The 4 megapixel Camedia C-4000 Zoom is impressive and aptly named.

It has a motorised zoom lens and a 3.5x digital zoom that allows you to move in even closer. Ideal for detailed close-up work.

It offers plenty of scope for the more advanced digital photographer.

The camera stores images as .tif files with a maximum image size of 2,288 x 1,712 pixels.

It is possible to get more pictures on your storage media by reducing the size of the image.

There's an optical viewfinder you can use to save battery power and an LCD screen that is bright enough to use in daylight.

The buttons and dials are all easy enough to understand as long as you spend half an hour with the manual in one hand and the camera in the other.

The menu system is extremely comprehensive.

Exposure control, light metering, white balance, resolution, sensitivity, flash mode and more can be set using it and you can record short video sequences in QuickTime Motion .jpg format.

But users should be warned his function is hugely memory-hungry (you only get about three seconds per megabyte).

You might want to change the 16Mb SmartMedia card which comes with the camera to a 64Mb or 128Mb card.

I liked the Olympus Camedia C-4000 Zoom a lot as it offers a much more functionality than some other similarly-priced digital cameras.

But it needs a larger capacity SmartMedia Card as standard.

Other than that, I felt this was a good quality camera, suitable for semi-professional use.

It will certainly repay the investment by providing you with good results for what is really quite a modest price.

Price: £382.97 plus VAT.

Contact: 0800 072 0070 or www.olympus.co.uk
Feel good factor: 8 out of 10.