Olympus SP-310

Opinion: I love this little camera, I wish that Olympus still carried a camera similar to this along with the Stylus line. My only regret is not buying the SP 350 instead of the SP 310. Having the hotshoe would be great to use with my FL36 flash.

Opinion: this camera is a good learning unit, by experimenting on manual settings you will understand how things works... like arperture, shutter, iso, etc. using auto is not that bad at all. im happy and satisfied with this sp310!!!
when i bought my sp310, it comes with 4pcs 2100m ap gp rechargeable batt. with charger, 256mb olympus memory card, jacket ( no option for sizes), photography magazine, 23 percent discounts ITS ON SALE , AND A NOKIA 1110i CELLPHONE!!! what do you think guys... is it a goood deal??? hehehe

Opinion: When my old Olympus D-360, a 1.3 megapixel camera started to die, I knew it was time for something a bit newer. I think that purchasing the SP-310 is one of the best purchases that I have made.

The camera is small and light, but quite sturdy. Only the battery compartment could be a bit more secure, but it locks in and is in no danger at all of opening up. I use the camera with standard rechargeable 2500mAh batteries. They last for plenty of pictures, though they show the "low battery" warning quite early. It takes the batteries some time to charge the unusually bright flash. The flash, while bright is quite neutral and works extremely well. When it causes red-eye, the built-in red-eye reduction is surprisingly effective. The xD card is pretty slow and hinders some of the cameras performance, but I'm not sure how much you'll be using RAW mode where this slowness makes itself known. Tapping the shutter button allows you to almost instantly take another shot while it is still recording the first one, and outside of sequence mode I have found it impossible to fill the buffer.

All of that said, I think it is difficult to find a better camera in this price range. With a wide shutter speed, aperature, and ISO range it can at times feel more like a dSLR than a Prosumer model. The LCD screen is beautiful and bright, and it has a viewfinder for those days that are sunny enough to make you want to use it.

Though at 400 ISO the noise is noticeable, it is fairly easy on the eye and a selective gaussian blur takes care of it quite nicely. Color is particulary accurate and restrained which gives the pictures a pleasantly professional feel.

Even in poor lighting the camera performs very well. I recently took some excellent shots in just candlelight. I was pleasantly surprised at the sharpness and detail. I don't notice any strong color casting in any of my pictures, though I often soften the blue channel by changing the center in my levels dialogue.

I have absolutely no negative to say about the lens. It is of excellent quality has no noticeable distortion and yields some truely magnificent macro pictures. With an optical macro mode as close as 2cm, I can use this camera like a microscope.

The focus is also quite fast and accurate, even without the built in AF Assist lamp. In my personal use of Nikon and Canon cameras of similar price range, neither is as speedy or accurate at focusing as my Olympus.

No camera is perfect, and this one has its drawbacks, but I have to remember that I was in the market for a $300 camera, not a $900 or more dSLR. What I love is that despite the price and size, more often than not this camera yields pictures that are worthy of a much pricier dSLR.

The camera accels at exactly what it should, taking pictures.

If you would like to see some of my photography with this camera, visit http:// photography.d-site.net. My pictures there are of very much reduced quality for bandwidth reasons, and though some are edited, many are not. You can find EXIF data on most pictures to get some idea of the settings used.

Opinion: The SP-310 has excellent picture quality, with AUTO mode, full manual control including focus. The iso200 images are very good and iso400 is very usable (better than iso400 on my 4 MPixel Nikon cp4500) . The 2.5" LCD is very nice, but on the ski slope you will use the optical viewfinder instead. The menu system is excellent, but deep. Once you settle on your preferred camera configuration, it can be saved in MyMode 1 through 4. Very compact, not as small as my Minolta X20, but all key functions can be controlled with the right hand alone. One of the neater features is the interval mode: The camera will shoot up to 99 pictures, separated by up to 99 minutes (programable). I use it to take star constellation pictures, which are then co-registered using the free IRIS software.

Revisit after 3 months and over 1000 pictures:

Excellent camera.

If you use the SP310 as P/S in Auto you miss most of its good features, but you have to read the manual. Most of my pictures are now taking using the bracketing (BKT) mode set to -0.7, 0, +0. EV with SQ1 (3.4 MPixel). Each picture is about 0.6 Mbytes. In BKT they are taken at 0.2, 1.4 and 2.4 seconds after shutter release. This setting is saved as MyMode1. Very handy.

There are cases in very bright outdoors conditions, when the LCD is almost unreadable, but that is when I can fall back on the optical viewfinder. (Note the complaints with LCD only cameras elsewhere on the DPReview forums).

Very nice results at iso400. The camera does little noise suppression on its own, which is good, since the free(NeatImage) and commercial noise reduction programs work better than even the best in-camera software. Images intentionally underexpose by one stop in iso400 (i.e. effectively shot at iso800) can be corrected in PhotoShop with very reasonable results.

Revisit after 7 month. The picture counter is approaching 5000 photos taken while traveling on three continents.
99% of the pictures are technically excellent (i.e. well exposed and focused). Wish 1% were good pictures, rather than photo diary quality, but this is not the camera's fault. Very nice camera with all the manual controls the few time it is needed in a very compact picture at an incredible price (under $200 August 2006).

Opinion: I LOVE my SP-310.

Its a wonderful camera, extremely light, compact, has LCD and an viewfinder BOTH in such a compact form factor. Uses standard AA batteries is a HUGE plus, since a proprietary battery is a major concern in my SD300.

Image quality is at par (if not better) than the canon cameras! Oly has a firmware upgrade available which resolves the noise issues. Make sure you do it if you're facing that problem.

The flash is very strong and was able to light almost all objects in an entirely dark landscape till the range of 15'.

All in all, I am planning to keep this camera for a very long time unless I lose it or break it apart ;).

Opinion: This camera "eats" batteries. Went through three sets of 2200 & 2300 mAh ni-mh batteries in less than an hour and a half. Used only the optical viewfinder in an attempt make a difference. Did not help. Note the November 21st review in this forum. Several of the LCD menu examples show a red, low battery life indicator. Three of them in just one page.

Returned the camera.

Opinion: A camera is only as good as the image it takes.

The lens is astonishly well built. And there's no purple fringing I can see. This I loved.

The construction is well done. For plastic.

Color saturation is very good.

The inbuilt flash is acceptable.

The camera is very easy to use for beginners or pros. The inclusion of so many controls and settings suggests Olympus is selling this to prosumers...

...But the amount of image noise is unacceptably high. It renders the RAW format POINTLESS when you're looking at more noise grain than salt spilt from its shaker!! 100ISO on this thing is comparable to 400ISO on a film camera, as far as I'm concerned. And the cost of the camera ($350) means you need to buy and develop over 800 film images before you make up the price difference. (using Fuji Reala 100... using a typical off-the-shelf 400ISO film, the amount of pics to take would more than double!)

In short, no prosumer would even want to consider this overpriced toy.

My Sony Mavica CD500 that recently died, a 5mp camera, had far less noise than this model, a 7mp camera! How dare a three YEAR old camera outperform a brand spankin' new model in terms of image quality? This is a joke on the consumer, pure and simple.

Forget Olympus, they're playing the megapixel game on you. Don't fall for it.

Here is a comparison of the noise. Guess which one is the Olympus? (I used virtually no compression as I did not want to exaggerate how bad the Olympus is.)

i4.photobucket.com/albums/y104/flibble72/noise.jpg (add in the h t t p : / / prefix before the i4 when copying it into the address bar)

The one on the left is the Sony. A bit on the cool side, but the noise isn't as chaotic and blends in very well. The Olympus gets the color tone right but the noise is garish and atrocious. While not as easily seen in a real picture, it's still there and noise removal procedures only hamper the sharpness.