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Digital Photography: Kodak DCS 330 Vs.Olympus C-2500L
by John Rettie

Recently I had the chance to try out two of the newest digital still cameras from Kodak and Olympus and it made for an interesting comparison as both have similar specifications and produce similar results yet they are aimed at different audiences and have a price differential of over $5000. In all honesty, I should not compare the two cameras side by side but nevertheless, the comparison does have some relevance in this ever-changing market place.

Kodak DCS 300
Kodak's newest professional camera the DCS 330 is based on the Nikon Pronea 6i camera body and is a substantial upgrade from the older DCS 315, also based on the same body. As it's name suggests, the DCS 330 is a camera with a 3-megapixel CCD producing a 2008x1504 image, while the DCS 315 has a 1.5 megapixel chip. Beside the increased resolution, the 330 also inherits some of the functionality of the much more expensive DCS 500 and 600 models.

Because the 330 is not as rugged as the 520 or 620, which utilize the Canon EOS 1N andNikon F5 bodies respectively, Kodak is not aiming the camera at photojournalists and sports photographers who need speed and ruggedness. Instead, Kodak portrays the camera as being ideal for general photography such as weddings, portraits and studio work, where speed is not so critical.

The 330 sells for $5995 which is considerably less than $10,750 charged for the DCS 620, which only has a 2-megapixel CCD.

In a way its kind of ironic that Kodak's newest camera is based on a Nikon body at all considering that at much the same time that Nikon introduced its own D1 digital camera with a slightly more competitive price point of around $5600. I would love to have had the opportunity to try the two cameras side by side but sadly the Nikon is still in tight supply and it looks as though it will be several more weeks before I can try one out.

It certainly means that Nikon users have a wider choice with five different digital camera bodies (DCS 315, 330, 620, 660 and D1) compared to Canon users who only have two, the DCS 520 and 560 (plus the identical Canon D2000). I am sure this situation will not last for long as Canon surely will not allow Nikon to get ahead of it in the digital game.

Olympus C-2500L
The Olympus C-2500L is the newest SLR camera in the Olympus range and it follows on from the successful D-620L with an increase in resolution to 2.5 megapixels, giving it an image size of 1712x1368. It is built into a neat body with a non-removable 3X zoom lens with a 35mm-equivalence range of 36-110mm. Surprisingly, the camera's retail price is $1499, which is an increase of more than $200 over the price of the D-620L when it was first introduced. This places the camera at the top of the range in the prosumer camera market.

In all fairness, it is also probably true to say that it potentially offers the best quality and functionality although I am not sure it is worth 50% more than the Nikon Coolpix 950 or even Olympus' own C2020Z.

The nicest part about the camera from a traditional photographer's point of view is that it works just like a regular SLR film camera. It offers a nice clear viewfinder with the added benefit that one can still see the image when the shutter is being fired, as there is no mirror to get in the way. This is useful with flash, as one can visually see if the subject has been captured and lit properly.

One of the most significant enhancements is the inclusion of a slot for CompactFlash cards, which are much more popular than the SmartMedia card used in other Olympus models. But instead of just one slot the C-2500L also has a slot for SmartMedia cards, making the camera useable for owners of either type of storage cards. It certainly helps avoid the problem of which type of storage card to use. This is a smart move on the part of Olympus.


One of the unfortunate minuses of a SLR digital camera is that it does not display the image before it is captured. For those who have never experienced this benefit of a digital camera, it is no big deal, as it is normal. For those who have used a digital camera with an LCD which shows an image all the time, the ability to compose a picture on the screen ahead of time is very convenient, at least indoors or out of the sunshine. It is not enough of a difference to detract from the Olympus but it does beg the question as to whether it would be possible to add a real time screen to an SLR-style digital camera. Obviously, it would add cost, but not all that much by my reckoning.

In order to give these two cameras a work out I used both on a couple of photo shoots with models where speed is important but not a be all and end all. Nonetheless it is still very important to have a camera that responds quickly and allows quick shooting in small bursts.

I found both cameras worked well, much better than most I have tried. The DCS 330 allowed me to shoot up to eight shots pretty rapidly before the camera would disallow more shooting while it finished writing the captured information to disk. I only had to wait for the camera to catch up a couple of times while shooting a total of 236 pictures during a four-hour shoot.

Six NiMH AA batteries mounted in a tray power the DCS 330 and one set lasted the whole shoot, which amazed me. I had 256MB and 512MB PC Card hard drives for storage and I used Nikon's AF-S 28-70mm f/2.8 Silent Wave zoom lens for the shoots. Because the CCD is smaller than a 35mm film frame, there is a multiplying factor of about 1.5, making the lens effectively a 42-105mm. Rather than redesign the viewfinder Kodak only marked off the area captured by the CCD. I found this was fine especially as I wear glasses and it allowed me to easily see the whole frame.

Although you cannot see an image of the shot before pressing the shutter, one appears on the LCD screen within a couple of seconds of the image being captured. As always this is one of the most useful aspects of a digital camera, especially when shooting a model as one can immediately show her the images, which helps improve the shoot no end. You can scroll through the captured images really fast but the image is not as good as on other digital cameras.
Operation of the DCS 330 was not significantly different from a regular Nikon 35mm camera. All the regular camera's functions operate in the same fashion and one has the option of a basic automatic setting or full manual control.

Not surprisingly, I found the Olympus C-2500L not quite as fast in operation as the DCS 330. It's focusing was slower and I could only capture five images in succession at the medium-quality setting. Perhaps the slowest operation was scrolling through pictures after they were captured which took a couple of seconds for each image to be drawn on the LCD screen, making it much slower than other cameras. The quality of the image displayed was excellent, though.
The studio flash system was triggered through a hot-shoe adapter on the camera and worked okay, but the Olympus only has two aperture settings in the aperture-priority mode making correct exposure more complicated than on a camera with full aperture control. Nonetheless, I was able to capture a total of 331 images using the combination of Compact Flash and SmartMedia cards I had at my disposal that totaled 184MB and the (included) set of four NiMH AA batteries lasted for the whole shoot. If I had not had the use of the Kodak camera I would have been perfectly happy with the Olympus. It turned out to be a much better studio camera for shooting a model than the Nikon Coolpix 950, which is just too slow between shots as it does not have the same buffer to allow rapid-fire shooting in the same way.
Once back at the office it was time to transfer the images to the computer. I have hooked up a PhotoChute 3 iMac external card reader made by Antec. It is a USB peripheral, which makes it easy to plug in on a modern Mac or an older one with a USB card installed. The reader has two slots, one for SmartMedia and the other for Type I or II PC cards. It includes an adapter so a Compact Flash storage card can be slotted in and read as if it were a PC card. Once a card from the camera is inserted the folder containing the images can be transferred to the computer just like any file from a hard drive. USB operates at a much faster speed than a serial connection so it only took a couple of minutes to transfer 90 images from a 96MB Compact Flash card.

Unfortunately, the Kodak camera came with Type III PC cards which are too large to be inserted in this particular reader so I had to resort to using the Firewire cable to connect the camera to the computer. It took 10 minutes to transfer 79 images from the 256MB hard drive in the camera. I would far rather use a card reader to transfer images than even a Firewire cable, as the operation is so much easier and quicker.

The DCS 330 stores images in a raw TIFF file that can only be processed by Kodak's own software, which is accessed as a plug-in via Photoshop. It takes about 20 seconds for the plug-in to process each image before Photoshop can access it. When you have a lot of images to view this is a bit of a pain as all the images have to be read onto the contact sheet every time the plug-in is accessed. To avoid these problems I had the program translate all files to JPEG format so they could be read by any program for quicker access. Surprisingly the Kodak software compresses the images more than the Olympus camera. Each 11.5 MB image ends up being compressed by 1:30 to provide a file of around 400K. The size of the file varied between 200K and 500K depending on the content of the image and how much compression could be performed. There seemed to be much less file size variation among the images captured on the Olympus. Most of the 8.9MB files were compressed by a 1:16 ratio to produce files around 550K each.

The bottom line is that both these cameras produced very good images. Neither of them retained good detail in the model's hair but skin details and fabric patterns reproduced well. On the whole I liked the colors better on the Kodak camera but some of that was due to the difficulty of getting an exactly correct exposure for the Olympus with its lack of fine aperture control.

If you need to use a 35mm camera for everyday work the Kodak DCS 330 should prove ideal with its interchangeable lens and full function capabilities. However, if you are more interested in using a digital camera as a second camera or for doing test shots the Olympus C-2500L will perform nearly as well.

I think the Olympus C-2500L is a little more expensive than it should be but it is good value compared to the Kodak DCS 330. On the other hand the DCS 330 is much better value than the more expensive models in Kodak's professional range as it produces better images without giving up much functionality. In my opinion it is the best camera, taking price into consideration, in the Kodak DCS line. Pricing has become very confusing in the world of digital cameras and it seems to be getting worse. However, as always, the bottom line is don't wait-buy the camera that works for you now and produces the return on investment that meets your goals in business today.

John Rettie is a photojournalist who resides in Santa Barbara, CA. He has been using a camera as a professional for 29 years, a computer for 19 years, and has combined his knowledge of both for the past seven years. Readers can contact him by e-mail at john@johnrettie.com or by snail-mail c/o Rangefinder.