Olympus Digital Camera & Won't Turn On Article

Company: Ritz Camera, .com; Wolf Camera, .com Price: Camera: $11 (way); processing $11 Spec Data: megapixels Pros: A dense, reasonable, no-foolishness, way for first-timers to try out digital photography Cons: Image property is poor; expensive over the long term Bottom road: First-timers are better off buying cheap reusable digital cameras or even getting disposable film cameras and having better processed images delivered on CD.

Full Review

A Disposable Digital Camera

The camera, manufactured by virtuous Digital Technologies, is a no-nonsense affair with basic, simple-to-use controls—a beef switch, obliterate button, and self-timer. The undivided user manual is printed on a sticker on the back.

The camera is simple to use: You turn on the efficacy, frame the effort in the optical viewfinder, and press the shutter release. A tiny LCD screen shows how many shots remain. There's no way to review images, so you don't get the instant fulfillment that's such a big part of digital photography, but if you suspect a picture won't turn out well, you can remove the most modern image. On our tests, image quality was a motley bag. Four- by six-inch prints looked good at first glance, but lacked fine detail and had a commonly low appearance. Closer on-screen examination of the pictures from the provided CD simultaneously surprised and dissatisfied. Color and exposure were more accurate than we expected, but the lack of image detail and shabby quality of the lens were even more perceptible.

For analogy, we duplicated our test shots using a 2-megapixel Olympus D-390 ($120 road). The pictures were mainly sharper and clearer, with much better detail. fixed, the D-390 costs 10 times as much as the Dakota Digital, but prints from the Olympus would be only $ at a Ritz Camera. Even if you threw the Olympus away after 200 pictures, you'd still be beforehand of the game—and you'd have much better pictures, to boot.

As you might think, we discovered several sites dedicated to creating a USB connection for the camera, letting you reuse it and eliminate the cost of thought processing. This is one way to get more for your riches, but lucid Digital claims that images it processes will be of higher nature, and that, in any case, it will presently release a model that incorporates stronger refuge measures aimed at preventing this sort of hacking.

On the surface, the disposable camera looks like an nominal, no-commitment introduction to digital photography. But at about $ per print, it seems more like an exorbitant device. You'd be better off buying a low-end, nondisposable digital camera, or, if you don't acquire the cash, buying a disposable film camera and getting your processed images back on a CD.