To help prevent ugly dead pixels, the Olympus FE-130 has an automatic pixel-mapping feature that analyzes the camera's sensor and notes specific pixels that show up too light or too dark. Once the camera records this information, it can compensate for those bad pixels when it processes images. Olympus puts pixel mapping on all of its digital cameras, but it's otherwise a rare feature for low-end snapshot cameras.
We found the Olympus FE-130 to be sluggish, with an irritatingly slow shot-to-shot time dragging down a relatively quick shutter lag. The camera was able to capture its first shot 3 seconds after we pressed the power button, but every shot thereafter requires another 3.1 seconds. With the flash enabled, we managed only one shot every 3.7 seconds. The shutter was relatively responsive on a high-contrast subject, lagging only 0.6 second. Unfortunately, our low-contrast subject more than doubled that lag, for a painful 1.7 seconds.
Image quality was acceptable, though the Olympus FE-130's extremely limited settings meant we couldn't put it through the rigorous array of tests most cameras endure. It captured colors accurately, and to our pleasant surprise, the automatic white balance produced a relatively neutral picture under incandescent lights, without the yellow pall most cameras display. We noticed a small amount of fringing and noise in our images, but the pictures generally looked good. Since we couldn't manually select ISO, we were unable to run our usual lab tests. In our test images, well-lit shots came in clearly, with little noise and acceptable highlight and shadow detail. When we turned on the camera's digital image stabilization, the images exploded with artifacts. Unless you want your photos to have more speckles than a robin's egg, you'll shy away from low light and turn off image stabilization.
The Olympus FE-130 is a nice enough camera if you just want to press a button and take a picture. While its various shooting modes and presets offer a few options, the camera's complete lack of manual settings will stifle users who yearn for more control or want to get better pictures in out-of-the-ordinary situations.
What You'll Pay
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