Customer Reviews
Disappointed!
While this camera has some nice features for an amateur, the bottom line I look for is quality on the pixel level -- this camera fails miserably in that department. Even at the highest quality/resoulution setting, the photos have a very high degree of pixelization, which is a terrible disappointment!! I work in Photoshop, and wouldn't dream of using this camera for quality work.
Great quality, great LCD, great battery life, great low-light pics
I'm a rank amateur when it comes to actually taking pictures, but one of my considerations was getting nice, high resolution images for printing and modifying in Photoshop. After a few months of regular use, this is a purchase I have no regrets about, and would gladly repeat.
The picture quality is amazing, and the amount of detail you can see with full 8MP images taken on a bright day is breathtaking. Alternately, even setting the camera to image stabilization (which limits the images to 5MP) still lets me take beautiful pics, w/o the flash, using indoor lighting.
It's open and ready to shoot almost immediately, small enough to slip into my pocket (though I do have a little belt holster now, which ties in somewhat to my Batman toolbelt obsession), has a HUGE, beautiful LCD that works fine under sunlight, and I don't find myself missing the lack of a physical viewfinder. With an LCD this good, I'd never use it anyway.
In short, this is a good camera that takes good pictures, even in VERY low light, and combined with my photo printer (HP PhotoSmart 8250, also very nice), I'll never need film again. It doesn't have all the settings a pro will need, but if you're looking for a digital SLR, check out Olympus' Evolt E-500. I got that one for my wife, who actually knows what she's doing, based partially on how happy I am with this model.
After a week
I switched my old Minolta Z1 with this amazing camera. My main criterias were good results in night shots and compact size with best optics.
Stylus 800 didn't fail me in any of this criteria, contrariwise it provide me with even more functions I honoured by really snowy weather in Alps (it is water resistant) and with those Scene modes it's making even better pictures than I can manualy set.
Pros:
- great resolution (you can enlarge small point on the picture and can see what it realy is)
- good autofocus indoor and by room-light
- water resistance (no more stress from rain, waves or anything else)
- heavy metal body
- very fast 1st picture (lens go out in a wink)
- large LCD with great resolution
- very useful ISO 1600 function by evening scenes or fast moving scenes (only 3MPix, but thats enough for travelers like me) without "snow" on pictures
- good flash distance for a compact
- good battery lifetime (I can fill my 1GB card on 1 charge)
Cons:
- slow picture download to computer (USB 1.0 only - with my 1GB card it takes a while - about 15-20 min.)
- slow video (only 15 frames ps) with only digital zoom during recording
- flash recharging sometimes takes a while (about 5 sec)
- leather bag delivered in accessory kit without pocket for second battery (where do you want to lose it again)
- without "anti-red-eye" flash it makes almost always red eyes, but there is software correction available directly in camera or in included software
- software included for managing pictures is slow and too functionally, what leads to dificulty (I lost some pictures after I made a red eye correction and tried to save it - result was .jpg file but corrupted, really unconvenient bug)
