Olympus IS-20 QD.
It all started one fine afternoon in Mall of America, America’s largest shopping mall. My girl was shopping inside a women-only garment shop and I was loitering around with the brand new stylish Olympus 80mm zoom soapbox camera.
Just a day before, that camera had impressed me with its sleek design and for the first time in my life I had bought it purely based on aesthetics instead of performance.
Now, I noticed a couple of beautiful paintings on the wall of that women apparel shop. I promptly took out my camera and took a picture of those paintings.
It was half an hour later and about twenty miles away from Mall of America that I stumbled upon a great discovery - I had lost the camera somewhere. I didn’t have it anymore.
After getting skinned alive by my girl for losing a camera, which had all her Lake Pepin photos, I set out on yet another Camera shopping… the fifth one after I had started earning.
The choice was clear this time. Olympus Cameras. The models considered were IS-20 QD and IS-50 QD. The prices range anywhere between 250$ and 300$. What I thought would be a half an hour affair, actually turned out to be a month long saga of in-depth research. I thought it would be a good idea to document the process and hence, this review.
IS-20 QD and IS-50 QD are a cross between the standard soapbox and the SLR. In a way we can describe them as ’’Automatic SLRs’’ which have no manual operation and which do not allow the users to change the lens. I prefer to call these cameras Soapbox SLRs or SLR-S.
IS-50 QD wins hands down in the department of aesthetics. It has got a great body and an even greater sense of humor. It brings out a smile on everyone’s face as soon as it comes into the sight of him/her. IS-20 QD is also good looking but is not Hritik Roshan material.
We both fell in love with the 50 QD instantly. It was love at first sight. We flagged down a BBB ( Best Buy Boy.) and told him that we would like to take home the metallic beauty. He smiled apologetically and told us that they only had a display piece. It was out of stock.
So we ran to our car as fast as possible and drove to the next nearest Best Buy. They didn’t have a 50 QD but there sure was something magical about the 20 QD that was on display. Both had the same price tag. That made us think carefully about the two models. One of them was a better model than the other. But which one?
We went back to the Internet (https://olympus.com) and did a thorough comparison of the two models. IS-50 QD had a slightly better zoom lens (28mm - 120mm) than IS-20 QD (28mm - 110mm). Also it had three additional picture modes which were absent in 20 QD. (Like Portrait, Landscape, Stop Shot)
These differences coupled with the advantage it enjoys in the aesthetics department, 50 QD almost had us hooked to it… until I found out the most glaring ’bug’ IS-50 QD had so far quietly suppressed. It didn’t have the Panorama feature.
Panorama feature is particularly useful for shooting scenery shots of Mother Nature. It allows you to change the aspect ratio of your photo by allowing more space horizontally without proportionately increasing the vertical. I am a big user of this feature and have won numerous accolades from my friends for my scenery shots.
You guessed it. IS-20 QD offers this feature. So home comes this beautiful young lady neatly wrapped in an expensive featherlite box. For the last two days I have been reading the manual in and out to find out how I can use the Panorama feature. No luck so far. Olympus has the worst ever user manual in the history of the United States electronic revolution. (Or should I say Japanese?)
Overall : IS-20 QD is a very good bet if you are looking for a cheap SLR kinda camera. It is not too heavy on your pocket and it outscores any soapbox in the market.
Venu