Still great after all these years.

I bought my first C2100 in 2002. It was stolen 3 years later but I found a mint used one at a reasonable price, so I bought it. The last 4 years I have been using a higher MP DSLR, but I still use the C2100 on occasion. I transfer all of my digital pics from the camera to my computer, and when I view all of my pics I am amazed at the quality of those from the C2100 as compared to those from the DSLR. Why Olympus never brought out upgraded versions of the C2100 is beyond me. If they had, I would have gotten one for sure.

Mr. Jim LG

- Just a few words to tell you how much I agree with your thoughts & feelings about the Olympus C210UZ. A few friends who have the same camera & I refer to it as "my Uzzie". The camera in addition to being excellent has almost a personal feeling to it- when I pick it up I feel as tho' I am shaking hands with a good friend.

Two years ago I blew out the electronics & the camera sat idle for that time while I wrote to several camera repair companies in the US, mainly in the UK & a several in Europe. I am in Portugal & met an x-Olympus employee who recognized me on the street. We chatted a bit & I told him of my misfortune.  He told me of someone in Lisbon who might be able to fix it for me, I followed his suggestion & 3 days ago I had my Uzzie back in  my hands & together we are raring to go. My Sony A3000 goes into forced retirement immediately now that my Uzzie is once more serviceable.

Just wanted to touch base with another lover of that particular camera. Continue to enjoy yours, I know I will love using mine again.

Marvin Baer

Never knew about it, but that is a nice bright lens for that much zoom power. Cool looking too.

What did it cost back then?

elliottnewcomb wrote:

Never knew about it, but that is a nice bright lens for that much zoom power. Cool looking too.

What did it cost back then?

It depends. New it was over $1k. However many of us got it when Olympus had a fire sale and dumped it at CompUSA (remember them?) in the US and perhaps other stores abroad for $500.  At the time, Olympus needed to raise some cash and the world had moved on to 3 megapixel cameras.

However, in terms of image quality, while it only had 2 megapixels, those megapixels were sharp, and the C-2100UZ (or UZI as we called it) often times came out with better pictures than the 3 megapixel cameras that succeeded it.  I printed up many 8x10" images with the UZI.  The trick was to frame the shot in the camera, because you had zero room for cropping (other than to trim the edges to adjust the aspect ratio).

While I still have mine, and keep it charged, I haven't shot with it in over a year. I think the last time I took it out, the pictures were corrupted, so the smart media cards may be failing.

That being said, I have 10,564 shots with it in my albums (23.12%) since I got it in 2002.  Most of the shots were in 2002-2004, with usage tapering off after I got the E-1 and later DSRL/mirrorless cameras.

Once I had gone to multiple cameras, the UZI had a nice niche due to the 10x zoom for a vacation camera.  One of the reasons I got the Stylus-1 was that it was a more modern version of the UZI, fixing the one problem I had with it.  The problem was the camera started at 38mm equivalent field of view, and that is just too long for many indoor shots where you can't back up.

One other thing that the UZI had going for it was the Olympus forum back in the day was a lot more fun.  Back then we weren't into deep diving into specs comparison or zooming in 100% to look at pictures of brick walls, but it was more of a community that shared our pictures and experiences.

And here I was, feeling smug for using a 2012 XZ-2 and a 2013 E-P5. "We are unworthy! We are unworthy!"