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Olympus Stylus 300 3.2 MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom

Olympus Stylus 300 3.2 MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom

List Price: $249.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: nice camera, poor indoor photos
Review: Incredibly small and asthetically pleasing, this is a major upgrade from my 1 megapixel Olympus. Being able to keep this in my back pocket is great (it's actually so small that my major worry is leaving it on the table in a restaurant somewhere). The battery life is excellent (and the battery, like the XD card, is tiny). The major drawback--even on a very bright, sunny day, it cannot take pictures indoors without a flash; without the flash, pictures are dark yellow and severely blurred--surprisingly, they were yellowed and blurred sometimes WITH the flash. Given the weather-proof design, this is clearly meant as an outdoor camera. Overall, though, a keeper.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Pricey & not the best camera!
Review: Nice design and good looking. (Although not yet stylish as Canon Elph's.) Good battery life but the extra battery costs a lot. You can't put in AA batteries in this one.

Average image quality indoors. Good outdoors. Slow to focus and has annoying shutter lag. No manual features and many photos need to be tweaked in photoshop. Video mode is junk.

Uses propreitary xD cards, just another way for Fuji/Oly to rip off consumers. What was wrong with standard SD or CF cards? Imagine the chaos if every manufacturer used different memory cards.

Back to the camera, its a good attempt by Olympus but still way behind Canon, Sony, Pentax, Nikon and Minolta. This camera has nothing special warrant this high price tag.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great camera except for indoor no flash shots
Review: First, the bad: indoor, no flash pictures are poor. We took about 60 pictures this weekend for my brother's graduation, about half inside with no flash, and only 4 of them came out okay. Even the "good" ones weren't particularly sharp when I reduced them to 800x600. We mostly took pictures of people; any movement on the part of the subject or the camera made the picture very blurry. Guess it's using a slow shutter speed to compensate for the low light, though I'm surprised that it's as bad as it is! Though, this is the only digital camera that I've used, so it might just be that I had high expectations

Besides indoor no flash shots, this camera is great. It's pretty. It has some weight to it which makes it feel more solid. It's small---it easily slips into a jeans or shirt pocket. The lithium battery that comes with the battery is great---it lasts forever. The camera comes with a charger. I used the camera off and on over the weekend (~60 pictures) and didn't run out of battery. Outdoor shots are sharp and the colors are good. The memory is pretty speedy. I transferred over 100 meg worth of pictures in just a few minutes. Oh, and since the battery is so good, you don't need to worry about buying one of those special download hookups. Just plug the USB cable into the camera and start downloading!

One thing that I particularly love (being the computer geek that I am) is that I can mount the camera as a USB drive under linux, no special software needed. I just "mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb" and copy the files over. No hassling with Windows!

In summary, if you don't mind using the flash for indoor pictures, this is a great little camera, well worth the money.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great for Flower Pictures
Review: A friend showed me the next model down, and liked it. I decided to get this model with lithium batteries. I take close-ups of flowers, and it does a great job, and viewing them through the display allows centering of the bloom every time. My only problem is that the pictures make huge files, which take time to attach and send on the internet. Perhaps there is a way around this, but a friend compresses the files and that serves. I agree with the comments on the button sizes on the rear, but it isn't a big problem. I'm happy with my new toy

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: First Digital Camera Owners - This is For You!
Review: After searching for several months for a good digital camera, I found that the Stylus provided the most "bang for the buck". It's compact size and user friendly interface makes it a breeze to use, even for first time digital camera owners. The software provided makes downloading and emailing pictures easier than ever and it even allows you to do simple touch-ups to your pictures (resizing, cropping, changing quality, red-eye, etc.) before sending them out. Kudos to Amazon.com for offering a US warranty product at competitive prices, not to mention free shipping, free picture cards and no tax!

The only reservation that I had about this camera is the fact that it uses the new xD picture cards. This is definitely not a knock on the camera itself, but rather a concern that this media type may cease to exist. Hopefully this media will be supported as much if not more than the others and won't die a tragic death in the same way that BETA did with the VCR.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: WOW! What a camera!
Review: This is a snap response after recieving this camera today and playing with it for about an hour or so.

First, THE GOOD:

The first thing you're gonna notice about this camera is it's apearance. It's simply GORGEOUS! It's called the STYLUS for a reason! It's STYLISH! It's hands down the most attractive looking camera I've seen, it just looks cool. You're bound to get compliments any time you whip it out among company. The shiny aluminum case is no just very classy looking, but also makes for a durable and sturdy frame.

The Stylus 300 Digital by Olympus is very well made, and feels firm and durable in the hand. It does'nt feel flimsy at all. You get the feeling that if you dropped it on a sidewalk a few times it would probably survive with little more than a dent (Although I wouldnt try that!). Also, it's supposedly made for all-weather use, so you should be able to take pictures in driving rain if you wanted to. You'l notice that all the ports and connectors are protected by rubber covers and all the little compartments with plastic doors (for example the little cover that you flip up to put in a memory card) covering them are sealed with rubber rims to keep out water. This is a great camera for anyone who tends to be a bit clumbsy or who wants to be able to have take pictures in bad weather.

The camera is also pretty small. It may not be the smallest camera out (when compared to other super-tiny models) but it's pretty damn small! It's about the size of a pack of cigarretts! It's actually smaller than my wallet!

The camera is also very well designed. There is no lens cap to loose or have to remember to put on. Instead a door slides over the lens and protects it. This same door/sleave is used to turn the camera on/off. Turning it on is as simple as flipping the door over. Start up is very quick! I was able to turn the camera on, take a picture, and turn the camera back off and in my pocket in about 10 seconds! It's pretty responsive. It's pretty quick taking pictures too, the wait time between pictures is very short (shorter than my 35mm), not quite as fast as would be wished for though.

Olympus also through in a remote control! This is great for self portraits or when you want to actually be IN the pictures you're taking. The battery life apears to be pretty good, and a lithium Ion battery is included as well as a charger. Also included is a 16 MB memory card. I wish there was a little built in memory or a larger card had been included for the money. The card technology is either a new one I am not familiar with or a proprietary one - it's called "XD picture card". The 'card' is a TINY (about the size of thumbnail).

USB is supported (as expected) and you can ussually plug the camera right in and windows (XP and ME) will automatically recognize it as a removeable drive. This is great as you can even use you're camera's memory to carry around or transfer other types of files as well which might be useful in a pinch. It also supports video out so you can view pictures on your TV.

Finally there is also a movie mode that lets you take 16 second video clips. The down side is that this is in quicktime format (I would much prefer MPEG or AVI). Another thing is that the length is ALWAYS limited to 16 seconds - even if you have a 128 MB card in there, you can only take 16 second clips... that's just dumb. If I have enough memory why cant I take longer clips? Come on Olympus, release a firmware patch to allow us to take longer clips or use a different video format. There is also no sound, which is a feature that IS present in models made by cannon and Kodak (who provde both built in mics, built in speakers, and the time of your movie clips is only limited to memory restraints). This is a significant drawback if this featureset interests you, but isn't enough to weigh down the rest of the quality present.

The interface is also pretty easy to use and supports plenty of features. It's not QUITE as easy as the Kodak DX4330, but most people will find it pretty simple with a minimal learning curve.

All in all, this is a GREAT camera. While you're probably going to want to buy a bigger memory card, you'll probably be VERY happy with this as a choice. The only cons are the lack of support for video features - the lack of sound and the time restraints are both unexcusable considering the price.

Still I give it a 5 star rating for the quality of construction and the over-all design. Im very happy with this camera, they just need to add sound to the next version. Heck, if they would just release a patch t allow video clips to use MPEG or even just allow us to take longer clips, then I would call this the ONLY CHOICE in digital cameras for the price range.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Fantastic camera!
Review: Wonderful camera, easy to learn, long lasting battery and amazing color and quality! So small and so convenient to carry around. I would reccomend this camera to anyone.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Happy User
Review: I love the size and the look of the camera. It's very compact and look like a million bucks. I don't usually carry a camera with me at all time. With the size of this camera, I kind of forget that I have it in my purse. Picture quality is great. This is my first digital camera. I figure if I didn't like it I would just simply return it. I ended up keeping it. The camedia software that comes with the camera is very basic. Nothing much can be done with it except downloading the pictures to the PC...

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great Camera and easy to use
Review: We received the camera on the eve of our trip to Florida and we were able to learn the basics on the plane. We just loved its ease of use and styling and quality of pictures taken. The only drawback I found was not enough memory to hold more good quality pictures. Hopefully Olympus will improve this feature.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great Little Camera
Review: I purchased this camera a couple of weeks ago and couldn't be more happier with it.

I bought this camera for its size (small and compact)and I am delighted. I'm a point and shoot type of guy and love to take photos but hate to carry a camera. After buying the Stylus 300, I took a 5-day trip to the desert with it in a small carrying case on my belt. After five days of hiking and climbing, I didn't even know I was carrying a camera on my belt. If you carry a cell phone on your belt, you won't notice the Stylus 300 there.

Compared to my previous digital camera (Kodak 4800)this camera is a dream to carry. In addition, the battery life appears to be much better than the Kodak. I bought an extra battery for the trip and took approximately 150 photos during the five days and didn't run out of battery life.

A couple of small gripes. First, the camera doesn't allow you to date stamp a photo. I like to use the date stamp on occasion and the Stylus 300 won't allow you to do it.

Second, there is a setting that allows you to reset the camera's settings when you shut the camera off. Or you can choose to keep your setting when shutting down. I would have like to see a chose to lock certain settings and have the camera reset the remaining settings you don't wish to lock.

Third, the camera doesn't come with a carrying case. I bought one for less than $10 that worked fine but an Olympus case would have been nice.

However, these are minor issues that do not distract from the overall performance of the camera. I am very happy with the Stylus 300 and would recommend it to those "point and shoot" folks that don't like the hassle of carrying a camera around all day.


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