Rating: Summary: Cute little camera, not so cute battery usage! Review: I got this camera for my birthday last week, it is very easy to use, put battery and mem card, and off you go. At first I couldn't stop taking pictures, and the battery lasted about 3 days of almost non-stop usage. Although by the 4th day the battery had died and I put 2 alkaline batteries, and after maybe 5 pictures, it would just turn itself off. I think it just drained the alkaline batteries extremely fast, so I don't like that one bit, maybe the rechargable batteries won't be so bad. The camera itself is very fun, although it doesn't have the same features as the D-370, but it comes darn close! If you want to use this camera for basicly just emailing pictures, this camera will be definitely a must have for the quiality (quality is pretty descent) and price ...! I just don't like the battery drainage at all, and that's one thing that really worries me, because I've read reviews on this camera on here, and people are saying the same thing about it! Just one thing, rechargable batteries/AC Adaptor are a must!!
Rating: Summary: Very battery intensive? Review: This was my first digital camera. I found it very easy to use with the quick start intructions. The pictures came out nice and they downloaded easily into my pc. I took 8 pictures, downloaded them, and spent some time learning the menu options. I figure about 60 to 90 minutes. I turned the camera off. The next day I went to take pictures and the battery was dead. It was late, so I used some Duracell AA batteries, which the instructions said you could use. It took 8 new batteries to take one picture and download it. Forget about making any changes to the settings. I had to put batteries in and take picture right away. These AA batteries lasted about 30 seconds if that much. The next day I went to Walmart to get another battery, the lithium type that it came with. They had several sizes, but they did not carry the size for this camera. And they sell Olympus cameras there, although not this model. It must be an odd size available at camera stores. I called tech support and asked him if this is the normal life span of the so called long life battery. He said that it did not sound right and something must be wrong, he had never heard of this problem. He put me on hold to check it out. When he came back on he said, and I quote, "This camera is battery intensive and we reccomend the rechargeable nich (?) batteries" I asked him again if this was normal for the other batteries or was something wrong with the camera. He replied" The only thing I am allowed to say is that this camera is battery intensive and we reccomend the rechargeable batteries." His attitude leads me to believe I had a bad camera, but that they were not admitting to it. I would be interested in future reviews to tell how the batteries lasted.
Rating: Summary: Terrible, extremely shoddy product Review: I bought the Olympus Camedia Brio D-100 in Oct 2002. Got it for about a hundred greens. Thought I had a landed an awesome deal, until the camera proved you get what you pay for. CONS: 1. Battery eater: No rechargeable battery is good enough for it to last through 20pics. I couldn't leave batteries in it for a week - they would be run down in that time. 2. Major issues with focus: The whole user interface with communicating when its ready to shoot is incredibly unreliable. I would switch it on, and wait for the green and amber lights to stabilize. They would sometimes, and not others. Even worse, they would and wouldn't on the same shot, with the same composition. Very frustrating. 3. Unreliable save: I was never sure if it saved a pic. Sometimes I would press the button - but nothing. No indication on the camera what's wrong. Then I would have to close the cover, reopen it to switch it back on, and pray it will shoot this time - 50% chance. No indication of what's wrong. Using the LCD at the back is a pain too. Often it wouldn't have enough power left to let you browse through to see if it took pics alright. I could go on and on, but the sum total: very frustrating, unreliable camera, best take your money elsewhere. I don't care about bells and whistles, but one expects if its called a camera, it will take pictures. If its called a camera 100% of the time, it will take pics a 100% of the time!! As for mine,after missing some critical pics on a very important family occasion, and some more of household items while documenting before a relocation, I finally hit it against my tiled floor, broke it in a hundred pieces, drilled through it in various places, and am sending it to Olympus's HQ with a letter explaining what they should have done themselves that I had to PAY them to do!
Rating: Summary: Paul W. Review: Well if you have plowed through 32 reviews so far, you must be serious about buying this or another digital camera. I am 66 years old and, well, not too out of step with the electronic world though this is my first digital camera. I have had an Olympus SLR for years (30?) though that alone was not a deciding factor in my purchase of another Olympus product. I wanted 3 things 1. Price I could afford. 2 Easy to operate. 3 good pictures. It met all 3 at a 5 level. I also like the feature of showing the pictures on a television. Not as sharp on a tv screen as on my 17inch computer monitor but very nice. I printed a picture of my dog taken outside and printed it on 8x11 plain paper using my deskjet 932c and it looks very nice. I have yet to wear out the battery pack that came with the camera and have taken about 60 pictures, in groups of 6 to 8, and then down loaded them to my computer and displayed them on verious tv's. I did buy 4 Nickel-Metal Hydride recharables and a charger as it is obvious that this is a necessity for any digital camera. I like to use the old fashion optical look viewfinder as apposed to the screen when taking pictures. Perhaps this is why the batteries have lasted so long. I have a H.P. computer and as soon as I selected "my pictures" and connected the camera, the download procedure took off with easy to understand directions. No sweat. And quick. It's a gem of a product!
Rating: Summary: Start here. Review: This is my first Olympus digital, but it will not be my last. It is a very nice beginner's purchase, and would also make a very good backup for a more dedicated digital photographer. The size and weight make it a breeze to carry in a pocket, purse or glove compartment. It has good quality optics, a 1 megapixel resolution (that will allow pretty good 5" x 7" prints), good battery life (and can use readily available alkalines) and easy USB connectivity to your PC for transferring images. The included 8 meg card is adequate, though it seems to me this camera, which when attached to your PC is automatically recognized as another drive (a nice feature requiring no software installations), would have benefited from some on-board memory. Furthermore, I do not like cameras that require using the LCD panel to view & frame the image, much preferring a traditional through-the-lens viewfinder, which is absent on the Brio. However, its most glaring short-coming is the lack of an optical zoom (it has a digital zoom, but these are vastly inferior digital tricks that halve the resolution while doubling the size of the selected portion of the photographed image), but if that's not a problem for you, you'll be happy with the rather handsome Brio.
Rating: Summary: Hard to beat for the price. Review: My wife bought this camera 3 years ago after reading a positive review. She likes the camera because it is small, simple to use, and has been dependable. She isn't a computer whiz but she has no problem using the program that comes with the camera. Her only complaint was battery life. She recently bought a Digital Concepts battery charger at walmart that comes with 4 - 2000mah Nimh AA batteries for $17.00. Now she can get over 70 pictures with no battery complaints. With good batteries and a good charger this camera is an amazing value at the price.
Rating: Summary: Great Camera, very durable Review: I bought this camera on clearance and couldn't be happier! It works every time, takes great photos at a nice quality and is auto recognized by iphoto. Also, this camera is tough. My 4 year old takes hundreds of photos with it on our 256MB smart media card. In all a very good buy.
Rating: Summary: Great Camera at an affordable price Review: When I shopped for a camera, I had 3 things in mind: a) Cost b) Ease of use c) Quality. My thoughts on how Olympus D-100 rates: Cost: If you are a beginner looking for a low cost digital camera, this is the one for you. If you are looking to broaden your horizons in photography, go for the olympus D100. I purchased this for $129(new). I even got an additional 16MB smart card -- free! I would say any price under $150 is a good price for this camera. I rate it 5 STARS for the price. Ease of Use: Okay , it comes with a software and all..But on reading the software manual, i found that this camera is not supported by the software. Then upon playing with the USB stuff, i found that it is a auto-detected by the PC. Hence this obviates the need for software. I have Win2000 Professional edition on my PC. To make things easy for people reading the review, i want to state in simple terms how to transfer pictures: 1) Attach the USB to the USB card in your PC. The other end goes to your camera. 2) Now start your PC. 3) Windows will detect the USB and open up a drive for you. (In my case it was G: drive). 4) Now open "windows explorer". 5)Click on "my computer". 6) Click on G: 7) This will show a folder for your camera. Once you open the folder you see your pictures. 8) Transfer the pictures or upload them on the Web and enjoy! This is a very simple process and I would rate it 4 STARS for ease of use. Picture quality: True the quality is not as good as a 4.1MP but it is good enough. This drop in quality is only observed when you zoom in your pictures...But like i mentioned before, it is good enough for a 1.3MP camera. I would rate it 3 STARS for picture quality. And finally my thoughts on power drain...I think this is to be expected from almost all cameras. This is not confined to this camera alone. Hopefully , there will be clk gating technology(or better clk gating if they already have it) in the days to come. Hope this review was helpful to you..I hope you have made up your mind whether to go for this camera or not.
Rating: Summary: Alkaline batteries not enough, Lithium or Ni-MH needed. Review: This is a decent camera with poor instructions / information / design with regard to the battery. Good alkaline batteries don't last a whole day in this camera. Lithium batteries work but need to be replaced more often than in most cameras. The best thing for this camera is to buy Ni-MH rechargeable batteries. Take the batteries out when not using the camera and recharge them often.
Rating: Summary: Easy Transition from Film - Great First Digital Review: Remarkable camera for a reasonable price. Flawless downloading to my PC. Took me a few days to get the various options in mind so I could access them quickly -- especially "erase this picture" so I could free up card space. Don't know where I would go upwards from here without spending a lot more money for features I really don't need. This is the perfect vacation, travel, weekend camera and taking pictures at lowest density allows more than 160 frames on a card -- which turns out to be the perfect size for sending along with e-mails. It does go through batteries more quickly than I had imagined, but that's the name of the digital game -- ... PS: All my previous camera work has been done with single-lens reflexes and other small Olympus models.
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