#Olympus camera retro look manual#
#Olympus camera retro look series#

Meanwhile exposure compensation was also available in a +/-2EV range, again in one third steps.

This almost felt like finding a secret bonus level on a game and allowed you to grab half-decent light trail or firework effects.

Set the camera to Shutter Priority and you could choose speeds from 1/800 down to half a second, again in fine one third increments, while pushing the OK button unlocked even slower shutter speeds down to 16 seconds. Forget the handful of aperture steps on lesser models – set the C-2000 Z to Aperture Priority with the lens zoomed-wide and you’d enjoy 16 steps from f2 to f11 in one third increments. What made the C-2000 Z stand out at the time though was the degree of control over exposure.

#Olympus camera retro look manual#

The main mode dial lets you quickly switch between Program, Aperture and Shutter Priority modes, although strangely no full Manual on this model – something that was added to the mildly-updated C-2020 Z a year later. The actual exposure is shown on the main screen though which I’ll come to in a moment. The upper screen shows things like shots remaining, photo quality, flash mode, along with icons to indicate burst shooting, macro mode or manual white balance. Like most cameras of the day there’s an upper information screen to save you from using the power hungry colour screen on the back. That said, after two decades, many of those rubberised grips on other vintage cameras aren’t looking particularly good. In your hands it’s fairly comfortable with a decent sized grip, although a rubber coating here wouldn’t have gone amiss. But in 1999, the C-2000 Z was one of the first to sport this look. In fact before long, it felt like everyone had a camera with a similar shape and layout. The C-2000 Z represented a departure from both styles, adopting a boxier design that would become popular with other manufacturers. These were sold alongside larger, more sophisticated models with SLR viewfinders, like the C-1400L.

#Olympus camera retro look series#

By the time the C-2000 Z arrived, Olympus already had several years of digital cameras under its belt, starting in 1996 with models like the C-800L which introduced the CAMEDIA series and resembled traditional 35mm film compacts.