I've been looking at the Olympus D400z vs the Canon A50 and my only concern is that UBID sells tons of refurbished D400Zs weekly (tons=around 30 weekly.) which leads me to believe they have some design flaws. Is this a legitimate concern? I've never seen Canons refurbished, but maybe I'm not looking in the right place either.

-- Dan M (Qikslvr@Bellatlantic.net), July 19, 1999

Answers

I purchased a D400z and was pleased with the image quality with the exception of the way it handled "purples". This flaw could not be corrected by adjustments to white balance or other camera based functions. The main problem is, it,(blue correction) cannot be corrected with software without compromising the integrity of the image. I'm sure a great number of customers have noticed this and returned the cameras. Thus, the overabundance of refurbs.

-- K Baker (KB147@aol.com), July 20, 1999.

I purchased three Olympus 400-Z cameras for my field engineers. Within 2 months two were broken and have been at Olympus for repairs for about 2 months now. We found the battery port and lens access covers to be fragile. The camera is not durable enough for commercial and constant use. We found the picture quality excellent for our purposes however.

I would appreciate any suggestions on durable cameras of at least 1.3 megapixel quality/resolution.

-- Terry Fraser (tfraser@ms.com), July 28, 1999.