Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful camera - even for beginners
Review: ...I have been very happy with this camera. It is simple to use, and the Olympus Camedia software is very good. Users can begin snapping pictures immediately by just reading the quick start guide that comes in the package. Software installation was easy, and I like the fact that it connects via USB and that my computer sees the camera as another storage device (I am on Windows 98). Moving pictures from the camera to my hard drive is as easy as clicking and dragging or copying and pasting. There are many advanced settings, like aperture, exposure, etc. I don't understand any of those yet, so I haven't touched them. The camera is smart enough to make the adjustments for me. Give me some time, and I'll start monkeying with the more advanced settings. I HAVE played with the resolution quality, and found it easy to change by navigating on the camera's menu. I have also taken Black and White photos, color photos, and something called Sepia, which makes the photo look like an old fashioned picture you may have taken at Knott's Berry Farm or Disneyland. One neat feature that I found was the ability of the camera to capture sound and video in QuickTime format. I took a 30 second clip of video at the office just for fun. I don't know how much I'll use this feature, since if I really wanted to do a decent "family event" video, I'd go out and buy a digital camcorder, but it was kind of neat and easy to do. The only thing I didn't like was the battery compartment cover. On a camera that has a very solid, almost German sedan-like feel to it, I was surprised that the cover seemed rather flimsy. I sense that if I do not exersise care while closing the cover after inserting a new battery, that the cover may snap at the hinges. My wife was able to use the camera after only the briefest of tutorials, so that in itself was worth the purchase price. My son enjoys mugging for the camera, and he especially enjoys being able to look at the picture immediately after pressing the button. I've read reviews that comment about the high price tag, but think about it. It is an Olympus camera that looks great, takes great pictures, and is super simple to use. It has advanced features for the expert photographer, but the menu is easy enough for novices. ...
Rating:
Summary: Stop looking, this is it!....really.....
Review: On a scale of 1-5, this camera is an 8. It just doesn't get any better!!!!!!!!!! I've been into photography for 20 years and this camera take pictures so sharp and clear that you would swear it was taken with the finest lens available. Viewing the images on my Sony Monitor is truly a pleasure. It is so simple to use both in manual and auto modes. Its got a great feel. I have large hands and its not so small that you feel like your going to drop it. Money was not necessarily the issue for me, but I can tell you that I spent about 10 hours or more researching every model. I did price comparisons on the web, retail stores etc. I don't think you can get more bang for your buck. Transfering images to a CD Rom is so easy. It took me less than 5 minutes to open the package, plug in the USB cord and create the CD. The MPEG movie feature is great also. I really cannot believe how great this camera is. I know the new 4.0 and higher pixel camera's are coming out. Good for you because this should make the price of this model drop. I can't imagine needing more definition and color saturation. If modeling agencies can use 3.3 and 3.4 pixel cams for their photo's, trust me, it will be good enough for whatever your doing. I agree with everyone else though on the memory, pick up a additional media card because you do run out of room pretty quick. You can buy a 128K for $... or less. WFO
Rating:
Summary: Best 3 megapixel camera!
Review: I was planning to upgrade my C-3040 and tried different 5 megapixels cameras, such as Canon G5, Nikon Coolpix 5700 and Olympus 5050. C-3040 made better focus pictures than G5 or Nikon 5700!!! Olympus 5050 made identical pictures and although it had more features and accepts more card formats I was not able to justify the upgrade.
This showed me I made a right choice purchasing this camera.
Rating: 
Summary: fantastic camera
Review: I started with a Olympus 400Z I think. 1280x960 still printed great 8.5x11 on my photosmart. Now I've got 3.3 mega pixels, and I can't wait to print one of those at that size. --------------------------------- Things I love: Quality of photos 3.1 high resolution photos/second, to capture the action. I took some pictures of my daughter whipping a bubble wand around in a circle. With a regular 35mm camera I would have wasted 10 shots using the same approach. I got some spectacular action shots which you can see at ..., userid=jpayne. Takes great indoor pictures. No problems with red-eye, and I am pretty sure I haven't even been using red-eye reduction. The Nikon Coolpix cannot be used for indoor pictures, if you believe the reviews. QuickTime movies are a great way to share an experience with loved ones. I use the 320x240 (I think) resolution with sound. 75 seconds of that produces about a 24Mb .MOV file, which QuickTime 4+ can read and play back. In order to share that with my family on the east coast, I had to fork our $29 to apple to get the quicktime pro, which allowed me to compress that movie. That quality goes down, but I was able to produce a decent movie with a size of 1Mb instead of the original 15Mb (this was a 45 second movie). Awesome. The fact that sound is part of the movie is critical. The Nikon Coolpix 990 doesn't have sound with its movies. I copy the images to my laptop with a PCMCIA card. I just plop the smartmedia card into the PCMCIA card that's already inserted, and the "Removeable Disk" appears in Windows Explorer, and I can copy megabytes of data/second onto my hard drive. Don't waste your time with the FlashPath floppy adapter. I manage my images with ThumbsPlus by cerious software (...). For $75, this is a dream come true for photo management software. In addition to all the image manipulations you could ever want, it also allows you to (a) apply a similar operation to a whole set of images at once, (b) associate keywords with each image, (c) allows you to associate user-defined fields to each image. The result of which, you can perform queries of the form: "Find all imagines with Mom, Dad and Madeline, in Hawaii, out doors, in 1999". Up pops a slice of your image database in seconds. Sure beats combing through photo albums (that I never get around to putting together anyway!) I like the panoramic mode very much. The software does a good job of stitching the images together for you. You need the olympus card, though - the feature is disabled without that card. The camera is nice and small. --------------------------------- Things I don't like: The lens cap doesn't automatically come off, so you MUST remember to remove it before you turn the camera on, or else you will hear a grinding noise as the camera lens tries to extend. I am already over this. You cannot zoom when you make QuickTime movies if you are recording sound. When you try to zoom, it does a digital zoom instead of an optical zoom. Why bother? The speed at which the camera copies images and movies to and from the smartmedia is less than inspiring. SO you will take a QuickTime movie for 75 seconds, and then wait another 45 seconds while the movies is copied to the smart media. Then when you want to play it you will wait another 45 seconds while it's copied back into the 32Mb internal buffer. I usually just play the movie back on my laptop, which can copy to/from the smartmedia in seconds (actually, it just plays the movie directly off the smart media card). Previously I had mentioned I had trouble with 128Mb smart media cards, but it turned out to be the card. I wasn't able to determine the brand of that card, otherwise I would warn y'all about it --------------------------------- You can go to ... and look for albums from userid=jpayne to see some of the photos I have taken with the camera. The pictures are all taken in the highest resolution, and most of them are taken at highest quality as well.
Rating:
Summary: Brought Me Back to Photography
Review: This camera brought me back to photography, after many years away not being able to afford taking pictures the way I liked. With this you take as many pictures as you want, delete the ones that don't work, spend no extra money. The camera has all the features of a fine camera, and produces excellent prints up to 8x10 or more with "film" camera quality. Easy to download to a PC with the USB cable, burn onto a CDR, edit up to make even mediocre pictures look good. Small and handy to carry around.
I considered the 4 MP+ cameras, but I thought the extra price was steep for extra resolution I couldn't even see; plus the penalty of the extra storage space needed. (When you get one of these cameras, be sure you have 20 to 30 GB for storage, or a supply of CD-R's.)
Two shortcomings easily fixed: get rechargeable batteries and a charger: the 2 CR-3V's are great but too expensive to replace. Better to use the CR-3V's only while the others are recharging. Also, the 16MB memory card is way too small: pick up at least 2 64 MB cards, maybe even 3, which allow you to do a 160 to 240 picture excursion between PC downloads.
Rating:
Summary: Best for the Bucks
Review: This camera is incredible! With all the features it's one of the lowest priced and versitile camera's I've found (and I did alot of research before purchase). It's got BW, sephia, white board, black board and normal modes. You can adjust white balance, flash intensity (it also has an external flash output), shutter speed, ap. opening, picture format (HQ JPEG, SHG JPEG, TIFF, etc), etc. It's got a movie function that will record high quality video (better than my Sharp 8mm camcorder) and audio for upto five minutes! It's very easy to attach things like a wide angle or telescopic lens with a tube adaptor. It's a 3.3 megapixel camera, but Olympus has a better quality 3.3 than other cameras (I know, 3.3 is 3.3, but the pictures speak for them selves). It's got a tripod mount, timer, red-eye reduction, and remote control (that's right, it's got a remote control). It's got 3X optical zoom (meaning it uses lenses to zoom) and 2.5X digital zoom (meaning it blows up the image losing resolution). On top of all this, mine has taken a helluva beating (extreme cold, droppage, even mud), but there's no stopping it! You will love this camera!
Rating:
Summary: Olympus 3040
Review: I have owned this camera now for several years. Takes great pictures. Lots of creative options when using. It just takes some time to learn them all. Only negative comment is that flash does not seem to carry for long distance. Pictures tend to be on the dark side. Close up flash pictures are great.
Rating:
Summary: Meets All Expectations
Review: Very seldom do I purchase an item that meets expectations based on manufacturers specifications and claims. This camera has done just that. The only conceren is that the the view finder is off slightly relative to actual picture. I have been very pleased with this camera.
Rating:
Summary: Now's The Time To Buy
Review: Normally I don't take the time to write a review on any product but this is an exception. I just bought this camera ... (factory refurbished). I've owned Sony FD88, FD91, and Nikon 950 and without a doubt, this is the absolute BEST camera I've ever owned! The shots it takes are phenomenal! These shots coupled with a photo quality printer (I use an Epson 820) are as good or better than film. I'm no phoographer...I consider myself a point-and-shoot kind of guy but the pictures I've taken with this camera have all turned out great. I think the users guide is well written. It's not as difficult as one would think being that it's over 200 pages. The menu is easy to navigate as well. Battery life is fine but I recommend purchase of rechargable batteries because once you find out how easy this puppy is to use, you're gonna take a lot of pictures! The fact that the camera has quicktime movies makes it that much better. I use a card reader to transfer my pictures to the PC and it's done almost instantly. The only bad thing I would say about this camera is that the Zoom isn't long enough. Maybe I'm spoiled because I'm used to those huge lenses on the Sony products but the Sony camera's take poor action shots and you have to use Photoshop extensively to blow-up the shots to get decent 8 X 10 pictures. The type and quality of the shots taken with this camera more than make up for the lack of zoom. Plus, I've already ordered a 2X zoom to partially make up this deficiency. All and all a super camera and now with the prices so low...you gotta get one. There can't be too many cameras out there for [price amount] that can match this outstanding piece of electronics!
Rating: 
Summary: Comes up, just shy of a camera
Review: Pros:
-Very fast 3.3 frames per second, size, weight, full use of manual settings up to 1.8f. Cons:
-Viewfinder is not lined up with lens causing your shot to be off center and depending on the zoom, sometimes cuts off your subject (only important if you like to capture what you're seeing)
-Not for beginners, must be prepared to tweak settings, does not have portrait, scenic, sport, etc., presets for speedy setup changes, -- Program, Aperture, Shutter, and Manual only. Fix the viewfinder/lens difference and you've got a great camera!
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