I'm seriously thinking about purchasing the Oly D500L from Wal-mart online for $449. From review and comments, it looks like a great deal for this price. Is there another camera in this price range that should be considered?

Please hurry!! I don't know when this deal will expire! Thanks

-- David (dcoutts@mindspring.com), March 04, 1999

Answers

Sorry for the slow response, hope you didn't lose the deal. My personal digicam is the Oly D-600L, and I love it. (Although it can't stand up to some of the whizzy new units now appearing on the scene.) The D-500L took great pictures too, at a slightly smaller image size, and with a slightly different zoom range (a bit more toward the telephoto). The thing that would really distinguish the D-500L is that it's a true SLR camera, so you see through the same lens the CCD looks through. Very handy when using with accessory lenses like macro adapters, etc. At $449, I think it's a great deal, especially for a camera with a true optical zoom lens. If you don't care about zoom, the Fuji MX-500 and Toshiba PDR-M1 can still be found for $300-350. I think our advertiser State Street Direct has MX-500s for $349 these days. For my money though, the optical zoom is well worth an extra $100. Hope this helps.

-- Dave Etchells (web@imaging-resource.com), March 09, 1999.

The oly 500 has the best image quality in its resolution class, better than many cameras with higher resolution. I guess its not the most compact, and doesn't have huge storage, but it does have optical zoom. For web stuff I guess it'd be great.

For its time, olympus 600 was the image quality leader. check this oly 500/600 faq. http://www.leesoft.com/d600l/OlympusFAQ.html

-- Benoit (foo@bar.com), March 11, 1999.

Before you buy the $449 Oly D500L from Wal-mart. You might also want to consider looking at Damark. They have a members price of a refurbished unit for $349.

-- Brian Potts (brianp@primary.net), March 13, 1999.