We'll cut right to the chase: the Olympus Camedia C-730 Ultra Zoom is a 3megapixel camera sporting a massive 10x optical zoom lens.

So with an equivalent 35mm range of 38-380mm, the C-730 certainly justifies its Ultra Zoom badge.

This long optical focal length is essential for anyone who's interested in photographing distant subjects.

Digital zooms may offer similar levels of magnification, but they crop the image and enlarge the centre, thereby losing quality.

With a genuine 10x optical range, the C-730 can enlarge the subjects without compromise.

Despite such a long focal length, the C-730's body remains compact, measuring just 107 x 76 x 77mm. The lens extends by 2cm during operation, taking five seconds to do so.

Olympus has impressively kept a bright aperture of f2.8-f3.5. This allows faster shutter speeds, but don't underestimate potential camera shake at high magnifications - you'll either need a steady hand or a tripod.

Two macro modes are also offered, the more useful one focusing as close as 4cm.

At the heart of the C-730 is a 3megapixel CCD, delivering 2,048 x 1,536 pixel images with sufficient detail to make great-looking 10 x 8in prints.

Four lower resolutions are offered, along with two levels of jpeg compression - at the highest resolution, the two jpeg settings produce files measuring around 700KB and 1.2MB respectively.

There's also an uncompressed tiff mode, but it ties the camera up for 20 seconds.

Olympus also offers a mode that internally scales images up to 3,200 x 2,400 pixels. This won't create any more detail, but it is handy for smoothing edges on directly printed enlargements.

The C-730 is one of the first Olympus cameras to use the tiny new XD memory card format, and a 16MB card is supplied. At best quality, you'll squeeze on about 12 jpegs.

The slot can also take Smart Media cards, but the maximum capacity supported on either format is 128MB. Supporting both formats may seem like a backward step, but at the time of writing Smart Media cards were cheaper.

Like other long-zoomers, the C-730 is fitted with an electronic viewfinder, and the main LCD screen measures 1.5in.

There's a live histogram option for optimising exposures, as well as a range of cropping options. Exposure modes include foolproof Auto and Program, along with six screen presets.

Joining these is an A/S/M setting, which selects either Aperture, Shutter or fully Manual modes. There are 10 aperture settings from f2.8 to f8 and shutter speeds from 1/1,000 to 16 seconds.

An optional noise reduction mode can eliminate random blobs on exposures longer than one second, but takes the same time again for processing. There's also a movie mode with mono audio.

An impressive range of flash modes include slow-synchro and rear-curtain options, and there's also a sync port for an external flashgun, but no hotshoe to mount it.

Images are copied through the USB port, and there's also an AV output for TVs.

Finally, the camera is powered by either four AA batteries or a pair of CR-V3 lithium packs. Two CR-V3s are supplied, but you should invest in a set of rechargeable AAs as soon as possible.

In use, the C-730 felt great and impressed us with an array of customisable options and manual control.

The 10x zoom is also useful for certain subjects, although colour fringing was visible in high-contrast scenes.

The bottom line is deciding whether you need a 10x lens - for the same price you could get a 4megapixel model with a better-performing, albeit shorter, 3x optical zoom.

But if you need the 10x, the C-730 is an ideal choice - although check out the new HP Photosmart 850, too.

SPECS

DETAILS
PRICE: £499.99 (£424.68 ex VAT)

Contact: Olympus 0800 072 0070