Rating: 
Summary: Happy with my Optio 555
Review: Got my Optio 555 several weeks ago (upgraded from a Kodak 2Megapixel) and overall am very happy/glad I made the switch. The camera takes great pics and I LOVE the 5x optical zoom. The digital zoom actually works much better than my old Kodak too. I paid $370 for the camera and would challenge anyone to find a good 5Megapixel, 5x optical zoom camera for that price! I haven't had any problems with the camera so am not sure if the folks that have had problems just got lemons or what. I also bought a padded leather case for the camera ($30) so haven't had any problems with the camera not working due to jarring. My ONLY complaint about the camera would be that in very-low/low light the pics do seem to be too dark/grainy if the subject is more than 3-8 feet away. There is a special "sunset" mode you can use but that doesn't seem to make those pics any better. As long as you have "normal" lighting (normal office setting or at a Mall, for example) you'll never notice that problem, though. The only time I have noticed this problem was when taking some pics at a large low lit restaurant during a dinner. Regardless, I am giving the camera 5 stars as I very happy with the camera -- ESPECIALLY when I consider that for less than $550 I got a great 5mega pixel camera, very fast 256M SD card, padded leather case, spare battery, and a 2 year extended warranty.
Rating: 
Summary: fair camera
Review: I was considering purchasing this camera and did a lot of review reading. I have not purchased it because I have read a fair amount of complaints about it damaging easily, pixels on the lcd screen. If you still want to buy it amazon is charging WAY to much you can find it for between 300-500 on line. use sites such as price grabber.com also read the reviews on steves- digicams and dcp photo review. good luck
Rating:
Summary: Good but Slow. Not for moving objects
Review: I already have a Canon SLR film camera but it is too costly to keep because of costly film prices and hassle to get pics. So I bought this camera after an extensive research on the digital camera. This is my first digital camera as well. I was very pleased with the feature sets and picture quality of this camera. Easy to use for novices as well. I was dispointed though because this camera is only good for static objects (or non-movable objects). For me the camera is of little use because I bought this camera to take pics of my 1 year old son. Unfortunately this camera is "too" slow to take pictures of a moving objects. If you don't have to take much pics of moving objects, then I would recommend this camera otherwise try Canon S400 or S50. I heard they are good for moving objects as well.
Rating:
Summary: Optio 555 - excellent choice for me
Review: I bought the Pentax Optio 555 on 2 November 2003 in Hong Kong. My number one reason for choosing the 555 was: The longer battery life. My second reason was the 5x zoom, followed by stronger flash and additional features to learn now to use. Saying that, there will be times I wish I had the smaller, lighter, faster Minolta G500... So it was a serious compromise that was not an easy choice - they are BOTH excellent options for a small light 'everyday' camera! Very basic - but my very first photos are here - nothing special, just really posting them so you can see the image quality - almost all done in P mode... and straight from the camera! http://www.pbase.com/jaqatac/optio555_firstshots_hongkong (this expires 5 Dec 2003) OK - I have never owned a digital camera before, but I have owned most recently a Nikon F100 and do know a little about film cameras... I bought it, battery took exactly 3 hours to charge... While I waited, I read the manual Oh - and the first thing I did was stop all the annoying sounds by turning them all off in the user menu.
The second thing I did was turn the digital zoom off
I also turned the start up picture off I do not have a stop-watch - but here are some approximate times. NOT ACCURATE TIMES, NO STOP WATCH!
Sunlight/brightly lit room - I found the shot to shot time to be incredibly good - even with the flash and the pictures again were in focus with excellent lighting... Dimly lit room - wide angle - 1-3 seconds
Dimly lit room - full Optical zoom - 1.5 - 3 seconds Totally DARK room - wide angle - 3-5 seconds
Totally DARK room - full Optical zoom - 3-6 seconds I mean TOTALLY DARK! But saying that - the photos look great, are well lit by the flash and in focus...
With the zoom, it takes a bit longer to focus BUT once it gets it, it is perfect. (how, I do not know) Here are more accurate times from another review:
Auto Focus LAG Wide angle:
0.8 - 1.4 Auto Focus LAG Telephoto
0.8 - 1.5 Shutter Release LAG Viewfinder
0.1 Shutter Release LAG LCD
V1: 0.1
0.1 - 0.2 Shot to Shot Wide angle
1.8 Frames per second
1.1 I am using the P mode and I quickly set up the User Mode as Gordon (see DP Review Pentax Forum) suggested:
ISO 200
AWB
Low Contrast
Spot Focus I have a 256 Panasonic SD card (10Mb/Second)
MAX Resolution of 2592 x 1944
At 1 * it is 243 pictures
At 3 *** it is 75 pictures
I am switching between * and *** depending on the subject.
I am looking forward to Panasonic coming out with a 2 Gig card!!! The user mode with these settings is faster than the P mode by about 1 second in the dimly lit and dark rooms. continuous mode with no flash - that was really fast too - I did not time this. PIC - Night Scene Mode - I went out at night on the streets of HK and took three pictures of the same things - P Mode, User Mode, Night Scene Mode. What the Night Scene Mode does is really light up the whole area - I don't know how it does this, but the same photo in P mode was bright lights from the signs, and a bit dark everything else. While with Night Scene the whole photo lights up as if with a flood light - really amazing. At different times I would opt for P, User or Night Mode depending on my desired outcome. Physical - the case seems sturdy, the buttons are well placed, it is easy to hold and shoot. I like the way it is easy to change what the LCD displays and to turn it off... It is not as [nice] as the G500, but it is a nice functional, sturdy camera! OK - so this is the quick first impressions... but so far I am really enjoying it!...
Rating:
Summary: GREAT Camera!
Review: I can't say a whole lot that hasn't been covered by the other comments here... the Pentax Optio 555 is really a great camera. I agree with the reviewer who immediately turned the digital zoom off -- it's really kinda silly to mess with digital zoom on a digital camera, since you will probably be able to post-process the images. I haven't found the cash yet to upgrade from the memory card that comes with it, but it's definitely high on my to-do list. I've never seen a camera that's so easy to use right out of the box but also has so many great features. Even the novelty features continue to amuse me almost a year after getting the camera. The 3D photo mode is really fun to play with, and the panorama assist makes it really easy to take panoramic pictures. And yes, it includes software to stitch the images together (semi)automatically. Lately I've been taking lots of night pictures -- it's really amazing how well this thing soaks up ambient light to take bright night shots WITHOUT the flash. The ONLY complaint I've got is that in a really saturated environment the auto-focus doesn't work very well. A friend of mine got married recently and the auto focus refused to work at all, but I must admit the ENTIRE room was this hideous olive color, from the carpet to the fabric wall covering, and of course the completely mirrored ceiling only made the room twice as green. Add to that the weak yellow light coming from the chandeliers, and it was understandably tough for the camera. Finally I just switched to manual focus and put it in the continuous shoot mode and then I could just pick and choose the shots I liked and delete the rest. A couple of reviewers mentioned that the camera doesn't hold up well... I dunno about that. Mine's been bounced around on a speedboat, fallen off a table, jerked around by the strap, and survived perfectly intact. Maybe I've just been lucky, but I think that it holds up really well to "normal" wear and tear AND the occasional accident. I almost didn't get this camera because I really hate being locked into proprietary rechargable batteries. I'd normally rather go through a bunch of AA batteries because I always worry that in 2 years the company will discontinue the battery and my product will be useless. I've been pleasantly surprised, the battery has held up really well. I've had the same battery almost a year and it still works for a few days with several hours of use each day between recharges. It also holds a charge really well if I don't use the camera for a while. And though someone complained about the 3 hour recharge time, I'm used to charging my previous [Kodak] digial camera and my camcorder overnight, so 3 hours is a HUGE improvement. (...)
Rating:
Summary: GREAT Camera!
Review: I can't say a whole lot that hasn't been covered by the other comments here... the Pentax Optio 555 is really a great camera. I agree with the reviewer who immediately turned the digital zoom off -- it's really kinda silly to mess with digital zoom on a digital camera, since you will probably be able to post-process the images. I haven't found the cash yet to upgrade from the memory card that comes with it, but it's definitely high on my to-do list. I've never seen a camera that's so easy to use right out of the box but also has so many great features. Even the novelty features continue to amuse me almost a year after getting the camera. The 3D photo mode is really fun to play with, and the panorama assist makes it really easy to take panoramic pictures. And yes, it includes software to stitch the images together (semi)automatically. Lately I've been taking lots of night pictures -- it's really amazing how well this thing soaks up ambient light to take bright night shots WITHOUT the flash. The ONLY complaint I've got is that in a really saturated environment the auto-focus doesn't work very well. A friend of mine got married recently and the auto focus refused to work at all, but I must admit the ENTIRE room was this hideous olive color, from the carpet to the fabric wall covering, and of course the completely mirrored ceiling only made the room twice as green. Add to that the weak yellow light coming from the chandeliers, and it was understandably tough for the camera. Finally I just switched to manual focus and put it in the continuous shoot mode and then I could just pick and choose the shots I liked and delete the rest. A couple of reviewers mentioned that the camera doesn't hold up well... I dunno about that. Mine's been bounced around on a speedboat, fallen off a table, jerked around by the strap, and survived perfectly intact. Maybe I've just been lucky, but I think that it holds up really well to "normal" wear and tear AND the occasional accident. I almost didn't get this camera because I really hate being locked into proprietary rechargable batteries. I'd normally rather go through a bunch of AA batteries because I always worry that in 2 years the company will discontinue the battery and my product will be useless. I've been pleasantly surprised, the battery has held up really well. I've had the same battery almost a year and it still works for a few days with several hours of use each day between recharges. It also holds a charge really well if I don't use the camera for a while. And though someone complained about the 3 hour recharge time, I'm used to charging my previous [Kodak] digial camera and my camcorder overnight, so 3 hours is a HUGE improvement. (...)
Rating:
Summary: No more Stress
Review: I highly recomend this camera, it takes great pictures and is very user friendly. The reason we bought this is beacause we have a very expensive minolta 35mm that never took a bad picture, that was until we got a pack of film that was bad and every single picture about 75 or so were all bad. That was not a risk I was willing to take with the birth of my first child. I bought this camera two days before my son was born and had very little time to learn how to use, but I did not need it, it is so easy to use and I took over 100 pictures, every single one came out perfect. The only thing you will need to get is a bigger SD card, I got 2, 256mb panasonic cards. I chose the panasonic cards because that is the type of card it came with. But it was only a 16mb, not enough memory. I looked at several other cameras and I chose this one because it has the aluminum case not plastic and none of the other cameras had 5x optical zoom for this price. The camera is outstanding, great build, great size, great quality!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Incredible camera, 1 minor issue
Review: I love this camera's optical zoom. 5x, in a travel camera! They should all be like this. The digital zoom is also impressive. In a kayak, at 50 feet being rocked by waves, I could still capture and center a bald eagle staring at me (albeit it took a couple tries, but who cares with digital)! What's the minor issue? The optical zoom is a little too quick so that framing a shot with small changes is very difficult and there is a very significant delay between shutter click and image capture with the digital zoom (however the image stabilization works tres bien).
Would I buy another? In a heartbeat. Would I ask Pentax to fix the little bugs? Of course.
If I had free will with the rating it would habe been 4 3/4 stars. Enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Great camera!
Review: I love this camera. I have several digital cameras and this one is the best by far. The battery lasts for a VERY long time. It's very easy to learn to use (hint: read the manual). The pictures are great. I love the scenes (Pict) modes. Even city shots at night with no tripod came out great. There's no restriction on the time you can take a movie (like with the comparable Canon), and then there's the terrific, wonderful, fabulous 5X zoom that beats every other camera in its class. It's small enough to fit in a purse or a pocket and I take it everywhere. It powers up and focuses as fast or faster as any other digital camera. No more lost shots of the grandkids taking their first bite of brussels sprouts! It has a diopter so you can fine tune the optical viewfinder to fit your eyesight. The LCD screen is bright and sharp. Macro and super macro shots are amazing. If you're looking for a small camera that does a great job in point and shoot situations, or if you're looking for a camera with enough bells and whistles to keep you interested, this is the one for you. It's far better than my Canon, Nikon or Sony. Price is dropping, too. Sure wish I had the $$$ back I spent on my other cameras that now sit unused at home in their large, bulky camera bags full of expensive extra batteries (for the Canon and the Nikon) and obsolete, expensive memory sticks (in the case of the Sony). By the way, here's the key to capturing moving things, which is true for all digital cameras: 1. Focus; 2. Compose your shot; and 3. Shoot. With film cameras, you compose the shot, then focus, then shoot. Won't work in the digital world. Second hint is use the continuous mode which will capture several shots of the same subject. Then you get to pick the best one and delete the ones you don't like. One accessory that works great and comes in very handy is the wireless remote. Set the camera on a tripod and become part of your pictures, or capture those hummingbirds without camera shake. Buy this camera and enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Not so happy with Optio 555
Review: I purchased an Optio 555 in November 2003. I read the instruction manual on the airplane on the way to Hawaii. Problems: As I was shooting pictures using the zoom frequently outdoors, the camera would "lock up" and I had to turn it off to unlock it. Must have had a software problem. The pictures were very good within the limits of the camera. Upon returning home, I exchanged the camera for a new one. The camera shop was very helpful. The second camera functioned OK without any software problems. I was not as happy with the picture quality in the second one. I don't know if the meter was not as accurate or the white balance was not working very well. Indoors, the color was not accurate or washed out I have returned this to the camera store and will start my search over again. I think that the camera features and ability to take good pictures is very good. I think this is a quality control problem. Not like Pentax normally. Make sure you take pictures in a variety of conditions using all the functions within the time limits of the camera store's return policy just in case you have the same experience I had. On paper this is a good choice if all works well. The 5 MP and 5X lens are what I wanted. I haven't got a clear choice in what to buy in a compact package like this. The software provided made it very easy to download pictures into a PC and do some editing.
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