympus C4040 users group: a discussion group dedicated to the Olympus C4040 digital camera (hosted by Yahoo)

• Olympus 5050 online resource: an information resource for the Olympus C5050 digital camera
• Jeremy McCreary's dpfwiw site: Excellent site on the Olympus Camedia cameras
• Olympus Camedia C4040 Zoom photography: the Shortcourse book on the 4040. Good as a generic introduction into digital photography, the book however lacks insider tips and very camera-specific knowledge.
• See Christian Couderc's page on the Olympus C4040 - in French.

FAQs

1. You can be prepared beforehand by 1/2-pressing the shutter button (and keeping it 1/2-pressed) while aiming at the subject before the actual moment when you want to take the picture. The autofocus (AF) and the aperture will be set and the camera will then take the picture with no time lag when you press the last 1/2-way.
2. By having the LCD switched on, the time to activate the cameras AF and metering will be reduced by about 2 seconds.
   
3. Set the camera to manual focus (MF) at the subject distance you intend to take the picture at. This is most easily done by aiming at an object at the distance you want to use and 1/2-pressing the shutter button. While keeping it 1/2-pressed, press the AF/Macro/MF button. That fixes the focus at the desired distance and the camera is set to MF. This will significantly reduce the shutter lag.
4. Set the camera to manual exposure (M) which further reduces the shutter lag.
5. When it is tricky to catch the moment, use Hi-drive sequential shooting and start taking pictures just before you think the action starts. Use the optical viewfinder in order to follow the action when the camera's LCD is occupied while taking the pictures.
6. Turn off the "REC-view in the "SETUP" tab in the "Mode Menu". That will minimize the time that the just taken picture is displayed and you will be ready for the next shot as soon as possible.
7. Use fully charged batteries if you are using the on-board flash. Otherwise it takes a long time to re-charge.

• Wide = 1.25 inches=32.0 mm
• Wide + WCON-08 = 2.16 inches=54.8 mm
• Tele = 0.130 inches=3.3 mm.

Olympus 4040 Photo Galleries

• Zman's bird gallery: a number of amazing bird pictures taken with the camera remotely controlled by a computer (Cam2com)