Definitely a good deal.

Author's Rating:

Pros: Very flexible, solid, and takes great shots.

Cons: Menu is a little complex and is to big to fit in your pocket.

The Bottom Line: 
I am very happy with the picture quality, ease of use, and many options.

Author's Review

This is my second digital camera. I had a FujiFilm 2.3 mega-pixel that died after two years. I decided it was time to move up to 5 mega-pixels.

For those of you do don't understand mega-pixels, these are the dots that make up the picture. Generally speaking, the more mega-pixels the better the picture. My old camera was good for up to about 4x6 prints. This one will do 8x10's just fine without even taking pictures at the highest setting.

I did extensive research and finally decided on the Olympus Camedia C-5050.

One of the big draws for me was its flexibility. Many cameras require batteries or proprietary flash memory cards (Sony is one of the worst). The Olympus takes standard AA batteries and can use three different types of memory cards, including the new high speed XD cards. I had smartmedia cards from my old camera that work fine. It also takes CompactFlash cards and can have two different types of cards loaded at the same time.

Battery life has been great so far. I charged up the rechargeable batteries (which came included along with a charger) and have taken over 250 pictures over the last two months. I'm still going on the first charge.

Another thing I looked at closely was shutter lag. On my last camera there as about a 1/2 second lag or more between the time I press the button and when it took the picture. This caused me to miss a ton of shots. The Olympus is much better with this. There is a tiny lag, but that is true of any digital camera under several thousand dollars. In this case, the lag is much more acceptable. The only caveat is that you have to press the button half way down to set the auto-focus. If you don't do that, the lag can be quite annoying. This can make action shots a little difficult.

The camera comes with lots of settings and features for the pro. I have to admit, I'm a bit lazy and tend to just point and shoot. It does just fine for me this way. The menus to adjust settings are a little complicated. You really have to sit down with it for a few hours to set it up the way you want the first time. But this complexity is part of the price you pay for having so many different features and options.

I've taken a lot of outdoor and indoor shots that all came out just fine. I do get a fair amount of red-eye, but this camera, unlike almost anything else in this price range, comes with a hot shoe so you can attach an external flash if you want.

The display is small but is fairly clear. I don't really use that feature to often, preferring instead the standard view finder.

The highest setting for picture quality is an uncompressed TIFF file. One picture at this setting is over 15 Mb, which means you won't get much unless you buy a huge memory card. Also, it took 20-30 seconds to save the picture after I took it at this setting, which is annoying since I like to take several shots in a row.

I set the camera at it's second highest setting, which take about a 2 1/2 meg JPG (which is a compressed picture file). Picture quality is great at this setting, even for large pictures, and the save time is only a second or two.

The camera has a good solid feel to it. It is smaller than an SLR, but is too thick to fit comfortably in your pocket. I use the neck strap that was included.

I have not used the movie feature since I have a digital camcorder for that. You'll never get good quality movies out of any digital still camera on the market, but the feature is there if you want it.

The Optical Zoom is only 3x, which is minimally acceptable for me. I'd like more, but given all the other great features and good price, I'm not complaining.

Overall, there are no strong negatives and a lot of real positives going for this camera.