Opinions etc. sought on the Olympus C5050Z? (As seen in Friday's
Times!)

I bought a 5050 prior to my trip to the '03 Tour de France, and have to say
it's delivered unbelievable performance. It allowed me to get shots that
I'd only dreamed of being possible, even without spending a lot of time with
the manual. The wonderful thing about the 5050 is that it's amazingly
capable with all manner of settings you can tweak, but it's also easy for a
dummy to just pick it up and start taking great photos, by simply using one
of the various modes on the dial on top of the camera.

The thing that helped me immensely is the so-called "sports" mode, which,
when chosen, manipulates things so that your shutter speed stays high. This
has always been a problem for me in the past; unless you went to a manual
mode, it was difficult with my prior cameras to keep the shutter speed at or
above 1/400 second. And manual modes are always risky, because you don't
have the exposure latitude with digital that you do with film, so a slight
goof renders your shots really bad.

Battery life has been exceptional; using 2200 mah NiMHs, I get over 300
shots, and usually find myself changing the batteries before they wear out,
so I don't have to worry about losing power when I really want to get a
shot.

Add the versatility of using three different types of media cards
(smartmedia, compact flash and the new semi-proprietary oly), and you just
can't lose. You can have both a compact flash and smart media in the camera
at the same time and easily choose between them, which is really convenient
as you can use the smart media as your emergency spare if you run out of
memory on the main one. I'm running a 512 meg flash card (Transcend, $110
and *very* fast) and a 128 meg smart media from my earlier Oly units (a D40
and 3000Z).

The noise issue hasn't been a problem for me; I set the camera to a -3
sharpness setting and do any needed sharpening (which isn't generally
needed) later on. On a screen, if you go to extreme magnification, yes, you
can find noise, but it's rarely visible on prints. Purple fringing has also
been a non-issue; *much* better than my earlier Oly digital cameras.

What's not to like? Well, I'm a bit spoiled now by having the viewscreen
that angles out a bit, and wish it angled more. I'd also like it to be
easier to see (brighter). But that's really about it. Oh, one more thing-
it would be great if Olympus would provide a nice *printed* manual, and in
just the language you need. But aside from those things, it's a great
camera, well worth the price in my humble opinion.

I can't give you comparisons to other cameras (like the G3/G5) though, as I
haven't played with them. They might be great units too! Best thing is to
find one that, for YOU, makes it fun to take pictures with. If something
about a camera appeals to you, if something makes it easier to take
pictures, that's going to be more important than minor spec differences.

--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles
http://www.ChainReactionBicycles.com


"Richard Savage" wrote in message
...
Opinions etc. sought on the Olympus C5050Z? (As seen in Friday's
Times!)

My intention is to replace my (ancient and currently dead) Minolta X700.

TIA Richard