- Average user rating: 2.5 stars out of 33 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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4 out of 4 people found this review helpful
4.5 stars
"Very small, complete with helpful guide, and decent features"
Pros: small, light, feels very solid becaus of the aluminum body, takes very good audo and video, good flash, comes with av cable to TV
Cons: hard to take pictures with one hand, can't do panorama mode without XD type H card, only has 3x zoom, and cant turn digital zoom off, no multi shot, takes almost 3 seconds for SHQ pics to save.
Summary: To start out, when looked at at first, the camera is amazingly thin and sleek, and easy to use thanks to the 30 second learning curve.
The body fels very solid, as i have dropped it on my desk from 3 feet and there wasnt a scratch. moving on, there is no internal battery charger, meaning the camerca cant be charged with the battery in it; the battery has to be taken out and charged in a monsterous charger.
When the power button is pressed, a small gate of heaven opens, revealing the lens. On the back there is no viewfinder, but much makes for it with a beautiful 2.5 inch screen filling 75% of the back of the camera.
One advantage to a camera like this, is amazingly with a full charge (takes the battery 300 minutes of charge) the battery runs very long with the LCD, which in most other cameras INHALES the battery.
Also, the XD card slot is under the same door as the battery.
Adding to this problem, the olympus takes a special camera battery, meaning basic AA battteries cannot be picked up and slapped in for those "lifeless camera" moments.
Returning to turning the camera on, no welcome screen greets you to setting the date, time, and time format.
Next, depending on whether or not you have an XD card or not, (though the camera has a 22mb internal memory for 5 photos is SHQ mode) this is where the card is formatted. From then on the camera is ready for regular camera duties.
The unit powers off and on in under 1.5 senconds.
The power button is locatd next to the "take picture" button and is very areodinamic with the camera so the camera is not accidentally turned on.
When using the scrool wheel, the camera does have 14 shooting mode, lacking one of my favorites, multi shot, and most of the modes are accessed by the SCENE partition in the wheel.
When the mode is changed a helpful diaologue box is displayed, explaining what the mode is used for.
This does have an AUCTION mode for taking pictures for ebay and other auction sites, aswell as a built in guide for beginner photographers.
Another set-back is the panorama mode can't be unlocked without the type H XD card. Although, video mode is very fun to mess around with. With the 6 megapixels, the photos can be blown up to 11x17 comfortably.
Finally, this camera is a very good peresent for anyone who is getting into photography.
This does lack more top end features, more for basic and intermediate photographers, and slips in the pocket very easily.
while I did mention alot of negative aspects, these are easily passed by with the coolness and ease of this cameras use.
