My wife and I received this camera as a house warming present from my parents who wanted to see the house and our young son after the move. We put some time into determining what we wanted in a camera and put our own 'wish list' together.

First of all, we wanted something that could take high quality pictures and print high quality photo's up to 5 X 7. Some folks may want to go up to 8 X 10, and then you may want to upgrade to a higher resolution camera, but in our case 5 X 7 was more than enough.

Second, we wanted something that would have the flexibility of recording and sending video shorts. This camera can record up to 24 seconds of video captures with no sound. These can then be sent over the internet, which was great for us to send video of our son's first steps.

Third, we wanted something that was fairly intuitive to use. We are not going to use this as a professional camera to take wedding pictures or school pictures with, so we wanted something that had flexibility in it's options yet is still easy to use for a beginner. We are now progressing into advanced picture options, but for the complete beginner it is sufficiently easy as well.

Fourth, we wanted something that was not a hog on batteries. Compared to some of the digital cameras I have used at work, which include Canon and Kodak, this camera is very easy on the batteries. Like I said, we are not using the advanced options yet, but for typical home use our batteries are lasting about two months.

Finally, we wanted something that was easy to download and understand for moving pics to the computer. The Olympus is by far the easiest that I have seen for this. We are able to store the pictures in our own files and the first time I used it, I didn't even need the directions to download pics. It was very intuitive.

Overall, I am very pleased with the gift we received and am very happy that my parents let us choose which one we wanted. I would recommend this over any other camera as it is the right price and has all of the options the amateur photographer will need. As I said earlier, if you want to be able to print off 8X10 or larger with high resolution, you would want a higher resolution camera. However, for anything smaller, this is it.

A few notes for a person thinking of getting a digital camera for sending pics via email. I would recommend software called Microsoft Picture-it! for your usage. We bought this shortly after purchasing our camera and it has allowed us to do all sorts of things with the pictures relatively easily. We were able to create and print off our own Christmas cards using this software, and it was very intuitive software. Also, using this software it is very easy to pare your pics down to smaller images to send through email. The software that comes with the camera called Camedia is not as intuitive and has very little in the way of options.

Another note for the prospective buyer, make sure that your current printer has high resolution capability. We bought this camera and then started printing off pictures on our older Canon printer. The pics came out with grid lines and lower resolution, and we knew that it was not the camera's fault. A quick trip to Nebraska Furniture Mart and $170 later and we had an HP Deskjet 960c. This is a great printer for the money and I would recommend this for the amateur photographer as well!

Good luck and happy picture taking!

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 248