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Olympus Camedia Brio D-100 1.2MP Digital Camera

Olympus Camedia Brio D-100 1.2MP Digital Camera

List Price: $299.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: batteries for this camera
Review: I was unable to find a battery like the one that came with this camera (3v lithuim battery, LB-01 CR-V3) here on amazon.com and the recommended battery charger & batteries set does not use these batteries. I wrote to Olympus and this was their reply.

The D-100 can use both CR-V3 lithium batteries, which are not rechargeable, and Ni-MH AA rechargeables. It is also possible to use other types of AA batteries, but we generally only recommend lithium or Ni-MH.

This makes it easy! The Olympus charger kit is more expensive than the Kodak options. You can get a Kodak K200 charger on here for $25 (does AA AND AAA sizes) and a pack of 4 Kodak NiMH rechargeable AA batteries for $19. There is also a kit with AA charger and 4 AA batteries for $40, but I don't think that charger will charge AAA batteries. (4 rechargeable AAA's are $12.)

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Digital Cam Newbie
Review: Have used it for 2 weeks (40 shots) and so far a happy camper. I post a long comment hoping to save some aggravation to digital cam newbies like me.

I wanted a simple, practical, medium priced, good optics, moderately featured, small digital camera that allowed me to put up pix in a web site or send via email with an easy to load into PC procedure. No sound, no video, no super ultra resolution (no memory, no printer, no special paper, no patience and no need for more than 640x480 pictures).

In the Olympus the USB solution is the best part (although I agree the manual does not make it clear how simple it really is): hook the USB cable into the PC with the camera turned off and without doing anything else you have another disk drive instantaneously, with the Windows File Explorer, click down two directories into your new disk, then click to view or select and drag and drop to copy all your pictures in your PC into any directoy like any old file. No need to even install the included Camedia photo editor (of which I already have 3 in my PC that do the simple retouch things I need to do to family pix for sharing).

I bought and returned a Polaroid PCD 240(?) that cost a bit less as the "hassle free" software did not install at all and I had no way to transfer the pictures into the PC. And when it worked (in my old PC with the broken screen, to add to my frustration) I realized had to suffer a rotating parrot flash screen from Polaroid and use a program with special buttons and a slow 3 step process every time wanted to download pictures and the loading procedure worked 2 out of 3 times I tried it. So much for user friendliness. The USB port is quick: less than 30 seconds to download 20+ or 1.6MB worth of pictures and no extra program to run with the Olympus.

With the initial Polaroid purchase I discovered ALL digital cameras have the same Alkaline battery gobbling problem, as this Polaroid came with regular AAs and it ate them up in some 20 shots plus the normal testing and showing off you do with any new gadget, I read up a little and discovered this is not a specific problem of the D-100 but of all digital cameras.

Accept the fact that you need better (1600mA Ni-MH batteries) if you want to use a digital camera, as you accepted the need to replace your regular AAs for long lasting Alkalines when electronics got more complicated than transistor radios. The business here is consumables. Think Polaroid instant photos and the roll prices, think bubble jet printers and cartridges, think Microsoft Windows and PCs, think Internet and DSL monthly bills. They have to make money somehow. After all, you are buying a product that is more powerful than early PCs and you want it to use the same power source as your flashlight? Think again.

The previous comment about the D-100 lacking the see through viewfinder is plain wrong: that is one reason I preferred it over other other models in which you had to aim through the digital screen, which makes for awkward and shooting. In the D-100 you can turn off the digital viewer and it only comes up for a couple of seconds after a shot, displays it briefly and then shuts off again to save power.

Other issue is memory size vs resolution. The Standard (Low) Quality mode alloes some 80 shots at 640x480 resolution with the included SmartMedia 8MB card. This resolution makes 80KB-120KB files per picture, which actually bigger than they should be for email attachments or to put several shots in a family web page. In a web site with several pictures per page, a large graphic item should be 50-80KB so it downloads at a reasonable speed for regular earthlings. Sending email attachments over 500KB to international friends which may hook up via a pay-per-minute setup is not a polite thing to do.

Finally, I have read in several places (and believe it from Olympus) that the optics top quality for a low-end camera and the that it makes pretty smart corrections to color/focus/lighting and its reaction time is pretty fast. This was not an initial worry of mine but realized after using two models that it makes a big difference as subjects (especially babies) don't wait too long in the perfect picture taking position. The D-100 allows you to take 2 pictures per second in its Continuous Shooting mode.

The only (very minor) criticism access to some functions like the picture review function (press and hold the TV button: sounds easy but I could not remember it 2 weeks after I read the manual and tried all the options) and what some options mean, as due to the small size it crams several functions into 6 buttons, but this is a reasonable sacrifice for having a pocket camera that easily fits into your shirt or pant pocket (try that trick with the Sony Mavica or any of the semi-pro models). Again, for family uses or with newborns around, pockets and shoulders are a precious commodity. It much smaller than most other models and its shape feels very comfortable to handle. The zoom models felt awkward. Again, for amateur/email/web use, you can do all the cropping in your PC in 4 seconds flat AND reduce file/image size. Printing digital photos is not for me. Regular film is more practical/quick/cheap if you want hard copies and I believe will remain so for amateur needs for at least 5 more years.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Wrong adapter is suggested
Review: I'm certainly not a professional photographer, but I really like this camera and the pictures I've takes so far.

The power adapter they recommend is not the one that goes with it, you don't want the c-7au. You want the E-7au. At least that's what the folks at Olympus told me. Will know soon...

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: My 1st digital camera
Review: So, I'm new with digital cameras and I'm not a photography buff ... but I have been surprised (happpily) with this camera. I also bought the 32mg SmartCard and some rechargeable batteries, based on others' reviews. I've only had it a month, but was on a 2-week vacation during that time and took maybe 200 pictures. I'm very pleased with the quality of photos I'm getting; some of them are astonishing (a lighthouse at sunset from maybe a quarter mile away! Beautiful!). I expected a significant difference in quality from my 35mm but did not see much, if any. I post photos to my web site where they look great; I also printed some 4X6 in color and BW and they turned out wonderfully. An added plus: It was very easy to learn to use.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent value for money, great for indoors picture taking!
Review: Picture quality of this camera is impressive. I tried taking pictures with it indoors. It was much better than I expected. Even with lowest recording resolution, it looks like real picture in my computer monitor, even much better than Sony FD75 which is much expensive than this camera. It takes very good pictures for closely located objects with flash on, even closer or little more than a foot away. If you are looking for cheap camera with good picture quality this is it.

If you are worried about batteries, buy AC adapter. I'm just using 3 V, 2.5 A, not expensive digital camera AC adapter, but it is working fine.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Great camera-if you can find batteries
Review: I recently purchased the D-100, based on various positive reviews listed on this page. I purchased this camera specifically for an extended trip. The camera works great and the quality of the pictures is excellent. However, when the battery (provided with purchase) was no longer good, I could not find a replacement. Stores such as Wal-Mart and Target, who carry this product, don't carry the batteries. I searched for a replacement battery within a 500 mile radius, but no luck. As a result, I was unable to take pictures that I will never be able to get again. I intend to contact Olympus directly to bring this marketing problem to their attention. It appears that Olympus makes it intentionally difficult to locate replacement (one-time use) batteries, requiring consumers to purchase their batteries and charger for $60.00.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great little camera!
Review: I must say that for my needs this camera was perfect. I've got one of the larger "uber-pixel" cameras already, and wanted something smaller, lighter and less expensive that I didn't have to worry about losing when I went to parties, camping and other misc. activities... This one's perfect! The 1.3 megapixel is perfect for simply saving to my laptop on the road, desktop at home or simply printing out 4X6 or 5X7 prints, the 640X480 mode is perfect for posting to the web... The included SmartMedia card stores 8 in SHQ mode, 24 in HQ and 82 in 640X480... The other two modes provide and ample 1280X960 resolution. I also purchased a 32meg SM card for 35/99/331 photo storage respectively.

Image sizes are roughly 800k in SHQ (1280X960), 300k in HQ (1280X960, more compressed) and 80k in SQ (640X480).

Image quality is better than I expected. As I said, it fits my needs perfectly. And about complaints about battery life? I can't say that I agree, I bought the camera (As well as four NIMH rechargables) two days ago, and it's still using the provided Olympus battery after several hours of tinkering, downloading (downloading is very fast, BTW)... etc.

All in all I'll say this is a wonderful camera for this pricepoint... Check it out!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: A couple quick questions.
Review: In the product description and reviews, there is NO indication as to the NUMBER OF PICTURES (frames) the camera can store with (or without) added storage card. Also, how many pictures can one take in terms of life of batteries (or charge)? Does # of pix vary based on type of battery?

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent Camera!
Review: Excellent camera overall! Great pictures (better quality than a 1.3 Fuji I have...), small, lightweight, affordable, and easy to connect (no problem with OS 9.0.4 and a USB Cardbus adapter on a Wallstreet G3) - just be sure to have the latest USB update (1.4.1)

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great Camera
Review: The Brio D-100 is a great little camera. It is easy to use and and even easier to download the pictures to your computer. Just plug the camera into your USB port and your computer recognizes the D-100 as an attached hard drive. Then just drag and drop the pictures from the D-100 folder to your hard drive. There is software to install - but I haven't installed it - no need to. The LCD monitor display which is used to the review pictures you have taken and to set your various settings works great. You may preview pictures without turning off the camera by pressing the monitor button twice. (One review said this was not possible - but it is). There's just enough features to give you some good options but it is easy enough to set it, forget it, and shoot to your heart's content. I recommend it!


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