Olympus D-560 Zoom (C-350 Zoom)

Opinion: Great camera. needs only 2 AA batteries. I use NiMh rechargeable and it lasts forever! ;)
The 1.8" monitor is big and bright. spot metering is a must in some situations and it works as expacted.
TIP: don't sattle with the basic user's manual. Go for the reference manual (located on the camedia CD)

Opinion: CONSTRUCTION: Upon pulling it from its box for the 1st
time it was smaller than I thought. Its pocket size makes it
ideal for the outdoor types. Its a handsome bugger with its
silver finish and mechanical pop put lens, It also fits in the
hand nicely and the buttons are well made. Their is also a
'ridge' around the LCD display (a nice little feature to prevent
scrathing). The only downpoint is the slider which is made
of plastic, it looks a bit suspicous which I state in the
problems encountred.
FEATURES: Features are very easy to use, there is enough
options to take good pictures in all conditions. They include
scene modes such as portrait, self portrait, landscape,
nightscene and of course auto. There is two light metering
modes, and a you can change the AV brightness balances
from -2.0 to +2.0 (at 0.5 increments). The Olympus has 5
white balance modes and 4 flash settings, which I think is
more than enough. I would have liked to have seen manual
ISO settings but the automatic range of 60-400 is
respectable I guess.
IMAGE QUALITY: aghhh the most important aspect... This
camera takes great pictures outdoors, Im really impressed
with some sunset pictures I've taken! It catches the colours
well, I see no over saturation on hues outdoors. On some of
the pics indoors they looked a bit over orange or over red
under artificial lighting but nothing to drastic. The flash
works well, its not over bright or weak, again maybe it
makes pics a little blue indoors. Overall Images look sharp
and of good resolution even on the low-res setting! but tend
to blur on macro and zoom modes. EASE OF USE: Very
easy to use, you just slide the lens cover and your ready. It
stores your settings from the previous time you used it as
long as you have 'all reset' turned off in the settings. The
menus are easy to cycle through and operate (I was
completeley familair with it after 1 hour of 1st using it!)
VALUE FOR MONEY: The reason I brought this was for the
low cost, a top brand 3.2 megapixels at this price was
unthinkable a year ago. Ive had this camera for 10 days
now and upon reading other reviews I was optimistic on the
battery life, but I can say battery life is VERY GOOD if you use
2000mah rchg batteries. It wil just eat Alkalines like its
supplied with in the box! so get them 2000mah's!

Opinion: Sorry for my English first. I used c-300z before this one som I can compare these cameras. c-350z is smaller, lighter, but well fit in a hand. Is come with a rich package. For the price I bought it (approximately 270 euro), it is a great camera. It has bigger LCD than c-300z. Battery life is long enough, but if you often uses flash and tele-zoom, batteries are gouing out much more quickly.

Opinion: I just wanted to let anyone know who's debating on the Oly 560 Z that I played with it for a few days - still have it, in fact - and compared it to a few others, like the Nikon 3500 and 4500 and Casio Z3. And Fuji 6901Z and A303.

Of all these cameras, I have to say the 560Z takes a better, sharper, picture straight out of the camera, P&S. Amazingly sharp. The Z3 was HORRIBLE - noisy, bad flash, wierd auto-focus, the lot. It was great in every OTHER way - small, big LCD, nice interface, etc., but... no way.

The 3500 took some decent shots, but I needed to clean most up in PS. Not bad, but not as good as the Oly. Plus it hasa a cheap feel to it - rickety, or something. Like an old 110 film camera.

The 4500 - though in a different league, at 4mp - also took nice shots, but still... not as good right out of the camera as the Oly. A little soft, I think. And the camera was defintely NOT pocketable. The Oly is, though barely.

The Fuji 6901Z was crap. Unusable interface and even tripod pics were a bit blurry. Hand-held; forget it. A major bummer as I like Fuji's, typically. The A303 was a big surprise - very nice shots! Lightweight, small, fast, excellent battery life, and very pocketable - and very sharp shots with excellent Fuji color. Really good. The ONLY downside on this gem was it only had ISO 100 speed, which concerned me - right or wrong, since most cameras default to that anyway, but... it just worried me a bit. The A310 due out in June should fix that one problem, and I'm pretty solid on either that or the Nikon SQ for my pocket camera.

Bad things on the 560Z:

* Too heavy.
* I don't like the way it opens and shuts. Takes too long.
* User interface not as good as others, like the Fuji A303/A310.
* The LCD doesn't come on automatically, which is irritating - though there may be a way to set it to do this, (I haven't cracked the manual!).

Good things:

* Great results with no effort.
* Big 1.8 inch LCD
* Small enough to fit in a pocket if you have big pockets, (but not too big).

So, I hope that helps some.

My "real" camera is a Minolta 7Hi - incredible!!!