Congratulations
I recently bought several of the Olympus Brio cameral for some real-estate
agents. I was also amazed at how sharp and true the rendition was from these
products.
They are very battery efficient. My E10 and E20 which use 4 instead of 2
batteries does not get anywhere near the number of pictures per charge.
Over the summer I bought a C720 so I could have something a little smaller
for everyday carry. This has an amazing optical zoom. It is 40-320mm
equivalent and if you add the B300 tele converter it becomes a 545/3.4.
Truly amazing in a package that weighs under 2 pounds.
If you decide to pass the Brio on to your wife, take a look at the C-730
which now replaces the C-720.
Mark
----- Original Message -----
From: "AG Schnozz" <agschnozz@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 11:22 AM
Subject: [OM] Mysterious Olympus box appears
> 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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