For me, the perfect digital camera
Written: Oct 26 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Rugged, fast, easy to use, and excellent pictures.
Cons: You need to buy rechargeable batteries.
The Bottom Line: The D-550 builds on Olympus' years of experience making this type of camera. It's streamlined, rugged, and takes excellent photos with minimal effort. The perfect point-and-shoot digital camera.
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| happyconsumer's Full Review: Olympus Camedia D-550 Zoom (225330) Battery Charge... |
I've tried out many different digital cameras over the last three or four years, from Kodak to Olympus to Canon to odd ones like HP. I've tried cameras that cost anything from $150 to $1000. So, when it came time for me to give up my never-used 35mm Canon SLR, I knew exactly which digital camera I wanted to replace it with.
A few years back, I tried out a friend's Olympus Camedia camera with the same body as this one. It was only in the 2-megapixel range, as opposed to the 3 megapixels of this model, but I was always really impressed with the quality of picture it took. For a point and shoot digital camera, the shots were just amazing.
So I didn't have to look very far before I found this camera, the Camedia D-550. And it's certainly lived up to the expectations I'd developed from using the friend's camera.
In my opinion, this is what really makes this camera stand out from its competition:
• It looks and feels like a camera. Some digital cameras go out of their way to be all futuristic and oddly shaped, which I find annoying. I want to be able to hold a camera with my hands, not my fingertips.
• The design of the navigation software is excellent. I've used cameras that go to the extremes of interface design, and I've hated it. I used a Kodak camera once that used menus and control panels that were so big and colorful, it was like it was designed by Fisher-Price. Sure, it looked friendlier to use at first, but when I actually tried to find anything, like how to change the size of my pictures, it was too big and clunky. On the other extreme, some companies make cameras that use a completely bare and technical interface that's impossible to understand. With the Camedia D-550, all of your important tools are no more than two button presses away, thanks to the intuitive design of the interface. If you want to switch to Macro mode, you just turn the camera on and press "Up" twice. If you want to change the size of the pictures you're taking, you just hit the menu button and press left on the wheel that pops up, and you'll see a nice list. Not too invasive, not too technical.
• Streamlined features. A few years ago, it became popular to pack as many different things into a camera as you possibly could. Sound recorders! Movie cameras! PDAs! Cell phones! Put everything you'd ever want in one device! I thought this was a terrible idea. If you want a video camera, get a video camera. A still camera can't possibly hold more than a tiny clip, so why even bother? While this Camedia D-550 does come with the ability to take video clips, it doesn't assume that video will be your primary use of the camera like other models sometimes do. The feature is there, but you can easily ignore it.
• Rugged body design. Olympus sells a similar Camedia to this in features and price, but a different body. I borrowed one for a weekend, and was constantly having trouble with the lens that stuck out of the camera body. The lens cap would fall off all the time, and I just wasn't careful enough with it. When I had my 35mm SLR, I just put a UV filter over the glass of the real lens, and didn't worry about scratching it, but you couldn't do that with the other Camedia lens. With the D-550, you avoid the problem entirely. When you turn the camera off, the lens retracts into the body of the camera, and is covered by the sliding panel that's part of the camera body. It's a brilliant design that keeps the lens safe, and the speed of the lens movement is quick enough that it's not annoying. I love that my camera is so tough. Though I haven't dropped it yet, I have the feeling it would survive a drop just fine.
• And, of course, the image quality. Even with plain old point-and-shoot simplicity, the colors are vivid and sharp, the exposure is just right, and the low-light pictures are just incredible, which is important to me as a hater of flashbulbs. The other day, a bird fell down our chimney and got trapped in the upper grill of our fireplace, beyond where we could see. So I stuck the camera up into the fireplace and had someone point a dim flashlight where we thought the bird was, and I got a pretty decent picture of it! The bird ended up getting out of the fireplace and flying out the window just fine, by the way. :-) The macro feature is pretty cool, too. My desktop picture on my computer is a photo of an ant I took with my D-550. People are really impressed that the ant takes up 3 inches on my screen.
When you consider all the excellent features this camera has, then realize that it's much less expensive than similar cameras, it seems like a no-brainer. I would have easily paid twice what I did for the D-550, and still felt like I was getting a great deal. This camera is going to last me a long, long time, and I'm loving every minute of it.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
happyconsumer
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Location: NY state
Reviews written: 13
Trusted by: 1 member
About Me:
When I like a company, I REALLY like a company. :-)
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