Digital Camera Review

Digital Camera Review

The Olympus C-5500 made its way to shelves in February, following its unveiling the previous month at the extravagant Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The C-5500 is quite versatile for its $349.99 price tag. It packs 5.1 effective megapixels on its 1/1.8-inch type CCD and pairs it with a TruePic Turbo Image Processor. 15 scene modes are on hand to augment the selection of automatic and manual modes. This Camedia contains a 5x optical zoom lens, which is a welcome step up from the industry rut of 3x optical zoom. The longer zoom is nicely complemented with an image stabilization system, making for smoother QVGA-quality movie recordings. A 2-inch LCD screen with live histogram display rounds out the gamut of options offered by the Olympus Camedia C-5500 digital camera.
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Picture Quality / Size Options (7.0)
There are plenty of resolution options to choose from: 2592 x 1944 (SHQ), 2592 x 1728 (SHQ 3:2), 2288 x 1712 (SQ1), 2048 x 1536 (SQ1), 1600 x 1200 (SQ1), 1280 x 960 (SQ2), 1024 x 768 (SQ2), and 640 x 480 (SQ2). Images can be taken at High or Normal compression and in JPEG or TIFF format.

Picture Effects Mode (6.0)
The sharpness, contrast, and color phase can all be adjusted in the camera before and after shooting. Images can also be tinted to either Black & White or Sepia tones when desired. Black & White and Sepia are available as color modes in the ambiguously labeled Function option in the camera’s recording menu. The bad news: the Sepia mode looks moldy and Black & White looks more like grayscale. The good news: there are live views in the menus. In the Picture menu tab, the following options are available for adjustment without live views: Sharpness, Contrast, and Saturation.

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