Olympus E-20 5MP Digital Camera w/ 4x Optical Zoom

What an amazing machine this is. After suffering through the flimsy plastic trinket cameras with little or no real optical quality, I finally own a truly versatile digital camera. The E-20 (as with the E10) offers extraordinary flexibility in digital photography. Prior to my recent purchase I spent at least a year and a half researching and waiting for this last pixel jump. The E-20 offers all of the flexibility of a high-level SLR which is missing on most other digital cameras.

Good Points:

The feel... It has enough weight for good stability, and it fits your hand very nicely.

Excellent lens with the ability to add extenders, filters, what-have-you.

Super Image Quality

Good bundled software (Adobe PhotoShop Elements and Camedia)

Image control

SmartMedia, CompactFlash, AND Microdrive compliant with the ability to use more than one card type at a time (you can switch between the cards).

True SLR (some competitors offer interchangeable optics, but still have you look through a viewfinder. What's with that? I want to see what I'm taking.).

Great accessories! (I can't wait to get the lithium polymer attachment)

Drawbacks

I'll have to get a better strap

Flexibility & control vs. ease of use trade-off... there are roughly 30 buttons to learn (but most of us will want that kind of control).

It doesn't come with a case... even a cheapie

I need to buy stock in a battery company

Remembering to turn it off whenever I open the media bay or change power source

This is probably not the camera you would buy for your instamatic dependent Aunt Sally or Uncle Jimmy-Bob, but if push came to shove you could always tell them to just put the big knob on "P" (Program) and snap away.

When you pick your camera, don't go by statistics alone (or reviews alone for that matter). You've got to get out there and see how the camera feels in your hands. If you've a history with good quality 35mm SLR's you are going to love the E-20.

I am now using the E-20N for our newspaper and have found it to be excellent for sports and news photography. The only drawback is the write time from buffer to card can be long and ties up the camera when the buffer is full. It is a little slow powering up, about 5 seconds. However, I am learning to overcome it and work around it. It takes excellent quality photos and does night football on the high school level very nicely with the FL-40 Flash. The flash is a necessary accessory. It is a wonder to handle, good focus, fast auto focus and love the manual flexibility it has. I definitely recommend it. I did not know if it would take night football, but it has done very well. I am still learning it and trying to master the many features it has. Very, Very good digital camera, it has all but eliminated our wet darkroom. we also use Nikon Coolpix 950s and 995, both very good digital cameras.

Buy Olympus E-20 5MP Digital Camera w/ 4x Optical Zoom Now

The Olympus E20N replaced their E10 and now can capture 5 meg images. This is a key upgrade to what was already a very fine digital camera. The construction and materials of this camera put it into the upper echelon of consumer digital cameras and some would argue that this is a strictly professional tool. What I like about it is the balance of features, quality and design. Once Olympus manages to speed up the image storage process, the E20N will be worthy of 5 stars.

Many digital camera designers are scrambling to improve optical performance of the camera lens. The need for a zoom lens that covers a wide range is hamstrung by the small size of even a 5 megapixel CCD. This in part explains the poor image performance of many inexpensive digital cameras, but even in the lower price regime, Olympus has been an industry leader for years. But a designer of a more expensive camera like the E-20N ... has more latitude in designing optics and herein lies a key strength of this camera. The lens of the E-20N has a zoom range equivalent to a 35-140mm lens on a 35mm camera, with an aperture of f 2 to 2.4. One can sight through an optical TTL viewfinder or via a swivelable LCD screen. Excellent optics!

The control features of the E20N are also excellent, yet not perfect. Many adjustments are set by holding down a dedicated button while rotating the camera's control wheel, which can be difficult to do one-handed. The built-in flash has fairly decent range, but since the camera has a hot-shoe, an external flash can be added if necessary.

I like the ergonomic feel of the E-20N and I also like that it has four available operating modes: automatic, manual, aperture priority and shutter priority. By using the new progressive scan mode, one can take images with a shutter speed of 1/18000th of a second, but the image resolution is reduced by a factor of two. This might make you think this is an ideal camera for sports photography, but I'd disagree. The camera is just too slow at storing image data. It often takes over 8 seconds to store a high resolution image with the E-20N and this is the camera's most serious fault.

The bottom line for most folks is image quality and in this department, the E-20N does not disappoint. If you ever make the move up to a large-format printer, you'll want a camera of this quality. You can achieve excellent prints at 11x17" with the E-20N. For pictures requiring a slow shutter speed, the noise-reduction filter is very useful.

Read Best Reviews of Olympus E-20 5MP Digital Camera w/ 4x Optical Zoom Here

The Pros: EXCELLENT IMAGE QUALITY and control. Very solid grip and feel actually feels like a real camera. The lens is bright and sharp, image quality is probably the best I've seen. The focal length of the camera is great. Best thing compared to most digicams I've used: there is no shutter lag the time it takes between you pressing the button (click) and the actual picture being taken. I hate that on some Sony cameras I've used in the past by the time the camera actually takes the picture a person's expression or light conditions can change... :-(

All in all, a great camera for this price and probably the cheapest in its class of SLRs (compared to Nikon D1X).

The Cons: SLOW WRITE TIMES, but you can get used to that and learn to live with it. FIXED LENS you cannot change lens with is good and bad. Good because the CCD elements are protected at all times and don't get dirt.. a problem with some digital SLRs. You can also get attachments that go on top of the lens for macro or wide angle, etc. The LCD screen is HORRIBLE don't use that for composing shots too often.

I am waiting for the new models to come out at PMA end of Feb. 2002. At that time E20 should get cheaper hopefully.

You probably must've read a lot of reviews by now. ....

Want Olympus E-20 5MP Digital Camera w/ 4x Optical Zoom Discount?

If you're looking for a great snapshot camera, look somewhere else. This isn't it. This Olympus is a workhorse of a camera good enough to replace your film cameras. After years of shooting 35mm, this is the camera I picked to test the digital frontier. My main concern about going digital was photo quality but I have been impressed. Shoot at (near) top quality, run through Photoshop Elements, download to a CD-R, CompactFlash or SmartMedia and run it through your local photo lab at Ritz or even Wal-Mart. The quality is admirable. I took this camera on vacation to Canada and was not disappointed. Could you do better? If you already have Nikon or Canon lenses, spend the extra cash and buy their latest models. But for the money, you'd be challenged to find a better overall camera that will let you explore your own photographic passions.

The best features:

* True photo-quality at 8x10-plus (gives you room to crop)

* Feels like a real camera

* Bright lens with decent telephoto range

* Variety of settings to let you go totally automatic or manual

The worst features:

* It is somewhat heavy (although the weight does give you a sense of comfort)

* Slow write times to memory

* Small cache that fills up with about 5 high-quality tiffs

* Lens range (without extensions) is a bit limiting, especially outdoors.

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