Olympus D-595

A few months ago, Debbie started having trouble with her Minolta that was about three years old, and we decided to buy another camera to replace it. We went looking, and found the olympus D-595. Five Megapixel, 3X optical zoom, runs on two AA batteries. We use Eveready Lithiums which last a long time, and can be left sitting for a month or three months and still work fine. Unlike NiCad, and NiH batteries which gradually die as they sit. It uses XD memory, which is more expensive than SD or Compact Flash, but you don't need to buy memory cards very often, so the extra $10 for a card isn't really a problem. The D-595 takes ok video, but it is limited to 320x240 resoluton, and I believe it is only 15 frames per second. It also doesn't use a lot of compression, so video takes a lot of flash card memory, around 18 minutes per gigabyte. On the plus side, it has a built in speaker, so you can play videos immediately after you take them, and it is macintosh compatible, and creates .MOV video files. Overall, I would not buy it as a video camera, it just doesn't shine in that area. Fortunately we didn't buy it to take video, but to take stills, and it does a very good job of that. the D-595 is very easy to use, it provides a direct rotary dial to presets for portrait, scenery, night time, scenery+portrait, plus it has even more presets available through the menu system.

One of the truely great things about Olympus cameras, is that most of them will do super macro photography down to about an inch from the lens, and the D-595 is no exception. I don't suppose everyone has a need for macro capability, but if you do, then you should consider an Olympus camera.

Here are some pictures of the D-595, click any image to see a larger version;