Olympus FE-130

If you want a simple camera, look no further than Olympus's FE-series point-and-shoot models. These cameras have no manual settings but include low price tags and helpful features for photography newbies. For example, the Olympus FE-130 is a 5-megapixel digital camera with a 38mm-to-114mm (35mm equivalent) optical zoom lens, a 2-inch LCD screen, and few intimidating camera settings.

A little fatter than an iPod, the Olympus FE-130's solid, rectangular plastic body feels reasonably comfortable in the hand. Plus, its thickness allows enough room to use readily available AA batteries instead of a proprietary rechargeable battery. Its plain, matte-silver finish is pleasant enough to look at, but it won't win any fashion awards.

Atop the camera, you'll find the shutter-release button, the power button, the zoom rocker, and four controls: shooting mode, playback, trash, and print. The back panel holds the rest of the controls, next to a diminutive 2-inch LCD. After making a selection with the mode dial, you can change certain settings, such as flash, timer, and macro, through a four-way-plus-OK button cluster and a separate menu button. An additional display/help button cycles through the LCD's settings and brings up helpful tips when rummaging through the camera's menu system.

The Olympus FE-130 has a few handy features for camera newbies, but anyone expecting a lot of options will be seriously disappointed. The camera automatically handles image settings such as ISO sensitivity and white balance, giving users no say in the matter. Once the mode is set, only basic settings such as image resolution, flash, macro focus, timer, and EV compensation can be changed by the user. A decent handful of shooting modes and scene presets, from basic portrait and landscape modes to special museum and food settings, cover many common shooting situations and more. You can also select digital image stabilization, which boosts the camera's light sensitivity to ISO 800 for low-light shots and uses faster shutter speeds to help reduce blur in action-filled photos. But be warned--this approach is generally less effective than the optical image stabilization included in many higher-priced cameras these days. In this case, it led to pictures that were noisier than normal. Olympus includes a movie mode, but it can capture only 15fps QuickTime clips at 320x240 resolution. Sure, the camera's menus consider this QVGA video mode to be high quality, but nearly every other camera currently on the market offers full VGA (640x480), 30fps video.

The camera includes a special Guide mode that helps users set up their shots. A simple text menu lets users select choices such as "Shooting into backlight" or "Shooting subject in motion," then walks them through changing the settings for the situation.

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