Good Points

It's a lot lighter than an SLR - so it doesn't make my neck ache after a long trek around with it.

It's great to be able to take loads of photos so you can be sure of getting a good one. I've got a 64MB card which gives 128 shots in "normal" quality mode (HQ). I've tested the higher quality mode (SHQ) and TIFF mode, but can't really see any difference unless I zoom right in on the picture in a paint program on the PC. It might be worth using the higher quality modes for photos with very intricate detail and a large print, but I haven't needed that yet.

The auto focus works well most of the time, though it sometimes get confused on closeups. For the closest possible shots I use manual focus, put it right down to the minimum and move the camera back and forth to get the shot in focus. While setting the focus manually it also expands the picture in the LCD so you can see more clearly what you are trying to focus on. If you keep your finger on the focus change button, after it has hit the minimum value, it stays enlarged so you get plenty of time to focus.

It's pretty good at night time photos. I've heard that some other cameras are not so good in low light levels. I've had no problems taking photos at night, using only street lights - although of course they come out a little grainy compared to day time shots.

The batteries seem to last well. I usually get about 200 photos per charge of a set of 4 AA Ni-MH ones. I've used a set over a period of about a month and still managed to get this many shots. I did try to see how many photos I could take with a freshly charged set of batteries but I couldn't get them to run down! I took about 800 photos, lots of them with the flash, and most with the LCD on, but there was no sign of the batteries fading. It looks like with a fresh set of batteries the only limit is your memory cards. The 2040 apparently uses a lot less battery power when the the LCD is switched off (according to some tests I read about) - so you don't have to switch it off after every shot to try to save the batteries. You can leave it on to save time getting ready for the next shot.

The manual settings can be useful. For example to slow the shutter speed down to smooth out some water flowing down a stream. I've read that using F4 is the best for landscape shots to get the best picture quality, though I haven't tested this out yet.

The colours come out well. Both on a PC screen and when printed (with an HP 930C). I haven't had to fiddle about with any colour balance on the PC, printer or camera. Although a little tweaking might be needed to get the exact same colours as the original.

The manual white balance setting is good for odd lighting. I've tried this for night time shots using sodium street lamps. All you need is a white sheet of paper to "tell" the camera what white is meant to look like and then it adjusts itself to compensate for the colour of the lights. This gives quite nice colours at night. Unless, of course you want the yellow/orange effect of the street lamps in the photos.

The quick access to the flash and macro settings using the buttons on top is very useful. Rather than having to plough through the menus.

Being able to adjust the brightness of the flash is good, say for filling in a few shadows without burning out everything. You can just add a little bit of flash.

The stitching function on the Camedia software is pretty good. This is about the only thing I use the software for nowadays. It's nice and easy to use. If the photos have been taken using the panorama function then you just click on one option and away it goes. The panorama function is only available on Olympus memory cards (which cost more). I generally use a cheaper non-Olympus 64MB card; so for that you have to specifically pick the thumbnails that comprise the panoramic shot and arrange them in the correct order - which is pretty easy anyway. In this manual mode you can also stitch vertically as well as horizontally, e.g. 2x3 shots with 6 photos. In manual mode you can only have 4 photos stitched together vertically or horizontally, in a 4x4 square. (But you could always do it twice, and join the joined ones later if you needed). The stitching function works without any user input. You don't have to tell it where the overlaps are (it finds them itself), and it will adjust the exposure if you want it to. It generally does a pretty good job too.

There are loads of settings and options to play with if, like me, you like that sort of thing.

There seems little delay from the hitting the button until the photo is actually taken (once you have pressed the button halfway down to get the focus and exposure worked out). I haven't tried this yet on anything very fast moving, like sports, so I'm not totally sure about this. But there certainly isn't a long gap, like I've heard with some other cameras.

Bad Points

The image in the viewfinder is very small compared to an SLR, and it doesn't match up with what you are taking at close range. Most of the time I use the LCD display on the back, as this is more like the size of the image in an SLR - but it's difficult to see in bright sunlight.

The Camedia software supplied with the camera has an option for downloading the images off the camera - but this doesn't work. It doesn't actually support the 2040. The download functions seem to be for cameras that connect to the serial port, which the 2040 doesn't. I found that confusing at first. You have to manually download the pictures yourself using the windows explorer, as when the camera is connected via the USB port and switched on it pops up as a removable disk drive. It's pretty easy to drag the files out of this removable drive to where you want them, but I got fed up having to do it and wrote a little simple program that copies or moves them automatically at the click of a button.

The Camedia software also seems rather buggy. At least it is on my computer. I used to try to use it to sort out my photos into different folders, but it had a habit of crashing when dragging the thumbnails, especially when selecting quite a lot at once.

The file names of the photos are not very good for identifying them later - it uses 1 character for the month (1-9,A,B,C), 2 for the day of the month, and a 4 digit sequence. This would make them difficult to find if you have photos from different years, and months A B and C are somewhat confusing to figure out at a glance. However the files do have a date/time stamp of when the photo was taken.

The longest zoom (120mm SLR equivalent) isn't very good for distance shots, e.g. wildlife. You can get extra attachments to increase this, but they cost quite a bit.

I don't like the fact that you can switch the camera on with the lens cap still in place. I've done it several times now, and it makes a horrible noise as the motor whines and grates and the lense crashes into the front of the cap.

The camera has "crashed" a few times. I assume it's like computers, the more complex the software becomes, the more likely something is to go wrong. Once I couldn't turn the camera off. It just didn't respond to any of the controls at all. It eventually got fed up and turned itself off. Another time, the batteries ran out while it was moving the lens back into the camera body, and it took quite a few attempts at turning it on and off with new batteries for it to go back in properly again.

Some batteries don't work very well. This isn't a problem with the camera, it just seems that some batteries are not as good as others. I got one set of 1300 mAh Uniross ones from a computer fair, and another, exactly the same type, along with a battery charger from Wilkos. The ones from Wilkos are ok immediately after charging, but if left for a week or more they go totally dead. The other set I got from the computer fair are still fine after 2 or 3 weeks. I recently bought another set of batteries and they don't stay charged up for very long either.

If you set the camera to power up with your own settings and set the flash off, you then don't seem to be able to use the flash button at the top to switch it back on again. You have to fiddle about in the menu.

The lever to operate the zoom function seems (to me anyway) to work the opposite way around to what I would expect. You pull back to zoom in, and push it to get wide angle. But you soon get used to this quirk.

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Last updated: 18 May 2002 00:22