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Olympus Camedia D-540 Digital Camera Review

Review:

The Olympus D-540Z is a nice camera indeed. Its friendly features will for sure make beginners and first-timers fall in love with this camera.

It still surprises me how Olympus managed to assemble a digital camera with high quality optical features and still keep the price so low.

If we talk about the looks, the D-540’s new contoured design is just beautiful, and also contains every feature digital photography beginners will need to be able to take and print very good quality pictures easily, including a powerful Olympus 3x Optical Zoom lens and a 3.3x Digital Zoom, together with an effective 3.2 megapixel sensor. Also, a very clear 1.8 inches LCD screen assists in framing.

But the 3.2 megapixel CCD sensor is not alone. In fact, it is combined with the power of an enhanced image processor chip, the famous Olympus TruePic TURBO, which provides not only image quality but also processing speed. Even at lower resolutions, this processor is able to re-define the concept of sharpness.

This nice camera takes advantage of a 3x Optical Zoom (38mm to 114mm, f2.9/5.0 – f7.0 equivalent in 35mm photography) Olympus lens, that combines itself with a pretty good 3.3x digital zoom to produce close-ups of up to 10X.

Auto white balance control; exposure compensation, multiple flash options and a good metering system provide the D-540 with a great deal of photographic power.

The bright optical viewfinder and auto-focus feature are very accurate, and they almost eliminate the need of manual focusing, although experienced and professional users will find the lack of manual focusing capability a little disappointing.

There are seven preset shooting modes from which the user can choose, ensuring there will always be an optimal exposure level no matter what the environmental conditions are.

The D-540Z is also capable of recording movie clips, taking advantage of the QuickTime .mov format but not including sound. (Notice, however, that the included 16 megabytes memory card is really small for video saving, so I strongly recommend you to get a 32 mb or bigger card).

Six settings are available for the flash system, providing the widest range of possibilities. Unlike its predecessors’, the D-540z flash is built into the camera’s polycarbonate body, which preserves the small size and compact look of this camera.

The camera has the advantage of being powered by two AA batteries, and this is good for those situations when you run out of power and need a recharge: you simply buy two AAs and go on shooting around.

As an addition, the USB interface makes transferring pictures between computer and camera a really easy task.

Recommendation:

I recommend this digital camera to those who are about to have their first digital photography experience. The high quality and accuracy of preset values, while not very much liked among manual control loving experts, will make beginners and point and shoot fans very happy with both ease of operation and quality of results.

The 7-position dial is really comfortable to reach and operate, even when holding the camera with only one hand. Easy menu navigation and the clear LCD large monitor screen will also appeal first timers.

Features: