Great Olympus FE-20 Camera Publications

PROS: Very small, lightweight, decent outdoor picture quality, average to above average color saturation, large LCD for its size, easy to use menus and buttons.

CONS: Lens is noisy extending/retracting and stays open while reviewing pictures which is bad because of fingerprints on the lens when someone grabs it. Indoor picture quality is very grainy in all modes and has a lot of artifacts. Image stabilization appears to be a scene mode, meaning you can’t turn it on while in another scene mode (night/portrait/indoor/etc), you have to choose between stabilization or one of the other modes. Olympus claims this camera supports MicroSD cards, but in reality it only supports XD cards, but includes a MicroSD->XD adapter that you can put your MSD card into. This makes it one more step if you like to remove your MSD card to use in a card reader. The USB connector is on the bottom of the camera, which was a really bad choice by Olympus because you have to set the camera on the LCD or the lens to plug in the cord.

OTHER THOUGHTS: I got this camera for about sixty bucks on sale, which is the only reason it’s worth it to me. The outdoor pictures are not as crisp and clean as my Canon cameras (A80 powershot, elph, etc). Actually they’re not even as crisp as my old Fuji Finepix 1400z, but they look good anyway, and print quality isn’t bad. Indoor shots are another story completely. I adjusted the iso and picture modes all over the place and I couldn’t get a clean picture using flash indoors. Every single picture was grainy. To understand the grainy I’m talking about, take a mid range point and shoot camera like a Canon Powershot and set it to iso 800 no flash in a dark room with a lamp or two illuminating your subject, or at a concert with no flash and high iso. That’s what this looks like on iso 100 in a somewhat well lit room using flash indoors.

CONCLUSION: Overall this is a nice little camera if you can get it for 80 or less and don’t do a lot of indoor picture taking. I wouldn’t recommend this camera if you’re looking to take good quality indoor pictures that you want to archive or print for years to come. I would give this camera 4 stars if the pictures were as good as my A80, but because of that, 3 stars. I would only give it 1-2 stars if the outdoor quality was as bad as the indoor.

Well there’s good and bad with this camera. One thing is if you set the picture quality on “normal” you will get somewhat fuzzy or blurry photos like some others have said, although your picture files won’t be so large size in megabytes. With quality set on “fine” the pictures are decent, but file size is large, almost too large. Colors on some photos sometimes come out too reddish. Outdoor movies can come out horrible, very red, overall this is not a good movie camera, Samsungs tend to be very good for movies. Battery life is very good, drain it at least once and then fully charge, it will improve. Good small size and fairly easy to use, everything else is OK.

This is a hard case with no flexibility; the camera has to be “squeezed” into it,although it states that it is meant for my particular camera. I will not use it. You get what you pay for.

There I was sitting in the office trying to think about how we were going to sell these Olympus FE-46 cameras. I mean they’re a nice camera for the price and all, but there isn’t much to make it really stand out in the low end of cameras.

So I went down to Bob’s office–that guy in marketing who does a pretty good job selling out stuff. I said, “Hey Bob, how do we sell these things?” He asked me which one this one was. I replied, “It’s the under $100 one all the nice features.”

He replied, “oh, the one we make the customer either buy xd memory or more expensive micro-sd cards for?”

“yeah, but it has 12mp and a cool 5x optical zoom”, I retorted.

“Well if you could take decent pictures at any other time than high noon in a land where time stands still, those would be nice features”, he snorted.

Now I think he was making fun of the fact that it’s easy to get blurry grainy pictures from the camera, but you’re not going to get optical image stabilization or a really good lense at this price (yeah, you get digital image stabilization, but don’t let that fool you).

I tried to think of a come back, but before I could he continued: “There’s just nothing to make it stand out in a crowd. The features don’t sound any different than anyone else. And it looks right out of 1995–and for me, 1995 wasn’t a year I want memories from.”

Frustrated, I resorted to name-calling, “Ok, Mr. Smarty-Pants, how do we sell this thing then???”

He answered, “It’s all about perceived value. Let’s throw in a storage box that costs us all of a dollar. Then we’ll throw in a case, which (with the current slave labor conversion factor) also costs us about a dollar.”

“Hmm,” I said, “That doesn’t sound bad, but why would you buy a box with a camera?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he answered, “They add perceived value. In fact, let’s throw in a box of crayons and 6 months of free coloring book prints!”

I got a little scared as I saw costs addings up. “Slow down buddy, can we really afford to include that?”, I asked.

“Don’t worry,” he replied. “The prints are ones you print on your computer. Not only that, but they normally come free with a 64 pack of crayons!!! It’s perceived value at its best! And your camera will come up when people search for 64 crayons.”

Wow, that Bob in marketing is either a genius, or an idiot. But, I’ll try anything once. So here’s your camera, box, case, and crayons. It may only be an average camera at a good price point, but look at all the crap you get with it!

edit 12/13/09: accidently put digital zoom where it should have been optical. Thanks Jack Olmstead!

Ok so this was a gift for my friend. We needed a camera with at least 8 pixels, and USES NO BATTERIES (charges are best)

and we found this.

It was great. and the seller sent it very quickly. I think we ordered it on friday and I got it monday. lol

PROS: Very small, lightweight, decent outdoor picture quality, average to above average color saturation, large LCD for its size, easy to use menus and buttons.

CONS: Lens is noisy extending/retracting and stays open while reviewing pictures which is bad because of fingerprints on the lens when someone grabs it. Indoor picture quality is very grainy in all modes and has a lot of artifacts. Image stabilization appears to be a scene mode, meaning you can’t turn it on while in another scene mode (night/portrait/indoor/etc), you have to choose between stabilization or one of the other modes. Olympus claims this camera supports MicroSD cards, but in reality it only supports XD cards, but includes a MicroSD->XD adapter that you can put your MSD card into. This makes it one more step if you like to remove your MSD card to use in a card reader. The USB connector is on the bottom of the camera, which was a really bad choice by Olympus because you have to set the camera on the LCD or the lens to plug in the cord.

OTHER THOUGHTS: I got this camera for about sixty bucks on sale, which is the only reason it’s worth it to me. The outdoor pictures are not as crisp and clean as my Canon cameras (A80 powershot, elph, etc). Actually they’re not even as crisp as my old Fuji Finepix 1400z, but they look good anyway, and print quality isn’t bad. Indoor shots are another story completely. I adjusted the iso and picture modes all over the place and I couldn’t get a clean picture using flash indoors. Every single picture was grainy. To understand the grainy I’m talking about, take a mid range point and shoot camera like a Canon Powershot and set it to iso 800 no flash in a dark room with a lamp or two illuminating your subject, or at a concert with no flash and high iso. That’s what this looks like on iso 100 in a somewhat well lit room using flash indoors.

CONCLUSION: Overall this is a nice little camera if you can get it for 80 or less and don’t do a lot of indoor picture taking. I wouldn’t recommend this camera if you’re looking to take good quality indoor pictures that you want to archive or print for years to come. I would give this camera 4 stars if the pictures were as good as my A80, but because of that, 3 stars. I would only give it 1-2 stars if the outdoor quality was as bad as the indoor.