Olympus D-580 4 MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom

Rating:
Summary: Worst digital camera ever
Review: Batteries: I bought Olympus Ni-MH batteries. By the time you go through a few menu items red light on battery starts to come out. When it goes dead, you cannot even close the cover.

Usability: Everything in menus which eats up battery power. Menus are confusing, blink out instantly and I thought Hieroglyphics went out of fashion with egyptians. You make changes, but the camera like resolution of the picture but it reverts back to another resolution all on its own.

Quality: snapshots of landscapes are OK, but the camera cannot focus anything closer than 10 yards.

I think the name fits this camera: Camedia but I think it is misspelled it shoud read "Comedy" of a camera.

I own 5 digital cameras, this one is a big dissapointment.

Rating:
Summary: Great camera
Review: Easy to use straight out of the box. Great automatic features and has the option of manual. Over 130 photos can be taken with a 128mb card, more than enough I think. The good price makes it top in its class. Instructions are very clear and easy to understand. The software that comes with it is easy to use. Makes a great first digital camera, as it is mine.

Rating:
Summary: Nice Camera, battery issue overblown
Review: I bought this camera a month ago and use AA NiMh batteries that I recharge. They last for a long time, in fact I have never run the batteries down on a photo shoot. I do have to turn the flash off on several occassions when it really is unnecessary. The photos come out great and all the user interfaces are easy to use. The down loads to my pc are fast and easy too. For the price, this is a great buy for a digital camera.

Rating:
Summary: Worked great up until...
Review: I found this camera to be very easy to use right out of the box. The software installation went off without a hitch and I was able to view the pictures on my PC with ease. Anyone looking for a first-time digital camera would be very pleased with the package Olympus has put together here. However, after only having had the camera for four days, the lens would no longer retract when I went to turn the camera off. So now, the camera beeps and the indicator lights near the viewfinder constantly blink which if I read the manual correctly indicate some kind of battery problem (which it isn't). I'm planning on exchanging it for another one and hopefully, this lens problem is just with the camera I have now.

Rating:
Summary: The Best Camera
Review: i got this camera for Christmas and i love it because it is very easy to use and to hook it up to the computer is soo easy.

Rating:
Summary: Battery HOG! Just not worth it
Review: I had one of the first Olympus digitals - a 2.1 mp - and loved it. It finally broke after years of pounding - and decided to stay brand loyal.
I'm getting ready to box the new one up and return it. I used rechargeables - as well as 6 other pairs of batteries to feed this camera - and it just burns through them like nothing. The "free" batteries it comes with lasted maybe 10 minutes - and that was just turning the camera on and playing with the settings. And I never even used it for video.
The speed of the camera seemed just as slow as my 2.1 - and the quality was not as good for some of my shots. I'm not high tech when it comes to cameras - but this one just didn't seem to have the right speed or adequate lighting. It was too bright on some shots - and others WAY too dark.
The good to the camera - it is small - but I guess in this instance - size doesn't matter - b/c I don't like this camera at all.

Rating:
Summary: A Horrible Camera - Unworthy of Olympus
Review: I have been a huge fan of Olympus cameras and I totally adore my 4-year old 2.1 megapixel Olympus D-490. I thought the D-580 would just be an upgrade to my camera because there are a lot of passing similarities between the two, but in its guts the D-580 is a horrible re-design with almost nothing good about it.

For starters, if you select anything less than the highest quality image-format, you'll find that the pictures are totally unacceptable. They are blotchy and jpegged to death. It's shocking and disgusting how bad they are. With my old camera, I would sometimes select a slightly lower quality image in order to speed up photo-taking, but that just won't work with the D-580.

The 580 is unusable without the flash, but the flash is such a bright and focussed white light that reflections often blow out the CCD and colors look washed out and artificial.

The viewfinder lens is so small that the LCD is the only reasonable way to line up a shot, but that runs down the batteries in no time at all.

The LCD is large, but has funny problems, like when the camera was pointed at a bright metal building, the whole thing appeared in reverse-colors.

The menu options are arranged in such a manner as to obscure the most simple tasks. Where my old Olympus automatically compensated for all but the most extreme lighting conditions, this camera needs tweaking for every different environment. Changing a setting involves navigating through an awful round selection-menu, followed by choices from a sub-menu and finally tuning the options in a totally separate menu.

Comparing images from my old camera to the D-580, the old 2.1 megapixel camera wins every time. Images from the old D-490 are sharper, the colors more accurate and the flash produces warm living tones.

Yes, the D-580 is small and light and it can do a lot of nice tricks, like shooting panoramas or QuickTime movies with audio. But the sacrifices aren't worth it. I can't recommend this camera for anyone. Olympus needs to re-think their consumer strategy!!

Rating:
Summary: Good Camera for the Price
Review: I purchased this camera for my wife because of it's ease of use (point'n'click) and the lense is automatically covered when turned off (protects lense in her purse or briefcase). It is a nice camera, easy to use, picture quality is OK (my daughter's Kodak 6340 and my Nikon 5700 pictures are much sharper), good camera for beginners. Batteries do not last long, pictures blurred with full digital zoom.

Rating:
Summary: alan rap
Review: I received this camera as a Christmas present from my wife. I think this is a really nice digital camera. It's very easy to use and takes terrific photographs. I've read the reviews on this page about the camera being a battery eater. In fact, it exhausted the batteries that were included with the camera in less than 15 photographs. That got me nervous and I was ready to return the camera. But my wife also got me a nimh battery recharger which made all the difference in the world. These rechargeable batteries last significantly longer than the alkaline batteries. I would recommend this camera. It's inexpensive and a great starter digital camera.

Rating:
Summary: Great starter camera
Review: I used to always borrow my dad's C-5000 (I think that's the model... now I can't remember!), so my parents decided to buy me my own camera for Christmas. My mum picked this one for me, and I think she made a pretty good choice. The camera is very easy to use. At first it may seem intimidating to have to flip through the digital menus to change settings, but it quickly becomes second nature.

All of the pictures that I have taken using just the point-and-shoot method have come out very well. The flash is sometimes over-powering, but for the most part it does its job well. Pictures taken in the auto mode are generally very crisp, unless I turn the flash off anywhere other than outdoors (in which case the shutter speed is longer and my hands shake too much to get a clear picture.. I also have this problem in night mode).

I love this camera because it makes playing with different settings -- flash, white balance, macro mode -- very easy. It's much, much easier than the C-5000. It's a very good camera for anyone who wants to dabble in photography but it's ready to drop the money for something more serious. And it's also a great little point-and-shoot camera.

Of course, a big complaint is the batteries. Don't even think about using regular AAs. I found an Olympus package at Best Buy for about $30 that solved my problem... It included two sets of rechargable batteries with charger, a camera case, and a (very) mini-tripod. With regular batteries, I think I took about 20 pictures, but I can take many more with the NiMH batteries the package included.

Another thing -- don't bother with Camedia software! We have it on my parents' computer, and it's a hassle! If you have Windows XP, bypass Camedia and use the default XP programs, they're much better!

Overall, I think this is a wonderful starter camera, and have been very pleased with it. I'll drop the money on something more sophisticated when my photography skills get better, but in the meantime I'm a happy girl. Even if you just want this camera for point-and-shoot purposes, I advise that you play around with the different settings (I like to practice on my dogs, so I'll know what I'm doing when I have to take real pictures) -- they can improve your pictures greatly!