The Olympus Stylus 300 is a Great Point and Shoot Digital Camera!
Written: Apr 05 '03 (Updated Aug 26 '03)
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Pros: Weatherproof with excellent photo quality!
Cons: Shutter lag is a little slow and no sound for videos!
The Bottom Line: If you are looking for an easy to use digital camera that produces excellent photos then this maybe the one for you!
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| surferdude7's Full Review: Olympus Camedia Stylus 300 Digital Camera |
The Olympus Stylus 300 is a camera made for easy digital photo shooting in any weather condition. It is not waterproof but it is weatherproof and you can take photos with this tiny digital camera out in the rain. This little beauty is made for the person wanting an easy to use digital camera that you can just point at a subject and then just shoot!
Little it is, it can easily fit in the palm of your hand, it is 3.8 inches Wide x 2.2 inches High x 1.3 inches Thick. It weighs about a 1\2 of pound with the battery and xD-Picture Card. It is a 3.2-megapixel effective CCD that will give you images up to 2048 x 1536 pixels.
Quality Built-in!
This double body is metal on the outside and a plastic body on the inside with a rubber material around the components to weatherproof it. Remember it is weatherproof not waterproof!
The View
The Stylus 300 gives you both a viewfinder and an LCD screen.
The viewfinder is a real image optical viewfinder with two Led lights to indicate if it is focused and if the flash is ready. They provide no diopter adjustment so if you wear glasses you will more then likely need them when using the Stylus 300.
The LCD screen is a 1.5 inch color TFT LCD (134,000 pixels) made for taking your photos a well as viewing, editing and camera menu setups. For editing you can show slide shows, rotate scenes, index display and view up to 4x enlargements.
The Flash
The camera includes a built-in flash with a recycle time of less than six seconds. It has a working range in Wide-angle of 8 inches to 8.5 ft. and a Telephoto range of 8 inches to 6 ft.
The flash modes are Auto Flash, Red Eye Reduction, Fill-in in and Off.
The Lens
Olympus uses an aspherical glass 3x optical zoom lens (5.8 - 17.4mm) with 5 elements in 3 groups. It is equivalent to a 35mm lens of 35 - 105mm. It also has a 4x digital zoom giving you a total of a 12x combined with the 3x optical.
The lens is an f/3.1 – f/5.2 and goes from 1/1000 of a second to ˝ a second.
It has a TTL contrast-detect auto focus system in the normal mode that goes from 20 inches to infinity and in the Macro mode it goes from 8 inches to 20 inches.
The lens retracts inside the camera when the lens cover is closed.
The Battery
The Stylus 300 gives you a rechargeable B-10L (3.7v 1090mAh) Lithium Battery with charger that will give you a couple of hundred shots per charge depending on your use of the camera. I did take 124 photos and the battery still had power on it, mostly outdoor shots with no flash use.
They do offer an optional AC adapter.
The Remote
The tiny one button remote included is for making self portraits so you won’t have to run back and forth from the camera.
The xD Card
The Stylus 300 comes with the newer xD Picture Card, read about the Olympus 128 MB xD-Picture Card that I used while using this camera.
Photos
The photos are in various sizes for printing as large as a 16 x 20 inch print with great quality.
There is a SHQ (Super High quality) of 2048 x 1536 that will give you about six photos in the JPEG format with the included 16MB xD Picture Card.
In the HQ (High Quality) mode of 2048 x 1536 it will give you about 20 photos in the JPEG format with the included 16MB xD Picture Card. On the Olympus 128 MB xD-Picture Card it shows 164 photos.
You also have SQ1 and SQ2 (Super Quality) modes that range from 1600 x 1200, 1280 x 960, 1024 x 768 and 640 x 480.
Movies
The Stylus 300 gives you two movie options of 320 x 240 and 160 x 120 with no sound.
They use the QuickTime Motion JPEG at 15 frames per second with a max recording time if 16 seconds in the 320 x 240 mode and a max recording time of 40 seconds in the 160 x 120.
Recording quality is fair, I wouldn’t buy this camera for the video features.
Other Specifications
ISO sensitivity, Automatic (80 - 320 equivalent)
Auto-Connect USB for quick and easy image transfer to computer
Epson Print Image Matching II compatible
DPOF (Digital Print Order Format)
USB Connector (Auto-Connect), Video Out, DC input
Compatible with Windows 98 rev2/ME/2000 Pro/XP Mac OS 8.6-9.22/OSX
Image Effects - Black and white, Sepia, Resize
Panorama using Olympus brand xD-Picture Card
Sequence - 1 frames per second with more than 4 frames in HQ mode.
White Balance System - iESP Multi-pattern Auto TTL Pre-set manual settings of Daylight, Overcast, Tungsten and Fluorescent.
Date/Time Calendar - Simultaneous recording into image data with the calendar automatic up to the year 2099.
Video Out - Video out signal for NTSC or PAL format.
Exposure Compensation of +/- 2.0 EV in 1/3 EV steps
What You Get!
The Olympus Stylus 300 digital camera comes with the following.
A 16MB xD-Picture Card
A rechargeable LI-10B Li-Lon battery with charger.
USB and Video cables
A remote control
Wrist strap
CD with drivers and software
Manual, instructions and a one year warranty.
Overall
This is an easy to use point and shoot camera that will easily fit in the palm of your hand or a shirt pocket. If you are use to using an Olympus digital camera it is a snap to get use to and if you are new to an Olympus digital camera it should be rather easy for you to use. All the buttons are placed easily and simple to understand.
My main drawback to the camera is no sound recording while using the movie/video feature. Though I would not buy any digital camera for the video features but sometimes it is nice to have them. I buy a digital photo camera for photo quality.
To use the camera just slide the lens cover over to the side and the lens will pop out and you are ready to take your photos. Recycle time depends on your settings and if the flash is used, I see the recycle times from about 1 to 5 seconds. The recycle time is the time it takes from when you took your last photo shot to when the camera is ready to shoot another one.
Photo quality with the Stylus 300 is excellent as with all Olympus digital cameras I have used. Using the camera outdoors mainly at a family gathering I managed to take 124 photos and only 3 had some blur to them due to my fault of not letting the camera focus in time before I snapped off the photo. I printed up a couple 8 x 10 inch prints on my HP PhotoSmart 1215 Personal Printer and they all looked great.
At first when all these digital cameras came out so small, I thought they were too small. Now after using a few and playing with the Stylus 300 gives me a different outlook on the smaller sizes and I like them. Not only do they take excellent photos but they are so easy to take along with you because of the smaller size.
For quality and all around use, I highly recommend the Olympus Stylus 300 digital camera.
Please read about the Olympus Camedia Stylus 400 Digital Camera, the twin of the Stylus 300 with 4 Megapixels.
Print your digital photos for 18 cents each; Click on Me to find out how!
Here is an Excellent camera the Olympus C-750 Ultra Zoom Digital Camera.
Here are some of my other Olympus camera reviews.
Olympus Camedia C-3000 Zoom Digital Camera
Olympus C-3020 Zoom Digital Camera
Olympus C-4040 Zoom Digital Camera
Olympus Camedia D-40 Zoom Digital Camera
Olympus Camedia D-380 Digital Camera
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Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 399
This Camera is a Good Choice if You Want Something... Fool-Proof for Absolute Beginners
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surferdude7
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