Jim Ziogas
New member
I have been using an old Epson camera for almost 4 years. The camera has been good, but it was getting long in the tooth and showing a lot of shortcomings. I was looking for a pocket camera that my wife could primarily use right out of her pocketbook for the times that the kids were doing something cute.
I was immediately impressed with the E550 for the speed. The near instant on nature (less than a second) and the speed of the snap once the shutter button is pressed is amazing compared to the old Epson that routinely allowed the kids to be halfway across the room before even the autofocus kicked in. With the E550, I can have the camera turned on and a picture taken in less than 2 seconds.
The features of this camera are also impressive given the small stature. Perhaps it's commonplace in today's pocket digicam world, but coming from a 4-year old camera I feel that the ease of use of this camera is impressive considering the options given. For example, having both the standard scene mode selections (portraits, landscape, night, and sports) is nice, but also having the shutter priority and the aperature priority modes is a huge bonus.
The pictures seem to be pretty good. Colors are not as sharp as other pocket cameras I tried such as a 3 MP Olympus. But overall, having a 6 MP point and shoot makes up for it. The ability to crop down into a specific subject and still achieve outstanding printed results is fantastic.
The construction is fairly good. There seems to be a little wiggle around the pop-up flash, but it's not bad. Otherwise, the metallic material feels solid, and the handgrip is very nice. The camera, even though it's quite small, fits in my huge hands well and never feels slippery. Controls are well placed and thought out.
I know I overpayed for the camera at a local camera store (by a good margin) compared to online merchants. And that's why I rated the value at 4.5 instead of 5. Otherwise, I think we will be very happy with this camera.
Problems:
None so far. It does absolutely eat batteries, though. I tried some older NiMHs that lasted about 10 minutes. Regular alkalines were even worse. The newer NiMHs that came with the camera seem to be holding up well. The camera has been under pretty heavy use for at least 24 hours how with no signs of a weak battery.
I was immediately impressed with the E550 for the speed. The near instant on nature (less than a second) and the speed of the snap once the shutter button is pressed is amazing compared to the old Epson that routinely allowed the kids to be halfway across the room before even the autofocus kicked in. With the E550, I can have the camera turned on and a picture taken in less than 2 seconds.
The features of this camera are also impressive given the small stature. Perhaps it's commonplace in today's pocket digicam world, but coming from a 4-year old camera I feel that the ease of use of this camera is impressive considering the options given. For example, having both the standard scene mode selections (portraits, landscape, night, and sports) is nice, but also having the shutter priority and the aperature priority modes is a huge bonus.
The pictures seem to be pretty good. Colors are not as sharp as other pocket cameras I tried such as a 3 MP Olympus. But overall, having a 6 MP point and shoot makes up for it. The ability to crop down into a specific subject and still achieve outstanding printed results is fantastic.
The construction is fairly good. There seems to be a little wiggle around the pop-up flash, but it's not bad. Otherwise, the metallic material feels solid, and the handgrip is very nice. The camera, even though it's quite small, fits in my huge hands well and never feels slippery. Controls are well placed and thought out.
I know I overpayed for the camera at a local camera store (by a good margin) compared to online merchants. And that's why I rated the value at 4.5 instead of 5. Otherwise, I think we will be very happy with this camera.
Problems:
None so far. It does absolutely eat batteries, though. I tried some older NiMHs that lasted about 10 minutes. Regular alkalines were even worse. The newer NiMHs that came with the camera seem to be holding up well. The camera has been under pretty heavy use for at least 24 hours how with no signs of a weak battery.