Olympus CAMEDIA FE-5500

I got this nifty little camera for Christmas 2005, and immediately I opened the box and saw it, I thought, 'oo, pretty cool - well done Mum!'. At a glance you see that the camera is compact and uncluttered with buttons, and there's an impressively large LCD display on the back.

When you start using it you see even more benefits, for example the menus are very easy to navigate using the simple buttons, which have easy-to-decipher pictures ...
...a very decent zoom, which you can also use when reviewing the pictures you've just taken - zoom in to see one in more detail or zoom out to see a display of thumbnails of all the pictures you've just taken. The camera can very easily be hooked up to a computer using the USB cable, and photos are extremely easy to transfer.

In the 5 months that I have owned this camera I've been taking a LOT of photos and have become very familiar with ... more

I got this nifty little camera for Christmas 2005, and immediately I opened the box and saw it, I thought, 'oo, pretty cool - well done Mum!'. At a glance you see that the camera is compact and uncluttered with buttons, and there's an impressively large LCD display on the back.

In the 5 months that I have owned this camera I've been taking a LOT of photos and have become very familiar with most of its functions, as well as some less obvious pros and cons. Less obvious advantages include the very cool rotating lens, which has made more than a couple of my friends 'wow' and 'oo' when I've turned the camera on. There's also a very easy-to-use self-timer, several different picture-taking modes for different situations, different flash modes, different picture quality options depending on how much space you want them to take up, a compact, flat rechargeable battery (looks a bit like a mobile phone battery) with charger, and you can also use the camera to record video with sound for as long as you have the storage space.

The disadvantages I have come across are not numerous. One is the fact that there is no separate viewfinder, so you HAVE to use the LCD screen. The downside to this is that it uses up battery power a lot faster, so if you're running out of power but you still want to take more photos, you don't really have many options. The only other real disadvantage I've discovered is that because the power button is right next to the shoot button, I've sometimes absent-mindedly turned the camera off when I've actually wanted to take a picture, but this may well be because I'm a girl. One other thing that is very slightly annoying is that if you take a really awful photo and want to delete it as soon as it comes up on the screen, you can't just press delete and be rid of it like you can on some other cameras. You have to press the review button then delete it from there. However, this is just a very minor complaint.

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