11 out of 11 people found this review helpful.
Best Digital Camera in class
Date of Review: Apr 5, 2007
The Bottom Line: Really the best buy for the top end of digital cameras- all the features needed, quality and performance for current street price- nice.
You've reached the summit on digital cameras with this product. I've used Olympus pretty steadily since digital cameras first hit the market. 2.2 MP, 3. MP and 4.40 MP.
Each of those cameras had excellent ease of use and were pretty durable and could take a little travel punishment just fine. I looked around long and hard this time around to find the right digital camera as I had made a decision to not press into the price range of digital SLR- I still think that price point is too high despite my frequent picture taking and penchant for quality output.
The S3 IS won out this time over Olympus in terms of price and overall feature set offered for the price. I shopped Ritz, Fry's Circuit City, Best Buy but in the end once I knew what I wanted- went to Costco on line and got the camera for about $350.00. No one throwing in a low end color printer I don't need (really bad move to let something like that influence your buy- that would be a purchase to solve a different problem.)
The interface is good- much of the symbology is universal if not intuitive. I tend to use Auto, Landscape, night scene modes the most. I have a Canon Optura Pi digital video recorder so I'm never inclined to shoot vid clips with my digital camera and in fact would prefer if they would leave that feature out of the digital camera but who knows one day I might change my mind and use it to satisfaction.
I like the flexibility of the LCD display- you can turn it in and keep it from getting damaged. Fip it up and have it centered below the viewfinder or swing it out to the left like a video recorder- I think it's best dead center. Personal preference I suppose. I've got big fingers so I didn't want the microscopic buttons and toggles- this has perfectly sized controls, without looking I can toggle between picture taking and viewing, tap the off button when done and easily hit the menu button and scroll thru and pick settings as needed. olympus menus might be a little better organized but that could be my bias from being so accustomed to their layout. Canon has given us all that we need for this rig. Easy to change out rechargeable batteries- that last a suprisingly long time
compared to my last camera. The SD card is perfect but this camera will use multimediacards too. You can delete pictures in view mode from an external control vs going inside and traversing menu selections. The flash is modular and stays cradled until you pop it up when needed. I sometimes like the look of a picture in natural light but this camera always seems to recommend the flash even though it isn't needed.
Picture quality is exceptional. I view on computer, CD, DVD and produce prints via shutterfly and I really like the quality I'm getting from this camera. Very nice color, rich tones, no tint like some cameras I've seen yield (bluish usually). At 6.0 mega pixels you are getting print quality equivalent to 35 mm so don't get sucked into 10-12 megapixels unless you need to make giant posters. At 6.0 I usually have to reimage in Corel photopaint to size down before emailing to friends/family. Last two things I will comment on is the digital zoom and the image stabilization. The latter is definitely contributing to the quality photos. The zoom is excellent. I shot pictures of Andy Murray at the SAP Open and got head shoulder shots of him despite the fact that he was an easy 75-100 yards out. You have to hold steady though- I don't think image stabilization helps in this mode- a little movement and you will blur.
I like the super macro too- I've got some bug pictures that look as if me and camera were shrunk to size to get them- nice feature. The only thing that this camera needs is some more time which I never have enough of to learn all the other features and to take more photos.
