Olympus C8080 WZ digital camera resource

Latest changes: July 28th, 2009 July 28th: Memory cards section updated. Aug. 29th: Firmware section updated Apr. 6th: comparison between the E400 and the 8080 by Snaarman

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Technical data and reference manuals

• The basic manual can be downloaded here.
• The reference manual can be downloaded here.
  
• Olympus Europe specifications
• The CCD used in the 8080 should be the new 2/3" manufactured by Sony.
• Here you will find a PDF with a complete list of parts of the 8080, with part numbers and detailed exploded parts diagram. Here is a price list with the parts prices (the prices service shops centres).

Reviews

• Snaarman upgraded from the Olympus 8080 to the E400 and posted an interesting comparison here.
• Sep. 14th: See the interesting page of Gary Ayton with technical data about the 8080, information about lens converters, external flashes, focusing issues, exposure, batteries and memory cards. Also see Gary's resolution test of the 8080.
  
• July 30th: see this interesting review of the Olympus 8080 by Photography BLOG. It's not on the level of Imaging Resource, Steve's Digicams and the other major sites, but it interesting to read.
  
• Apr. 7th: Imaging Resource updated their review of the Olympus 8080.
  
• Also see the Olympus 8080 user reviews page. These are reviews written by actual users of the camera.
  
• Apr. 27th: The Norwegian Digit.no digital photography site just posted their review of the 8080 (in Norwegian), calling the 8080 "the most interesting of the current crop of 8MP cameras".
  
• Apr. 17th: DCResource posted a full review of the Olympus 8080, this time based on a production camera.
  
• Apr. 16th: Megapixel.net published their review of the Olympus 8080. They give the 8080 8.6 points (out of 10) for functionality and 9.6 for image quality.
  
• Mar. 30th: Luminous Landscapes test CA, noise, distortion and vignetting of the Olympus 8080.
  
• Mar. 30th: full review of the Olympus 8080 now available at Steve's digicams. Steve's conclusion is overall positive, although he doesn't discuss noise levels.
  
• Mar. 24th: see this review of the Olympus 8080 in Slovenian
  
• Mar. 21st: production samples of the Olympus 8080 are now available at Steve's digicams site.
• Comments:
• there are no visible chromatic aberrations and noise is low at ISO 50.
• The image at ISO 400 seems usable.
• The amount of detail in the images is good, despite the low noise level. It appears that the noise reduction Olympus uses doesn't flatten the detail.
• The outdoor photos taken with auto WB have a blue cast.
• Mar. 16th: Jeff Keller posted Olympus 8080 sample images on his DCResource site. Noise and chromatic aberrations are low, but all images show some blueish cast and some are overexposed (the church one for instance). A polariser flter would have probably helped on that sunny day and the best results would have been achieved if the images had been shot in RAW.
  
• Dcinside.com has a detailed review of the Olympus 8080. It's written in Korean, but there are many interesting images.
  
• See the press release on the Olympus Europe site
• Luminous Landscapes published a short preview of the 8080. Tha author complains that when you wear gloves you have problems pressing the buttons of the camera.
  
• See Steve's Digicams preview of the Olympus 8080 (preproduction model, no sample photos yet)

Lens resolution

• To compare the resolution of the 8080 lens with the one of the Olympus E300 I used the following test (images supplied as RAW by Moshe Ronen; test target developed by Jens Birch):

• The test pattern consists of sets of five squares with horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines. Each square (1..5) has lines a different spatial resolutions, where 1 is the lowest and 5 the highest resolution.
• In the test I check in which squares the lines are still visible individually (beyond the resolution limit the lines start to merge).

• As you can see the 8080 beats both kit lenses of the E300 (14-45 and 40-150). If it is true that the 14-54 E300 lens does not have more resolution than the 14-45 lens, it means that the lens of the 8080 also beats the 14-54 "pro" Zuiko lens.
  

Sample images

• Mar. 12th: Karen uploaded a gallery of Olympus 8080 images. Comment: no visible chromatic aberrations, slight blue cast (pictures were taken in auto WB), good dynamic range (camera copes well with bright highlights and shadows)
  
• Mar. 10th: Jeff Keller posted an interesting comparison between the Nikon 8700, the Canon Pro 1 and the Olympus 8080. Again the images of the 8080 have the lowest levels of chromatic aberration and noise.
• Mar. 10th: see the samples posted on the site of Olympus Japan
  
• Mar. 9th: see this comparison between the Olympus 8080 and the Nikon 8700 (two test images)
  
• Mar. 3rd: new samples published on a Japanese site
  
• Feb. 25th: Andrea Liu posted the first sample images of the Olympus 8080 on her site.
  

 

Questions ? Comments ? Put them in the Olympus 8080 users group

White balance settings

• Under construction
• See this tutorial on White balance in digital cameras

ISO test: ISO 50 vs. ISO 200

• Two images, both shot in RAW, both handheld at 1/20s and F2.4. One underexposed at ISO 50, the other properly exposed at ISO 200. The (originally dark), underexposed ISO 50 image has been heavily brightened up in post-processing to make it as bright as the ISO 200 one.
• Both images were converted from RAW to JPEG with the same noise reduction settings.
• In theory both images should have the same noise levels. However surprisingly the underexposed ISO 50 one is considerably less noisy than the ISO 200 one.
• By the way, the above shots are both 100% crops.
  

RAW file format

• The 8080 generates 11.4 MB RAW files.
• To convert 8080 RAW files to JPEG either use the Camedia software which came with the camera or the much better Adobe Photoshop converter. Version 2.2 now supports the Olympus 8080 RAW file format. The plugin, which will work with Photoshop 8 (CS), can be downloaded from Adobe's site.
• Give a try to Silkypix's Developer Studio RAW converter. Not free, but it is getting very good feedback from those who are using it. It seems to be THE raw converter with virtually any control you can imagine. Some feedback from Jerry Beggs:
• "I have tried the Silkypics raw converter - it is the best I've found and importantly, it runs on old pc's; I use Windows ME on a PIII 800 processor with 256mb RAM.  It works perfectly and is fast enough.  Many of the new RAW convertors like Pixmantecs Rawshooter Essentials and Phase One's Capture will not run on less than 500mb RAM and Windows XP. "
  
• Another Free program that can view RAW is Picasa2 available from www.picasa.com
• Another RAW converter is Phase One's Capture One LE which allows saving the file as a 16-bit TIF. This allows saving the full range and tuning a high contrast image in CS preserving detail at both ends of the image.
• Give a try to the RAW converter from Pixmantec (RawShooter Essentials - free so far), which has received very positive reviews.

Questions ? Comments ? Put them in the Olympus 8080 user group

Memory cards

• For your information: I can confirm that the 8080 takes 8GB CF cards.
  
• Update June 17th, 2006: even a firmware update to the latest firmware does not speed up the 8080. The 8080 still tops out at painfully slow 0.95MB/s.
  
• See here for an official compatibility chart from Olympus showing which memory cards are compatible with the 8080.
  
• See here for CompactFlash and Microdrive compatible with C-8080 Wide Zoom. This table shows which CF card types have been tested for compatibility with the 8080.
  Note: of course there are lots of CF card brands and types which are compatible with the 8080 and are not listed there.
  
• August 12th: see the results of a memory card write speed test. Here are the conclusions:
• It appears that the 8080 writes with a maximum of 0.9 MByte/s (sustained) to CF cards.
• There is no advantage in using CF cards faster than 30x (actually the camera is write-limited to 6x, but we didn't test the write speed with slow CF cards).
  
• The maximum write speed to xD cards is 0.8 MByte/s (sustained) . Since xD cards are more expensive than CF cards, the only reason to use xD cards is if you want to use the 8080's inbuilt panorama function.
• These write speeds are painfully low. The Olympus 5050 for instance is capable of writing at 2.5MByte/s (sustained) to fast CF cards and manages to write a RAW image to CF in about 3 seconds. The 8080 needs at least 12 seconds to write a RAW image to a memory card.
• The 8080 takes xD and CF memory cards, even in sizes larger than 2GB because the camera supports FAT32.
• The write speed of xD cards in the 8080 is disappointing - 13 seconds to write a RAW file to an xD card.
  

• Generally speaking CF (CompactFlash) cards are cheaper than xD cards. Fast CF cards are also faster than xD cards in the Olympus 8080, so the only reason to use xD cards is if you want to use the camera's panorama function (note however that you can shoot panos by setting the camera into manual mode and locking the white balance, or setting the camera into manual mode and shooting RAW).
• So, unless you want to use the Olympus 8080 panorama function, the question becomes: which CF card to use ?
  
• Well, the 8080 limits the read/write speed to 0.9 MByte/s - that corresponds to a 6x speed (1x is 150 KByte/s).
• This means that even a cheap 12x CF card is perfectly adequate and very fast CF cards are not necessary, as the camera is the limiting factor. In other words, if you buy an expensive 65x CF card for usage with the 8080 you are wasting your money.
  

Firmware

• Here are some instructions on how to update the firmware.
  
• The latest firmware available for the Olympus 8080 is v757-78 (note: to get this firmware send your camera to Olympus). Here is an overview of the changes between firmware versions:
• 757-74 to 757-75
  The update corrects the following errors:
  1. Turn PW-ON and as Auto-PW-Off after leaving it for four hrs., dark current becomes 3mA (Cause of battery drain )
  2. Wrong focal distance (in 35mm film equiv.) is recorded in the EXIF data.
• 757-75 to 757-76
  The update corrects the following errors:
  1. The stray light is exposed when it exposes for 40 seconds with BULB, NOISE REDUCTION OFF and ISO400.
• 757-76 to 757-77
  The update corrects the following errors:
  1. When the external flash is used, the flash charging indicator is not on after the flash firing.
  2. Using the card which has block failure may cause a camera hang-up.
  3. Pixel Mapping does not function well.
  4. When the camera is used in SDK mode, the Camera Control cannot be used.
• 757-77 to 757-78
  The update corrects the following errors:
  1. When the lens of camera with FL-50 is set to wide side, zoom values below 35mm are not displayed.
  2. The minimum aperture of RAW data is not correctly indicated in any application software.

• July 27th,  2004: Olympus released a firmware update for the Olympus 8080. The firmware can be downloaded here.
• The firmware update fixes these two bugs:
• By taking certain type of route in camera operation, malfunction of AF or the camera not accepting any button operation occurs.
• In Exif Viewer, CAMEDIA Master and OLYMPUS Studio software, information of the focal length (Exif-information) in 35mm photography appears to be incorrect.
  
• but doesn't add new features or better performance (no buffered write yet for RAW images for instance).
• This firmware update (July 27th, 2004) is only needed for cameras with firmware v757-74 or older.
• To install the firmware follow the procedure described at the Olympus Japan page.
  

Autofocus methods

• Here is a depth of field calculator.
  
• See this page by Gary Ayton, which explains the different autofocus methods for digital cameras and gives tips on how to get the camera to focus properly.
  

Noise test: the Olympus 8080 vs the Olympus 5050

Chromatic aberrations / Purple fringing

• To remove chromatic aberrations you can process the RAW image with the Adobe Photohop RAW plugin.
  
• To remove chromatic aberrations with an image editor (desaturation of the magentas):
• 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).
• Also see "How to deal with chromatic aberrations" by Philipp Sanke. Philipp describes a number of ways to avoid or remove chromatic aberrations.

 

Questions ? Comments ? Put them in the Olympus 8080 users group

Polariser filter and other filters

• under construction
  
• The thread size for the filters is 58 mm.
  
• 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.
• 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

Accessories

• Raynox now offers an adapter tube, the RT5267CT, which screws directly onto the body of the 8080, and which can be used to connect auxiliary lenses. Some photos and a description are available here. Not sure if you can also connect a filter.
• Soligor will offer a 62mm adapter tube (Article Nr. 57955) to which auxiliary lenses can be attached. Not sure if you can also connect a filter.
  
• Some photo of accessories for the Olympus 8080 are available here:
• Olympus 8080 with B-HLD20 battery holder, CLA-8 adapter and TCON-14D teleconverter, mounted on a tripod. Also see here.
  
• Olympus 8080 with B-HLD20 battery holder, CLA-8 adapter and WCON-08D wide angle converter, mounted on a tripod. Also see here for another perspective.
• Comment: the Oly 8080 with CLA-8 and TCON-14D converter is HUGE, also considering that you get only 200mm (35 mm equivalent) focal length.
  
• Olympus Digital Accessories compatibility page: lists all accessories and tells you if they are compatible with the 8080.
• The Power Battery Holder B-HLD30 can hold one or two BLM-1 batteries and has a portrait grip, a shutter release button (with lock) and a zoom control lever. The B-HLD30 holder can store an additional xD memory card. In addition to powering the 8080, the B-HLD30 provides a more secure grip when using heavy auxiliary lenses and external flashes.
  

BLM-1 battery and cheaper 3rd party alternatives

• See this page which contains an overview of currently available BLM-1 battery clones: Olympus BLM-1 (original), PS-BLM1 (7DayShop.com), WT-BLM1 (SterlingTek.com), Energizer OM-1, Hahnel HL-M1, UNiROSS VB104295, WinTop PS-BLM1 and e-Film (Delkin) BLM1. The author rates the batteries according to construction, capacity, (low voltage) protection and cost. It appears that not all 3rd party alternatives are created equal.
• Nov 11, 04: Test added which shows which capacity the original Olympus BLM-1 battery and cheap 3rd party alternatives have. With the batteries I had (one original and two 3rd party ones) I measured the following:
• Original Olympus battery:   1299 mAh
  
• 3rd party battery 1:   1077 mAh
  
• 3rd party battery 2:   744 mAh
• This is OK, since the Olympus original BLM-1 battery costs 17 times more than the 3rd party alternatives I bought.
• The complete test results are available here.
  

• The original BLM-1 battery from Olympus is very expensive, selling at prices of 70 Euro upwards (a Dutch user even reported that the BLM-1 costs 119 Euro in the Netherlands) - a multiple of what a NiMH battery set costs. Since February 2004 cheap 3rd party alternatives to the BLM-1 battery are available from a number of sources (mainly sellers on ebay - do a search for "BLM-1" on ebay).
• The questions then are
  
• how good these cheaper alternatives are and
  
• whether they can they be used without problems in the Olympus 8080.
  
• The original BLM-1 battery from Olympus is rated at 7.2 Volt and 1500 mAh. The alternatives have voltages of 7.2 or 7.4 Volt and capacities of 1300 or 1500 mAh.
• The voltage difference is no problem:
  
• The 7.2 Volt which Olympus officially quotes varies in reality between 6.7 Volt (discharged battery) and 7.7 Volt (fully charged battery). These are voltages measured under a pretty heavy load of over 1 Ampere (battery loaded with a 6.8 Ohm resistor).
  
• With no load the measured voltages become 7.37 Volt in a discharged state (emtpy battery screen showing) and 8.2 Volt (battery fully charged).
  => In other words, it's highly irrelevant if the battery is rated at 7.2 or 7.4 Volt - the camera can withstand 7.7 Volts without problems.
• The capacity difference is also something not to worry about. There is no big difference between 1500 and 1300 mAh (we are talking of a 10% difference), but the 3rd party battery costs a fraction of the original one.
• Personally I bought two 3rd party BLM-1 batteries in August 2004 from a Hong Kong eBay seller.
  
• Price per battery was US $ 5.49 and the total cost including shipping was US $17.
  
• The batteries arrived in 10 days to my home in Germany.
  
• I tested one of these cheap "counterfeit" batteries. It lasted for over 600 shots (SHQ, all with the LCD on, about 10% with flash) and still had juice left when I got tired and interrupted the test. It just wouldn't die.
  
• Vidpro fast battery charger (this has been reported by Rod in the Olympus 8080 users group):
  
• My results are the Oly charger took around 5 hours to get to a full charge and the Vidpro about half that (which is what they advertise). BUT, it could be the second battery I charged on the Vidpro didn't need that much charging - what I did wasn't under very controlled conditions re residual charge before recharging.
• The Vidpro (US $30) charger base is a little larger than the Oly, and also has an AC to DC module (a little smaller than the Oly unit itself) that plugs into the AC wall socket whereas the Oly unit accepts AC directly with the supplied AC cord. Both the Oly & Vidpro accept 100v-240v, but the big difference I like is that the Vidpro has a 12v DC (vehicle, etc.) adapter allowing the batteries to be charged in the field.

Infrared photography with the Olympus 8080

by Antara Scales

Sunny day, f2.4, 2sec, ISO50, hoya r72, tripod. Photoshoped (levels, curves, channel mixer, usm, cropped to get rid of vignette at wide angle. I'm using a 49mm filter from the UZi). It took a bit of work.

• The Olympus 8080 is not too sensitive to infrared radiation (see the above image which required a 2 seconds exposure at F2.4).
  
• 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.
• 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.
• Gary Ayton has a page dedicated to infrared photography with the Olympus 8080.
  

Auxiliary lenses

• Jason Jones reported this:
  Merkury Optics .45x AF high definition digital lens with macro, bought off of eBay as a package with camera. Vignetting at widest angle, I can supply a test photo as an example. It screws on to the filter threads, probably not good for the camera.
  
• Raynox offers the following lenses for the 8080:
• DCR-2020PRO 2.2X High Definition telephoto Conversion Lens: this teleconverter extends the telephoto range to 300mm (35mm equivalent). Only problem is that you need to stop down the lens to F5.6, otherwise you get vignetting. Also, Raynox states that the lens resolves 260 lines/mm at MTF 30% in the centre - that means that the effective resolution goes down to 4MP (for 8MP you need a lens capable of resolving 370 lines/mm, i.e. 185 line pairs/mm). Requires the RT5267CT adapter tube (52-67mm).
  
• DCR-1540PRO 1.54X High Definition telephoto Conversion Lens: this lens extends the telephoto range to 215mm (35mm equivalent). This one suffers less from vignetting, allowing you to use it at F3.5. The lens resolves 340 lines/mm at MTF 30% in the centre, quite close to the 370 lines/mm needed for 8MP. Requires the RT5267CT adapter tube (52-67mm).
  
• DCR-FE180PRO Fish-Eye(Full Frame) Lens: magnification is 0.24x, meaning that you get a focal length of 6.7mm (35mm equivalent). Zooming is limited to 1.5x (I guess otherwise the lens barrel hits the fisheye lens. Raynox claims a resolving power of 480 lines/mm at MTF 30% in the centre - quite impressive. This lens however suffers from heavy vignetting. Requires the RT6267CW adapter tube (62-67mm).
• Raynox also offers the DCR-1850PRO Pro-Telephoto Lens 1.85X which suffers from low resolution (only 200 lines/mm at 30% MTF in the centre) and the DCR-150 and DCR-250 Macro/Close-Up lenses
  
• May 17th: Wim Pollet emailed me with an update:
  
  I’ve the 8080 since a couple of days now and the wcon08b probably can’t be used without vignetting. When I hold the wcon08b against the 8080 lens you have no vignetting. But the 8080 lens extends a couple of mm (I think about 4mm) more when powered up/down than the wide position so the adapter ckcpower is making can’t place the wcon08b completely against the 8080 lens… I’m sure you’ll have dark corners/vignetting with such adapter… I know now why the wcon08d is 80 g heavier… it has to be bigger at the inner diameter, especially because I heard you can zoom in a little bit (probably the space the lens needs to extend at power up…).
  
  The use of the tcon14b looks possible but I think it’s not very esthetical when it’s mounted on an adapter because the inner diameter of the lens is less than the adapter thread… The weight difference of the tcon14b and d is still strange…
  
  
  
• The WCON-08D 0.8x wide-angle converter lens reduces the focal length by a factor of 0.8, giving you a 35mm equivalent focal length of 22.5mm at wide angle.
• TCON-14D
  
• The TCON-14D 1.4x teleconverter lens, increases the focal length by a factor of 1.4x, giving you a 35mm equivalent of 196mm at the tele end.
• Gary Ayton performed a lens resolution test with the TCON-14D. His conclusion is that the TCON-14D has a very good resolution which does not lower the overall resolution of the 8080.
  
• The telephoto conversion lens TCON-14D ($240) and the wide-angle conversion lens WCON-08D ($220) require both a lens adapter tube ($45) in order to be used.
  
• This was posted by Wim Pollet:

Tom from http://www.ckcpower.com is making an adapter for the C8080wz with a standard lens thread instead of the special bayonet. That means you can use the E10/E20 tcon and wcon lenses instead of the new versions specially made for the 8080. That means also that you can use filters in between the adapter and the lens OR in front of the lens (but that's much more expensive because of the large diameter). Tom doesn't know what thread the adapter wil be (I hope 62mm like the E10/E20), he will know that next week he says and he will have the adapter within 3 weeks from now... People who are considering buying the Oly bayonet adapter... take note of this... It's better to use threaded lenses instead of bayonet lenses specially made for one type of camera... WCON-08B (E10/E20): 0.8x, 62mm inner, 105mm outer (108mm size), 340 g, 3 elements/3 groups WCON-08D (C8080WZ): 0.8x, bayonet inner, no thread outer (but 108mm size), 410 g, 3 elements/3 groups TCON-14B (E10/E20): 1.45x, 62mm inner, 86mm outer (90 mm size), 475g, 5 elements/3groups TCON-14D (C8080WZ): 1.40x, bayonet inner, no thread outer (but 90mm size), 430g, 5 elements/3 groups The weight difference is a bit strange, the wcon is heavier in 8080 version and the tcon is heavier in the E10/E20 version... somebody knows more about the differences? I'm curious how the quality compairs between both...

• Some interesting links:
• 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 Digital Accessories compatibility page: lists all accessories and tells if they are compatible with the 8080

External flash

• Here is how to shut of the pre-flash on my FL50 (reporteyd by Brian from Denmark):
• Go into the flash menu, set the flash to slave.
• All camera settings are still sent to the flash, but the flash is naturally using its own sensor instead of TTL.
  
• then no one is in time, to even think about closing their eyes, before foto is taken.
• Normaly i'm also locking the settings in camera to:
  Zoom  = Full wide = 28mm
  Focus = Manuel    = 2m
  Aperture:
  3,6 =  In focus from 1,0- ~m
  4,0 =  In focus from 0,9- ~m
  5,0 =  In focus from 0,8- ~m
  5,6 =  In focus from 0,7- ~m
  -depending on how close the object is from camera..
  -So with flash and camera settings set to above, you got a really fast snap-shot-tool :)
  
  
• 12.04.04: somebody reported that he is using his Canon Speedlite 155A (which has a trigger voltage of 6.5V) on the hotshoe of his C-8080 with no apparent issues.
  
• See Michael Meissner's excellent page on Olympus External Flash Support. It contains an overview of external flash units which can be used with the 8080 (as well as with other Olympus digital cameras).
• See here for how to measure the trigger voltage of your flash.
• See this interesting thread on external flashes "Olympus FL-40 or PROMASTER 5750 DX ?"
• See Jeremy McCreary'page on external flash for Camedia cameras.

Controlling the Olympus 8080 with a computer

• Try these software packages
• Pine Tree Camera Controller works with the 5050 (and possibly also with the 8080). Follow these steps:
  
• Open the card door on the camera
• turn on (for instance in P mode)
• press OK/Menu button and the Monitor button simultaneously (not the Quick View button) for a few seconds,
  
• a menu pops up on the LCD screen - put camera in to control mode.
  
• Close Media door, plug in USB cable and fire up the software (the software won't work if the camera is not in control mode).
  
• Cam2Com: see this information.
• Akond.net are developing a software for camera control. It's not free, but you might give it a try.
 

Travelling and storage

• June 17th, 2006: Wim Pollet reported the following:
• I made contact with the Vosonic support center to ask why the xdrive supports only the dslr series RAW files and not the Olympus C series. I have the VP6210 model and can only see the raw thumbnails which are pixelated/blocky and can't zoom in to check focus for instance.
  They asked me to send an .ORF raw file from my C8080wz, after some days they reported the Xdrive will support the decoding of the RAW file from firmware version 1.2.5 which is going to be released this month (June).
  I believe the Multimedia series VP6230/VP6210/VP6300/VP6310/VP8350/VP8360 all use the same firmware, they all have 1.2.4 right now...
  http://www.vosonic.com/index.php?PA=support
  Maybe it's interesting to put on your C8080wz resource page when the firmware is released later this month...
  
  
• August 2003: I just bought a Vosonic X's Drive 2. Without HD (I had one already) the price was below 100 Euro. This thing comes with a fast USB2 interface and will read Smartmedia, CF I and II, Memory sticks and SD/MMC cards. As far as I know this external storage device is currently the lowest cost device available. Quality and performance are good.
• 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 - 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

Underwater Photography

• Nov. 16th, 2006: see the photos of Jan Messersmith on Flickr: "All underwater pictures were taken with the PT-023 housing and the normal camera flash.  I've heard complaints that the inbuilt flash was useless.  I think these pictures show that this is not true.  You just have to know the limitations and learn to work with them."
  
• April 27th, 2004: Olympus announced a delay in the availability of the PT-023 underwater housing and the PPO-05 housing (see below). The housing, which should have been available from the beginning of April, has now been postponed due to the late availability of parts.
  
• Olympus has released the PT-023 underwater housing for the Olympus C-8080 digital camera. They have also released the PPO-05 underwater housing for the WCON-08D wide angle converter lens (same page).
  
• The site Digideep.com is an online directory for digital underwater photography.
• Interesting forum for underwater photography: DigitalDiver.net

Data recovery

• Convar's PC Inspector Smart Recovery tool now supports JPEG, TIFF and RAW. FREEWARE - highly recommended.
  UPDATE SEPTEMBER 04: Convar's utility now can recover also 8080 RAW images - for this just select "Olympus ORF (C5050)" as the file format to recover.
  
• Jpegdump, by Kurt Stege, is a free tool to recover deleted images from a memory card. Recommended, although it involves more work than the tool of Convar.
  
• These software tools are not free, so since Convar's software is available for free, there is no real need to use them:
  
• Check this site: Digital image recovery
Christian Grau has some software tools to fix damaged memory cards. The software used to be free, now costs $39.
• Datarescue also has a software tool (Photorescue) for repairing damaged memory cards, although it's not free.
• Photorecovery is another tool. Price is $39.95.

Noise reduction

• In addition to the 8080's inbuilt noise reduction, you can post-process the images with NeatImage. This software packaga produces surprisingly good results.
• Here there is a comparison of different noise reduction software tools.

 

Questions ? Comments ? Put them in the Olympus 8080 user group

Exposure information data (EXIF)

• The picture files of the Olympus 8080 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. "

Panorama shots

• Giuseppe calculated the position of the nodal point and built a QTVR panorama head for the 8080. The nodal point is situated 56 mm in front of the tripod mount (23mm to the left and 38mm up). See the corresponding diagram and Giuseppe's page.
• Here is some feedback from Stephane Brouard:
  "I just contacted Giuseppe. The 56mm on his drawing are 50 mm on my camera. 56mm is exactly at the end of the removable ring, not at the beginning of it (from the screw hole).
  As I checked again before sending this mail I found out that the 23mm is wrong also
  I don't think the specs of the camera changed."
  
• Some interesting links:
• http://www.skipwilliams.com/panos/panorama_links.htm
• http://www.htu.at/~sascha/ptguide/
• http://www.path.unimelb.edu.au/~bernardk/tutorials/360/calibrate/
• http://homepage.ntlworld.com/j.houghton/pttute.htm
• http://www.panoguide.com/software/reviews/panotools_v21.html
• Stitching software: http://www.vrtoolbox.com/vrthome.html
• Tripod specific for panoramas: http://www.kaidan.com/

Linux and the 8080

• Below are the steps necessary to connect the 8080 to a linux computer (thanks to Tobias Reif):

 

here are the steps (I'm on Suse 9.0 [1]): 1. boot Suse (optionally do $ sudo tail -f /var/log/messages ) 2. connect: 0. * use external power supply * "SETUP" -> "USB" must be set to "PC" (not "PRINT") * set playback mode on cam * make sure camera is turned off 1. connect with USB cable 2. turn camera on 3. watch: * drive icon appears on desktop: sda1 (rightclick -> properties: device /dev/sda1 mounted at /media/sda1) (clicking on it would mount the cam and open it in Konqueror "Icon View" => convenient thumbnail previews) (watch tail -f for USB stuff) ... or just wait a moment 4. get the pics: (as user:) $ mount | grep media $ mount /media/sda1 $ mount | grep media /dev/sda1 on /media/sda1 type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,sync,user=tobi) $ cd /media/sda1/dcim/100olymp/ $ cp -i ./* ~/data/move_to_cd/olyc8080_unchanged/ $ mv -i ./* ~/data/pics/olyc8080_changed/2004/01/10/ $ ls $ cd $ umount /media/sda1 $ mount | grep media $ turn cam off unplug cam

 
• Brian Miller created a page about using a Olympus C-5050Zoom Digital Camera with Linux. Tons of detailed information on how to interface a 5050 with Linux. This information probably also holds for a 8080.
• 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 should also apply to an Olympus 8080.

Astrophotography with the Olympus 8080

• Gary Ayton has an interesting page dedicated to astrophotography with the 8080.
  
• 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.

Links

• MyOlympus.org photo sharing site: similar to Photosig, here Olympus 8080 users can upload images and give/get feedback
• Yahoo Olympus C8080 discussion group: a discussion group dedicated to the Olympus C8080 digital camera

• Olympus 4040 online resource: an in-depth information resource on the Olympus 4040
• Olympus 5050 online resource: an in-depth information resource on the Olympus 5050
  
• Olympus 5060 online resource: an in-depth information resource on the Olympus 5060
  
• Jeremy McCreary's dpfwiw site: Excellent site on the Olympus Camedia cameras
• Rob Galbraith's site has an article on Alex Majoli ("Alex Majoli points and shoots"), an award winning photojournalist who uses Olympus point and shoot cameras, the c-5050, -5060, and -8080.  Interesting reading.
  

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. 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.
3. Set the camera to manual exposure (M) which further reduces the shutter lag.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. Use fully charged batteries if you are using the on-board flash. Otherwise it takes a long time to re-charge.

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