Olympus C-7070 Wide Zoom

The obvious selling point of the C-7070 is the wide-angle lens, which shoots the equivalent of 27 to 110mm in 35mm format. Look beyond that, however, and you'll find a solid camera with just a few niggling problems that hold it back from being great.

Built from magnesium alloy and with a minimum of plastic, the Olympus is large, heavy and feels completely sturdy. It is good to hold, with a comfortable grip that sits well in the hand. Just don't try to put it in your pocket.

Rather than a standard mounted or rotating LCD, the C-7070 has a flippable, reversed screen that can be turned to face the direction of the photographer. It is mounted in the body of the camera, and flips upwards to line up with the hot shoe (which is for a separate flash). The screen is beautiful: despite being a standard 1.8", it has approximately 130,000 pixels and shows images crisply, clearly and without much ghosting.

The inclusions in the box with the C-7070 are basic: the standard PC and printer connections, along with a 32MB xD picture card. The camera supports both xD and CompactFlash cards.

The camera offers a full range of customisable features, including a special focus option that follows a moving target. It has 12 preset shooting modes, the most notable being two underwater modes to accommodate the optional PT-O27 waterproof case.

Images came out well on the fine setting at 3072 x 2048. They did tend to look a little washed out, but fine-tuning of the exposure and saturation levels would easily fix that. Sharpness, on the other hand, was great, and we loved the wide-angled shots.

Although the lack of a printed manual was irritating, the rest of the software bundled with the camera is quite good. We particularly liked the panorama function, which allows you to stitch together up to 10 photos into a single shot.