Nikon CP950 vs Olympus C-2000

-- L. J. DeVito,Jr. (loudjr@home.net), March 18, 1999

Answers

It really depends on your intended use. That will tell you the must have features, the ones you can't live without and the annoyances you can't tolerate. You also need to take into account how long you can wait for the camera, since neither of these is shipping (in the U.S. as of this writing).

In my case, having owned a 900s, I was very happy with the image quality, liked the fact that it was very portable. But I really found the menus hard to use. I didn't like the fact that I had to press two or three different keys to select and delete a single picture, and the menus were almost counterintuitive. I really would have hung onto it, but they announced the 950s ten days into my ownership, and since I had bought retail, I could return it for a full refund.

The 950 should correct many of the features I found hard to deal with and add a bit of resolution and speed up the operation overall. Plus it will give me more direct controls in manual mode than the 950 offered.

When I saw the Olympus is to have an IR remote, I was very, very tempted. When I saw it was using SmartMedia, it no longer had the same appeal. But that's just a function of the way I intend to use the camera: I would like to be able to take a lot of pictures while traveling, without needing to dock to a laptop or a Clik! drive.

Your situation could be entirely different, and that remote could be the Must Have feature, and maybe you couldn't care less about the storage media type. One thing's for sure, you really can't have it all, at any price.

-- Matt Chroust (matthew.chroust@mkg.com), March 26, 1999.