Olympus C860L 1.2MP Digital Camera

Rating:
Summary: Batteries & Panorama pictures
Review: I bought this camera few months ago and I think its amazing product for beginners! Images are very precise and nice. I suggest to use Energizer alkaline batteries, these allows to take the highest amount of pictures, around 50-90 high quality with moderate/smaller use of flash and display. In case of heavy usage I strongly recommend rechargable batteries. Camera itself is very comopact, easy to use and full of features. The best feature is PANORAMA, you can take up to 10 images and put them together by enclosed CAMEDIA software.

Rating:
Summary: Vey Happy Owner Bronx, New York
Review: I didn't know which Camera to buy D360-L or this one C860-L after reading the customer rating I chose the C860-L and to let everyone know I am very very please this is the best one for the money. The pictures are great and it is very easy to use. The reader-writer that it comes with is great it saves alot of use on your batterys. I don't know if I will ever use film camera again. I printed the pictures and they look better than any film camera. BUY THIS CAMERA IT IS GREAT. Good luck with it

Rating:
Summary: The best digital camera for a new enthusiast!
Review: I had hope to get the Olympus D360 and was a little disappointed to find they were sold out everywhere. The disappoint didn't last long. I found a better deal. I found this Olympus 860! It is the identical camera to the top rated, critically acclaimed and highly sought Olympus 360. The only thing that is different is the label and the extra accessories.

The camera works beautifully right out of the box. The pictures are absolutely fabulous in the detail. Everything you have heard about these Olympus cameras is true. The ease of use and the numerous features make this the camera that everyone who is new to digital photography should buy.

What makes the 860 better than the 360? The other accessories you get! After you take a few pictures, you'll want to transfer them to your computer. The 860 gives you three ways to do this as opposed to the one slow option that 360 users have. The first way is that slow, battery-draining option of connecting the camera to a serial port. This option works but it eats up your battery and takes forever (at least it seems that way when you are excited about finally owning a digital camera). The second option is an USB reader/writer. This one is made by Olympus specifically for their Camedia cameras. It is harder to find than the 360 and usually costs anywhere for $ to $. It makes transferring your images fast, very fast. What a convenience! You can even edit your images and put the improved picture back on the smart media card in milliseconds. The third option that comes with the 860 is the pcmcia card. It plugs into the pcmcia slot on a notebook computer and all you have to do is slide the smart media card into a slot on this reader. The notebook computer handles it like another hard drive and can access your images as quickly as any other data you might have on your computer. It ,too, costs anywhere from $ to $. It makes travelling with this wonderful camera and a notebook computer great, because there isn't a need to make room for additional cables and cords. Best of all, you still can transfer images back and forth in a matter of milliseconds. The other nice addition is the inclusion of Adobe PhotoDeluxe. The software that comes with these Olympus cameras is decent, but soon enough you'll want a better image editor and the ability to really "jazz up" your pictures. The PhotoDeluxe is one of the most widely used and most highly rated software packages.

So if you are looking for the best digital camera for a new enthusiast, this is the one. It gives you everything the Olympus 360 offers and then goes the next step of giving you all the extras that you'd buy in the first 3-6 months of owning a digital camera. Save the time and the money and get this Olympus 860 and be a step ahead of all of those who thought the 360 was the best deal out there.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent price/quality relation
Review: I've owned a lot of digital camera's before, and they always disappointed me when it came to the quality of the lens. Non-flash pictures with non-natural light always turned out yellow or had ugly spots in them, or were way too dark, which enhanced light parts in the picture too much when I enhanced it with a graphics program. But this one certainly didn't!

The camera behaves like a 800$ camera, it seems to be designed and developed with that price in mind, and I bet that 800 bucks was what it costed when it came out. But since 1,3 megapixel camera's are "passé" these days, even a camera like this has to lower in price, and that's where it gets interesting for all of us.

Imagine having a former top-of-the-range camera, with an excellent quality lens, a lot of changeable settings, a design that resembles a normal camera, and that also behaves like a normal camera, well, it's there, the Camedia C-860L, and it's amazingly cheap.

I bought mine in a shop in the Netherlands, and paid only 250 USD!! All right, I confess, that's without the usb reader and the pcmcia adapter, but it's still very cheap. Later on I bought this package (reader and pcmcia adapter, from a company called PixoMedia) for the price of 61 USD (I use www.currencycalculator.com to calculate this). So all together the price was 311 USD.

The editorial reviewer says it has high battery-use, but that's because Mr. the reviewer doesn't read manuals. The manual clearly states that they STRONGLY advise NOT to use Alkaline batteries, but to use NiMh or other rechargeable batteries instead, because they last much longer. That I did, and I bought 4 rechargeable NiMh 1600mA batteries with charger, for 38 USD. But actually, the battery-use isn't that bad with alkalines. It's definitely not 60 low-res pics, but more like 50/60 high-res (HQ) pics, with the use of flash regularly and the use of the LCD-display to look at pictures afterwards (not during taking of pics, ofcourse that drains!).

All and all I can now use the camera for a very very long time without ever having to worry about the battery-level, using the display to look a pictures, and even to zoom in, although this only can be done by choosing out of 9 different parts of the picture, but it's still very nice.

If you want proof on the quality of the pictures, visit my website on www.gekkevogel.com/midzomer.html and click on any of the pictures to see the full-size version, and you'll be convinced, just like me, that this is a kick-ass camera!