- Average user rating:
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
-
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
1.5 stars
"No real reason to buy this"
Pros: 3 inch screen, wide-angle lens, well built
Cons: Very Basic functionality, blown highlights, confusing menu, poor sensor
Summary: I bought one of these in October because I wanted a wide-angle p&s camera - and kept it for a week before returning it, for the reasons set out below.
In its favour, it's well built and got a wide-angle. Oh yes, and a 3 inch screen. Also rechargeable battery. Start up times, shutter lag all decent.
However, it doesn't have any type of image stabilisation, or face detection, or any manual control. So control wise it's for Gramps or Junior to take fuss free shots, but without IS or FD it narrows the tolerance limits in which gramps or junior can take decent shots. You wonder why Olympus coupled a 28mm lens and 3 inch screen (both quite desirable in P&S stakes) whilst leaving out items you'd also expect on that list. Yet without the additionals I've listed above, this camera is outclassed. Yes you can get a camera with decent photo quality, wide-angle lens, image stabilisation, face detection, manual control and other electronic wizardry - and in this price bracket.
Image quality ok under certain conditions for a P&S, photos sharp in bright light or with the aid of the over-aggressive flash. Here's a key example of the compromises you get with this camera - A wide-angle lens comes into its own for landscapes, and at the other extreme, also in a social setting when you want to get everybody in around the table or bar. Without FD to control the flash, any indoor shot gets you overexposed faces and leeched out foreground colours, even if you do use the "party" scene mode.
Outdoors, the camera finds it really hard to cope with contrast - in anything but soft light (eg partial overcast winter morning) you end up having to choose between a blown sky or very murky shade. This is something that can happen with tiny high mega-pixel sensors, but I've got both a Fuji and a Nikon p&s that cost the same as this Olympus that shows it can be done.
ISO only goes up to 640 or something, which on the one hand is a refreshing change from manufacturers who push ISOs up beyond reason (or decent photo quality) to compete in the marketing stakes. At the same time shots above 100 have both noise and lose detail - This isn't a ISO 1600-capable sensor dialled down, it's a ISO 400 capable sensor dialled up.
One last thing - the menu is confusing and non-intuitive (luckily there aren't that many options to start with), so Gramps/Junior mentioned above might have one more reason to wish they'd chosen another camera.
