Olympus FE-370

Opinion: About J Ledbetter's comment on 18 Mar 09 - 'For some reason that I can't figure out, when you put it in Program mode, it only allows for 5 mega pixels.' - Obviously he has set Fine Zoom ON, if you set Fine Zoom OFF 8 mega pixels is available in P mode.

Opinion: Overall, a good camera. Being an Olymopus fan, the menu has a small learning curve, as they are all very similiar as far as that goes. Nice compact size, good sized display and no AAA' s needed. Nice setup with the rechargeable Lithium-ion.

Opinion: From the specs this looked a good camera, 5 x optical zoom, easy menu system, dual memory format and well constructed body.

I bought this to compare against a similar spec point and shoot camera,the Fuji J50 and found the following...

The main differences I found were the following:

-The J50 has an easier menu system
-The Olympus is built better
-The J50 takes SD & XD
-The Olympus takes Micro SD & XD
-The Olympus's Flash can be accidentally covered with your finger when taking a picture whereas the J50 doe not have this problem
-The Olympus's flash can reach further than the J50

Now when you search for reviews on the J50, like me you will find review after review of people saying it is a step backward due to the noise. But when testing it against the FE-370 it was supprisingly BETTER than the Olympus, even when going through the manual modes to lower the ISO settings, the J50 performed better and the Olympus had a coarser grain of noise.

The J50 is sharper on focus too although can take a few attempts to lock on to a target. Where as the Olympus is quick to lock on but is likely to be blurred when the shot is taken.