Any opinions on the Olympus 8080W?

Hello all,
I'm still a point-and-shoot type of person but would like to slowly
venture out into more manual controls. I want to avoid a full SLR since
I don't think I'll need all those features. I was looking at the Olympus
8080 and I thought it looked pretty good for my needs. The question is
the quality of the image.

Any comments one way or another?

Thanks

Paula

Paula Sims wrote:
Hello all,
I'm still a point-and-shoot type of person but would like to slowly
venture out into more manual controls. I want to avoid a full SLR since
I don't think I'll need all those features. I was looking at the Olympus
8080 and I thought it looked pretty good for my needs. The question is
the quality of the image.

Any comments one way or another?

Thanks

Paula

It's a very good camera; image quality is top-notch, probably the best
available in the "prosumer" category; rivalling dSLR's quality at lower
ISO's (50-100). Of course, sensor noise is an issue at higher ISO's
(200-400) as it is in all the fixed-lens cameras right now; if you need
noise-free ISO 400 or more you need a dSLR. It's a bit slower than a
dSLR to store images, and it's not as responsive - there's a small but
noticable shutter lag. Some users have been complaining about AF
problems in low light, but it's all relative - I've had trouble with a
Canon dRebel searching for focus in dim light, too. The lens is
reasonably fast (F/2.4-3.5), but it's not F/1.4 or anything. 28-140mm
equivalent is a reasonable range; you'd spend a LOT to get an F/2.4
28mm eq. wide-angle without fish-eye on a dSLR.

There's been lots of discussion of the C-8080 at
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/forum.asp?forum=1008 . It's on for
fire-sale prices right now, it's a really good time to buy it.
Unfortunately, it's discontinued, and it doesn't look like there's
going to be another camera like it in the future - low-end dSLR's are
taking over the market, for better or worse (worse, IMHO).

ECM

In article , Paula
Sims says...
Hello all,
I'm still a point-and-shoot type of person but would like to slowly
venture out into more manual controls. I want to avoid a full SLR since
I don't think I'll need all those features. I was looking at the Olympus
8080 and I thought it looked pretty good for my needs. The question is
the quality of the image.

The lens is *great*, even better than some DSLR lenses. Low light
focusing is no problem, if you use iESP focus with P-AF (this way, you
can focus in almost complete darkness).

Picture quality is great, if you use RAW:
http://www.molon.de/galleries/China/
http://www.molon.de/galleries/India/Rajahstan/

The only issue would be the painfully slow card write times (12 seconds
to write a RAW image, and no buffering, meaning that you have to wait
until the camera finishes writing to the card until you can take the
next image).

Noise is not an issue if you shoot at lowest ISO (50) - this is not a
camera designed to operate at ISO 400.

For more information, see the online resource (link below) and the
Olympus 8080 users group (link below).

At http://myolympus.org/ we have a photo sharing site for users of this
camera.
--

Alfred Molon
------------------------------
Olympus 4040, 5050, 5060, 7070, 8080, E300 forum at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MyOlympus/
Olympus 8080 resource - http://myolympus.org/8080/