We purchased a C-720 in 2003 and are very pleased with it.

With proper training, anyone can take awesome pictures with it. There are several reviews here that criticize the camera's "slow" auto and sports settings. I've taken probably 10,000 pictures with this camera, and almost none of them were taken in either of those modes. I highly recommend using P mode for outdoor pictures, or pictures in good light, and shutter priority (S mode), with shutter speed at about 1/30 or 1/40 of a second, and the exposure compensation on +2.0, for indoor pictures. The results are great.

The good things about this camera include the wonderful 8x zoom (for outdoor pictures, with shutter speeds of 1/250 second and faster, even max zoom shots come out great), the vibrant colors it captures, its wonderful work without a flash (very dramatic pictures), and the nice effect in portrait setting (in which it uses depth of field to have a sharp target and blurred background). The menus aren't that difficult to use. Battery life is great; I typically get 200-300 shots on one set of freshly charged NiMH batteries. My 128 Mb SmartMedia card holds about 200 pictures in the mode I use most often, and they're large enough to print sharply as 4x6 or 5x7, even after I crop a lot out of them.

There are two things I don't like about the camera.

The first is that it has a tendancy to develop "hot" or "stuck" pixels when doing a lot of shooting in low-light situations. Pixel mapping (a built-in pixel repair function) fixes this, but it's still really jarring to see ugly red and green pixels in the viewfinder and LCD and images when this happens.

The second is a quirk with my camera, and, from what I've read, lots of Olympus cameras. The C-720 uses a capacitor to "remember" the date and time, even with no batteries in the camera. There is something wrong with the capacitor in the C-720 I own. The connection to the batteries, even a freshly-charged set, breaks quite often. When that happens, the camera won't turn on until I open the battery compartment and rearrange the batteries, and then half the time, the date/time (nothing else) has been lost and needs to be reset. Because the camera cleverly uses the date to name the image files, this lost date/time is a real headache to deal with.

Because of the battery/capacitor quirk, I'm docking the camera one star. I'd give it five if the date/time didn't reset way too often.

As more and more people buy digital cameras, that are usually higher-end than the film cameras they once had, the learning curve associated with camera like this will decrease. To anyone who finds themselves disappointed with this camera because of blurred pictures, read my advice above and try again. Once you know what you're doing - it won't take long - you will take great pictures with the C-720.

I purchased this camera 18 months ago from Best Buy (sorry Amazon, I didn't have my account yet). My first digital camera. With accessories and the price of the camera at the time (they are now selling for half??) we spent $600.00. From the start the camera on Auto and Sport settings produced pictures that were blurry and out of focus about 1/3 of the time. Best Buy and Olympus had me convinced, being new to digital cameras, that I was the problem and that I might have been better served with a more basic camera (really?). The camera has since been back for repair with Best Buy once already under their extra four year warranty (5 week turn around, I plan to use a $100 Kodak digital I carry on my motorcyle in the meantime) and is going to go back again as the problem is now worse. When it comes back the next two times I will take it out of the box, have them take a blurry, out of focus shot of me and hand it right back to them. After the first "repair" Best Buy did not report that anything was found in need of repair only that the camera was recalibrated. I expect that there is nothing to fix as the camera is fundamentally flawed. The shutter speeds at Auto and Sport settings are just too slow. Three "repair" tries with Best Buy and we get our money or credit back. Olympus now tells me, after their warranty has expired, to go to the manual settings and increase the shutter speed and shoot in the manual mode. In other words that their camera shutter speed at Auto and even Sport mode will continue to be slow (and ruin pictures). By this time I had already figured this out despite their condescending advice that I probably should not have such a complicated camera! I have read similar reviews re: this particular camera with these problems at several other consumer sites. Check it out for yourself. Stay away from the Olympus C series. Interesting that they are currently not available from Amazon(things that make you go hmmmm)??!! I am staying away from Olympus all together. Customer service is a run around with a product they are unwilling to recognize as defective. Customers experiencing problems with these cameras (it seems from other reviews that not all are troublesome) should be offered a replacement or a trade toward something that works (maybe something simpler for those of us thought of as digitally challenged). We are extremely disappointed. Wake up Olympus. Time to cut the manure and reach out to make this right with your customers. I would love to retract this review.

I own this camera and am very pleased with it. I have some photography experience but this is my first digital camera, so in choosing a camera my goals were to find one that is as close to a traditional 35 mm film camera, but digital. This camera acheives that goal. The main drawback to this camera is that it is difficult to take action photos. I'll get to that, but first a few pros:

- Of course, the powerful optical zoom and optical lens, (combined with digital zoom gives you almost 30x zoom).
- For having an optical lens, this camera is really compact! It is easily held in one hand.
- Full automatic controls of shutter speed and aperture, but also the option of full manual (as well as shutter speed priority or aperture priority) should you want to do something creative. Though it does not have unlimited exposure time; you can't go past about one minute.

And a few cons:

- The necessary accessories will drive the price up. It only comes with a 4 MB memory card, and much more is needed (I recommend at least 64 MB, probably 128 MB). Also, rechargeable batteries are recommended, as well as a carrying case.
- Though it uses double-A's, most rechargeable double-A's don't last long. I often end up buying regular double-A's in the end anyway.
- Like other digital cameras, the camera must be powered up before taking photos but you don't want to leave it on at all times in order to save batteries. However, if you have a sudden photo opportunity it does take a minute for the camera to power up. The camera will go into sleep mode to save batteries and it "wakes up" a little faster, but still somewhat slowly. This is a minor drawback.
- And the biggest drawback, for me, is the difficulty in taking action shots. It is difficult for two reasons:

1) The auto-focus is slow. By the time the camera focuses and shoots, your photo opportunity easily may have passed. It does have manual focus but it is much slower! You have to use the up/down and left/right arrows on the back of the camera to focus. First, this is an inconvenient location especially if you are using the viewfinder instead of the viewscreen. And, the buttons are digitally controlled; each press of the button requires a short processing time. If you think you can manually focus on the fly with this camera while shooting sports photography, forget it! So, unless you are in a situation where you can focus manually once and take all of your photos at that focal length, you will have to rely on the moderately slow auto-focus.

2) After each photo, the image freezes to show you the picture you just took. This is a nice feature on most any digital camera nowadays, but since you can't turn it off it can really interfere if you are trying to take several photos back-to-back. The viewscreen does this, but so does the viewfinder, so there is no avoiding it. The only option, if you want to take quick back to back photos, is to turn on the "rapid-shooting" which will take 2 or more photos every time you press the button. Fortunately it's digital so you aren't wasting film!

All of that said, I will mention that I have managed to take some decent sports photographs. The drawbacks are a nuisance but can be worked around in ways like those that I have mentioned.

I recommend this camera to anyone that is looking for a digital camera at a very affordable price that will provide many of the benefits of a traditional 35 mm film-based camera. It is good for beginners as well as amateur photographers, but if you're planning to do action photography I recommend sticking to the 35 mm, or finding a different (though surely more expensive) digital camera.

Bottom line: it is hard, if not impossible, to beat this camera for this price.

And they are SO Right, it has so many whistles and horns, I cant figure out how to use it. The instruction book is as long as a novel. I have never used a digital camera, so I can guarantee that this one is HARD to understand.
Once you figure out the important needs of the camera, the one part that is easy is getting the pictures on the computer. That is camera/computer friendly, and easy to understand.
I noticed that all pictures have red eyes, and what I don't like the most, is I love taking pictures spontaneously, you can not take moving pictures at all, and that is a big downfall when you have kids and cats or dogs. Anything moving comes out blurry every-time. It is not the camera for those that like to be on the go, or like to take pictures as they happen. Its more for the mountain and tree type families, that take pictures of still objects.

This is my first digital camera and I did a lot of research before buying it. I bought it mainly for the 8x optical zoom and because of a retailer who recommended Olympus' lenses. The flaws of this camera were said by other reviewers - things like slow focus and blurry pictures. You CAN take good pictures with this camera, but it just takes a LONG time to learn for beginners (and after a lot of mistakes). And if you need somebody else to take pictures for you, it will be plenty of headaches. The paper manual that comes with the camera is the most user-UNfriendly manual I've ever seen - it assumes the user knows a lot about cameras. In conclusion, this camera is NOT for anyone who wants ease of use.

I researched carefully before buying my first digital camera. Prices were still up, but had dropped enough to afford a 3 megapixel. For my purposes that is plenty. I am not sorry I went for the Olympus 720. Two years later it is still working beautifully. On auto-mode it takes great pics, automatically adjusting for low light and finding the focus quickly. The controls are well-placed. Since most of my photos are for personal or online use, I rarely use the advanced features. I only hope Olympus continues to maintain the high quality of this product. If so, I'll be faithful for life.

Don't waste your money...there are much better cameras out there. This camera is too big, doesn't always cooperate, and takes horrible indoor pictures. It has an eight time zoom but the more you zoom the more distorted your photo is...very disappointing.

To put it as simply as I can, this is the camera that I never get rid of, and brag about the photos. I am no great photographer, but with this camera I catch things that no other could come close to! Children playing in the water and it picks up even the smallest drops of water in the air! Red eye has never been an issue and the clarity is excellent. Ive had this camera for about 13 years (when my 1st child was born) and I will never give it up. Other smaller cameras come & go..but the C-720 will always be my 1st choice. Its one tough piece of technology too! Its been dropped, sat on, thrown, exposed to water & sand...notiing has killed it yet in my graveyard of cameras. I strongly recommend this daring to anyone.