Well, it comes every 365 days, whether we like it or not. It's
the annual "adding of the ring".
First present, from Daughter #2 was a hands-free earphone for my
cellphone. Nice. Been wanting one for a year now. Second
present from Daughter #1 was a flash memory card. Hmmm. I'm
thinking, "nah, she didn't get me a MP3 player", could it be,
could it be?
I open up the present from my "S.O." and lo and behold, what do
I see? A box with "Olympus" printed on it. OK, now we're
talking. Contained in this box is a nifty little D-380.
Well, I couldn't help but run the thing through its paces last
night and was amazed by several things:
1. Battery life. I put in some NIMH batteries that were at the
end of their cycle and I never did drain them I had pulled them
out of my winder and tested them in a G40 flash and they barely
charged it. I put them in the camera and 100+ pictures later
(most with flash), lot's of editing on the screen and downloads
to the computer never did pull the batteries down from full
green.
2. Lens. This puppy has a fixed-focus (yuck!) F4/F8 (user
selectable) 4.5mm lens (equivelent to 35mm). The sharpness is
startling. It is no slouch! I thought that I'd be disappointed
with the fixed-focus lens. Nope, it far-exceeds anything I've
seen from any other consumer-grade digicam. Since it lacks a
zoom lens (it does have that nasty digital zoom function) there
is little reason for complex focusing mechanisms which rarely
work in a pocket camera anyway.
3. Color. Excellent skin tones! Colors appear to be very good
and accurate. Snappy.
4. Vignetting. None.
5. Flash. Bright and even illumination. For crying out loud,
this thing has reach. Even in a darkened basement it fully
illuminated out beyond 20 feet. Not sure what the specs are
yet, but my previous experiences with pocket digicams are that
beyond 8 feet those pipsqueek flashes give out. No visible
vignetting with the flash, either.
6. Flare. Shots taken directly into the sun yielded some flare,
but not as much as I expected. Similar to my SC Zuikos.
7. Size and weight. Not much bigger than my XA.
8. Viewfinder. Blah!
9. Features. You have to dig for them, but it has multiple
levels of flash control, exposure compensation and spot
metering.
10. File compression. Well, I've seen better. Anything
important will be done in highest quality mode, which eats
memory for lunch. Still, HQ mode isn't bad, and I do have a
deJPG filter in Gimp that helped.
11. Speed. Not the swiftest camera around but still about 1/2
the wait time of other pocket digicams.
12. Pre-flash. Is it my imagination or does the camera do two
flashes--first for exposure determination? Regardless, flash
exposures are excellent! But that could explain why I couldn't
get a slaved studio flash to expose the picture as expected.
For a general purpose pocket family camera this thing is very
impressive. I know that the fixed-focus lens will bug me now
and then, but frankly, it isn't the end-all camera anyway. We
will still use the IS-3 for important family stuff with the
digital to supplement for internet and quick-turnaround stuff.
This will probably be a major digital and/or medium format
purchase year for me, so this little camera will make a good
learning tool.
Besides, I know my wife has designs on the camera. As soon as
I'm done "playing" with it, it will mysteriously disappear into
her purse. After all, the "annual adding of the ring" is coming
up for her too.
Smart woman, she figured that with an Olympus XA, Olympus IS-3),
Olympus OM-2S and Olympus OM-4 laying around the house, that an
Olympus digicam was probably a safe bet. :)
AG-I'm falling-Schnozz
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