Olympus's 1.3MP Camedia compact of 1998 — fixed 5.5mm f/2.8 lens, TIFF option, SmartMedia, AA power
The Olympus Camedia C-830L was a 1.3-megapixel digital compact introduced in 1998, part of the first wave of consumer Camedia digicams that also included the C-840L and C-860L. In some markets it was sold as the D-340R. It sat in the affordable middle of Olympus's early digital range, bridging film compacts and serious digicams.
Its 1.3-megapixel 1/2.7-inch CCD delivers images up to 1280x960 pixels, saved as JPEG or, unusually for a budget camera of the time, uncompressed TIFF. The fixed 5.5mm f/2.8 lens works with a three-step aperture (f/2.8, f/5.6, f/11) and shutter speeds from 1/2 to 1/500 second. Framing is via an optical finder or the 1.8-inch LCD, storage is SmartMedia, and power comes from four AA batteries in a 235g body.
Today the C-830L is mainly of interest to collectors of late-1990s digital cameras and shooters chasing the distinctive rendering of early CCD sensors. Operation is almost entirely automatic, so it suits casual snapshots rather than anything demanding, and the AA power keeps it cheap to feed.
Check the LCD still works and that the battery compartment is free of corrosion from leaked AA cells, a common fault on stored examples. SmartMedia cards are long out of production and early cameras like this often only accept lower-capacity cards, so a listing that includes a working card and reader is worth a premium.