I am looking at the Oly 600L, Kodak DC260 and Nikon Coolpix 900S. Pros and cons of each? I have read reviews until my eyeballs fell out of my head. Any advice?

-- Marianne Marinovich (marianne@edrama.com), December 08, 1998

Answers

I don't think the DC260 is in the same class as the Olympus or the Nikon. My father has the Olympus and loves it. A big pro is that it's an SLR, (what you see is what you get). However, we've had big trouble focusing on anything with low light. By low light we mean in a reasonably cozy restaurant, romantic lighting, but not dark... There are supposedly fixed focus distances, but I didn't know how to use the camera well enough :).

Another minus in my mind is that it's large. It is not a compact camera. It's the size of a typical 35 mm camera. Finally, the last minus is that it uses smartmedia, not compact flash.

Compact flash has much higher capacities.

That contrasts with the Nikon 900s, which I'm getting for Christmas. It's slightly cheaper, it takes compact flash media, it takes comparable images, it has a smaller footprint.

Con is that it's not an SLR camera, but it does have a viewfinder...

Toshi

-- Toshi Takeuchi (ttoshi@netscape.net), December 09, 1998.

It's probably going to be hard to get a clear answer on which of your three choices is the best. It's a little like asking a large group of strangers what movie they'd recommend...

I've had the Oly D-600L for a year, and absolutely love it. It's practically an extension of my arm because I take it everywhere with me. To me, it's like using a regular point-and-shoot camera with ISO- 100 film. I'm very satisfied with the Oly, and don't plan to replace it any time soon.

The things I don't like about the camera, but have learned to live with, are: - Poor performance in low light (forget night cityscape shots!) - Weak flash (makes photos in low light look very flat) - The flash seems to make people blink more, especially the red eye reduction feature. (Yeah, it reduces red eye because their eyes are closed!) - The camera's ability to capture detail shows every skin imperfection in close-up face shots.

I'm not a professional photographer, nor an Adobe Photoshop expert, so when I was in the market to buy a digital camera, I looked for one that could give me the best "what you see is what you get" images for the price range.

I regularly compare pictures taken by various digital cameras, and for under $1,000, the Oly D-600L still appears to provide the most accurate color with sharp detail.

A great site for comparing images taken by the cameras you're interested in is http://www.imaging-resource.com/IMCOMP/COMPS01.HTM.

Another useful digital camera site is http://www.steves-digicams.com/.

My recommendation is to find a store with a good return policy, so if the camera you buy ends up not being the right one for you, you can exchange it for a different one.

-- Angelina Bostwick (abostwic@harris.com), December 10, 1998.