My first impression when I saw this camera was that it was by far the coolest camera I’d ever seen. Two years later, and this still holds true. Everyone was impressed whenever I’d take it out for pictures. This was my fourth Olympus camera and all the previous ones had been great. Beautiful pictures, ease of use, long battery life, and cool looking.

Unfortunately this camera did not meet my expectations. I loved the 7 megapixels and big screen, but the pictures were just not up to par. Whenever I took a big scenic shot with a blue sky or water, the blue was always grainy and the pixels were not fluid. Many times, my pictures would look fine on the camera’s screen, but when I got home they’d turn out to be blurry. After awhile I got into the habit of taking multiple shots of the same scene just in case one turned out blurry. The worst part of this camera is that if there is even a little sunlight, you can’t see the screen so you can’t tell exactly what you’re taking a picture of (and there’s no viewfinder so the screen is the only thing you can use). It’s really a huge problem.

In terms of taking pictures of people… in door pictures just don’t look good. I think the flash might be too severe because everyone looks paler and the pictures are usually very overexposed. My friends complained about this to me all the time, but there was nothing I could do. Tons of indoor pictures come out blurry… and I couldn’t take multiple pictures of me or my friends in the same pose all the time because that gets annoying. I used to delete all the blurry ones, but I kept having to delete ones that could have been good, so I eventually kept the blurry ones as normal pictures. I love taking pictures and I finally realized that there is no reason for me (or anyone) to settle for such a poor camera. Listen, I used to love Olympus cameras, but I hated this last camera. I’ve read tons of reviews on the newer models hoping they’d be better… but I’ve had to let Olympus go and move on to Canon. Maybe they’ll revitalize their company, but right now I’d stay away from their digital cameras.

If you’re looking for a new camera, read my review on the Canon PowerShot SD870 IS… and then go buy it, I promise you’ll be happy.