I owned the C-2000Z digital camera for one year and I was very happy with it. Just recently I decided to upgrade to the new C-3030Z mainly due to the USB connection and the battery compartment lock problem. I do a lot of night photography and I also need a full manual control, which I found in the C-3030.

I am very dissapointed as the images taken at exposure times 2-16 seconds contain A LOT of noise. At above 8s the entire image is covered with color dots of various sizes and the subject can be hardly seen. I tested several cameras and found some of them to be very bad in this respect. With the lens covered the image should be black. My previous C-2000 camera had only about 12 hot pixels in the entire CCD that were always showing up at long exposure times. What I am getting now with the C-3030 is simply not acceptable for low light photography. Since I upgraded to the C-3030 I can not use it for what I used to use my old C-2000Z. For those who use the camera for daylight shots it probably does not matter, but for me it is a major defect that I can not accept in the camera of this class and price.

Has anyone noticed this in other C-3030 or is my camera defective?

I assume that if the camera has a shutter speed up to 16 s, this is a usable range, that should produce almost black images with the absence of light. Am I wrong in my assumption? Should I ask Olympus for a replacement camera?

Regards

Mark

-- Mark Kubis (markk@pacific.net.sg), May 21, 2000

Answers

The new 3 megapixel digicams clearly have higher sensor noise than the older 2 MP designs: Smaller CCD elements translate into lower signal- to-noise ratios, no matter what.

In our own work, we've discovered that the cameras' low light performance is *very* strongly affected by temperature, particularly the internal temperature of the camera. We've now routinely begun doing our low light tests starting with the camera at a uniform 70 degree F ambient, and shoot the lowest light levels first. You might try leaving your camera in a reasonably cool place (near an A/C duct, but NOT in your refrigerator, you'd get condensation & could short out the camera electronics) and then immediately try a long time-exposure. If you get horrendous noise under those conditions, you might try a different camera. Check our low-light shots from the C3030 on our site, which have now been updated to show results with a room-temperature camera. (FWIW, when we first tested the C3030, we shot the low light stuff at the end of a full day of other shooting, meaning the camera's innards were rather toasty. The result was pictures shot at 8 seconds where you could barely make out the subject behind the "snow." The room- temperature results are much better.)

-- Dave Etchells (web@imaging-resource.com), May 30, 2000.

Hi Mark, You should check out the 3030 vs. Nikon 990 review at http://www.dcresource.com/ - the author has some interesting observations on night photography with both of these cameras - it has almost convinced me to buy a Nikon 950 vs. the new 990 because of the exact problem you describe.

-- Gerry Parrott (gerry.parrott@home.com), May 24, 2000.

Hi Mark I also upgradet an C2000Z to the new C3030 with the same problems you have! I used the C2000Z to photographe fishtanks without any problems. Using the new C3030 I always have to swith to ISO400 and hardly can produce an Nois free Image. I also tried to shoot long exposter night shots and was very disappointed to see the "snow" in the picture. (after a series of shots!) I didn't try yet to coold down the C3030 to get better results in lonh exposer shots, but I will try this soon. But never use the ISO400 setting with is horrable bad! Over all, I am very disappointed in the new C3030 an some times I whis i would get my C2000Z back.

I never read about the low light problem of the C3030 vers. C2000Z in any digital forum yet.

-- Ralph McIntosh (mcintosh@freenet.de), June 03, 2000.