I bought this camera few days back at a price of $179.99 (costs around 11k in India) and I’m quite happy with the way I’m able to handle it. Considering the fact that I’m a novice photographer and haven’t owned a camera before I had to make a very cautious decision before I bought one! Before I dig-in into the specifics of the machine, let me tell you what my preferences were:
A very simple camera with a short learning curve. Yes I don’t know what Hue, Saturation are and to share the secret with you, I ’almost’ failed in the Image Processing paper :(
Easy to charge and don’t want to invest on a charger and batteries.
Should be able to easily transfer my photos to a PC/notebook (I dont normally print the pictures and rather prefer emailing around)
I don’t have big pockets and don’t carry any back packs, so wanted something which I could slip in into my pockets and don’t feel the weight of it.
- Above all, couldn’t dispense anything more than 10k. After all I should buy a laptop too ;) I visited a bunch of electronic retail stores in city (BestBuy, CompUsa, Fry’s, Costco and CircuitCity) noted down the model names I liked. Then came back to work, researched on the web looking for the features I needed (Hmm, being in support phase of my project I could afford spending office time on personal work!) Finally I freezed on Canon Powershot A540, Nikon L3 Coolpix and Olympus FE190. Canon was recommended by most of my friends and its certainly a very good brand.
The problem was it was a bit heavy and coming to Nikon I thought 5 MP was an old one to have (can’t I have personal opinions? ;p) Finally I bought a Olympus FE 190, here is what I found after I bought it.
You might need to buy an xD card as the internal memory is only 22 MB (15 pictures), I bought a 1 GB xD card (Sandisk, 60$) which lets you store around 230 (PC Editing quality) pictures.
It comes with a rechargeable Lithium Ion battery (LI-42B) and with a charger. So needn’t worry about buying a battery charger again.
Almost all the controls are automatic and trust me you can learn to operate the camera in just under a minute!
Comes with Digital Image Stabilization (For those flying in SU-30 Jets and wanna shoot an F16 from cockpit! Yes, sometimes there could be no end to exaggeration)
A 2.5 inch LCD screen is a certain good to have feature. Here’s the link for detailed tech specs: https://olympusamerica.com/cpg_section/product.asp?product=1262&fl=4 If you want to buy this India, do check out eBay https://cgi.ebay.in/OLYMPUS-FE-190-DIGITAL-CAMERA-FE190-NEW-1-YR-WARRANTY_W0QQitemZ330035907352QQihZ014QQcategoryZ107897QQcmdZViewItem and if you are in Hyderabad, we have one outlet in Banjara Hills.
Hope the info helps!
~Chaitanya