pretty good little camera
Written: May 26 '02
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Pros: optical zoom, nice size
Cons: delayed shutter
The Bottom Line: This is a fantastic camera! I'm quite pleased with it and highly recommend it. (Especially if you can get it at close out prices.)
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| megdunn's Full Review: Olympus Camedia D-510 Zoom Digital Camera |
I recently bought the Olympus D-510 Zoom. I am repeatedly impressed with the improvements that they have made to the camera as compared to my last digital camera, the Olympus D-490 Zoom.
Its a great camera for personal use. If you're a professional photographer, then the delay between pushing the button and the camera actually taking the picture is going to be problematic. But, as a nonprofesional, it bums me out but not enough to want to ditch the camera. To make up for it I just take tons of pictures and delete out the ones I don't like.
Which leads me to one of the main advantages in having a digital camera--you can take pictures like mad and simply delete the ones you don't want. And I'm not so stingy about taking pictures for other people now because there's no extra work to take a shot for them and shoot it to them in an email. Its also handy to have a digital camera when adding pictures to a website. Though I could take a shot with a film camera, pay to get it processed, and scan it into my computer, its a heck of a lot easier just to load it onto the computer directly from the camera (or from the "film" card).
Main advantage number 2 of going digital--picture posting sites. I no longer have to get doubles and triples made for relatives. Now I can just load all my pictures onto Shutterfly and email all my friends/family a link. (Again, with film I could have scanned the pics, but I'd really rather not take the time.)
Things to know about this camera in particular:
Open it all the way! When I first got it, I was pretty bummed out that I couldn't get it to work. In fact, I even called the product support line. Their response? Open it all the way. Duh! They were right. Did I ever feel like an idiot! Unlike the D-490, the D-510 has a two-click system when opening the camera. Open it to where you feel it click into place, then tug at it a little more and it'll make a second click and the lens will telescope out. The advantage to the double click system? Well, according to the warnings in the manual, when you close the camera, you'll be less likely to bend the lens. You close to the first click, wait till the lens has retracted, and then close it the rest of the way.
This camera has an optical zoom, in addition to a digital zoom. A digital zoom means that it basically takes the picture without the zoom, and then digitally remasters it to make it look closer. In other words, you're going to get a picture with larger pixels than if you had an optical zoom and took the same shot. On this camera, if you only want to use the optical zoom, you can. If you want to be able to see even closer when you take the picture, it is possible to turn the digital zoom on (and man! its amazing how much closer you can get!).
The overall size of this camera is smaller than the D-490 and there are fewer buttons but the same functionality as the older camera. They also made some fantastic improvements. For example, if you want to make a quicktime video, its only a matter of a few clicks (of the same button). Its incredibly easy. (Same goes for taking
Other handy features: you can see several thumbnail pictures at once (pretty common on digital cameras), you can play back pictures in a slideshow format, you can rotate pictures so that when you play them back in the slideshow format they're all facing the right direction, you can zoom in on a picture while viewing it (after its already been taken, that is), and there's apparently also the ability to take panoramic pictures (though I haven't used that yet).
As far as battery life, I've never heard of a digital camera that wasn't a power hog. Such is life. Buy some rechargeable's.
As far as the data card, expect to buy a larger one -- especially when you're on vacation and don't want to lug along the computer.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 220
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Epinions.com ID:
megdunn
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Member: Meg Dunn
Location: San Francisco, CA
Reviews written: 58
Trusted by: 9 members
About Me:
... the mother of 3 young children, a former math teacher, and a scifi fan.
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