Olympus CAMEDIA C-860L > Reviews (7)

The Olympus C860L is definitely the best value for money I could find, after comparing prices and features of a considerable number of digital cameras, both in physical shops and on the net. It even has some features that higher priced cameras don't offer (like a panorama function which lets you connect up to 10 pictures to make one BIIIG picture) It's 1.3MP give you a sufficiently high resolution for home use, the 1.8" LCD monitor lets you view your pix in a variety of ways (9 different pix as thumbnails; one pic at a time or you can even zoom in and view any pic magnified 3 times). There are all kind of different flash modes (incl. red-eye-reduction, always on, always off and the some ;-). One other big advantage of this camera is that is comes supplied with an 8MB SmartMedia card as standard, which can take up to 122 pix at a time in the lowest resolution (480x640) and still up to 36 shots at 1280x960 in compressed mode. In the highest resolution and uncompressed you can print pictures in A4-size in almost photo quality (with a decent printer, of course). The camera offersa macro-mode for close up photography and a 2x digital zoom. Some other nifty design features are the lens cover (open it to activate the camera), a video-out connection, so you can connect it straight to a TV and view your pix on a big screen the ability to use rechargeable batteries and you can adjust the shutter speed.

Ok, so much to the advertising - here are a couple of slight set-backs. When you use the LCD monitor the power consumtion is horrendous (i.e. if you constantly use the monitor to take your pix, you'll get about 50 pix out of the 4! AA batteries0. The second unfortunate thing is that it only offers a serial connection to your computer, so when your SmartMedia card is full and you want to upload your pix onto your computer you'll have enough time to go down to the chip shop, have some dinner, get a pint at your local and by the time you get back home your photos should be uploaded (hopefully).