Digital Cameras : Olympus CAMEDIA C-5500 Sport Zoom

I've only had this camera for about three weeks and haven't had time to check out all the features, but from what I can tell, it has great value. I like the panorama feature, but if you want a truly sharp panorama, it's best to use alternate software that allows you to manually stitch & color-correct the pictures. Most of the time the focus is where it should be, but occasionally it will miscalculate what needs to be in focus. Manual focus, however, is available. There's also a slight delay from when you push the button to when it takes a picture.... more specifically, maybe a quarter-second, sometimes half-second delay. If you want to take extreme close-up pictures, it does a good job if you either have plenty of light or a tripod. However, I'm in no way, shape, or form an expert photographer. There are lots of features and things to learn about this camera. It takes 4 batteries and they die relatively quickly unless you have rechargables or you don't use the monitor or zoom too often. I think it's a great camera. Definitely get at least a 138KB card for it as well. Hide Full Review

I purchased this camera 1 year ago, and can say that I truely like virtually everything about it. I must admit that I was frustrated at first as the owners manual is very limited, and you are forced to look everything up on the Olympus web sight. If you are more technically inclined this probably wouldn't be a problem.I had planned on being more creative with the manual features, but find that it's much easier to use the auto feature and it still takes wonderful pictures. Oh yes ,the reason I say bullet proof is that I have droped this camera twice, and other than a little scrath it has held together. Hide Full Review

The camera maybe isn't to most compact one, but it's easy to handle and has a large, clear LCD screen. It has a lot of options for manual settings, but also a complete automated program for those of us not so experienced in photography. The 5 megapixel resolution is more then you'll ever need, if you're not thinking about blowing up your pictures to giant poster size. The only con I see so far, is that the pictures turn out blurry if you don't use the flash when the lighting is low. Other than that, I'm perfectly happy with my purchase: a lot of quality for a fair price. Probably the best camera in it's price range! Hide Full Review

I never expected to find a camera of this quality and features at the $200 level, but when I saw it on sale at OfficeMax, I snapped it up even though I had no plans to buy a camera for awhile. I'm veeeeery happy with it! Hide Full Review