Olympus X-840 Review – Hands On w/ Digital Camera

I am to photography what hedgehogs are to crossing the road: Whether I take a good snap or not is more a question of luck than anything else. Like the hedgehog, my success rate is around forty percent, and this is a generous estimate.

Update: This product is now available from Amazon UK

I have to say though, that after receiving the Olympus X-480 digital camera as a gift, I am very impressed with it, especially as I have probably pushed my average up by at least ten percent over the last few months. Sadly, this is down to the camera.

So for the purposes of this review, I have gauged the camera on four elements.  Ease of use, picture quality, battery life, and criticisms.

Ease Of Use

The camera is a basic point and click, but you can adjust the settings very easily to suit your surroundings.  For example, by selecting “Scene” from the options wheel, you can take more effective pictures depending on the environment.  I found the “Behind glass“, and “Sports” settings, extremely useful.  It also starts fairly quickly, so it is possible to capture, “that shot“.

This picture was taken from the apartment where I stayed, in Amsterdam.  The camera was set to “Behind glass“.  (Between the church and me was a window.)  Incidentally, behind the church is The Anne Frank museum.

Picture Quality

The standard of pictures in ‘normal’ light is very high.  The camera has 8.0 megapixels to this end, and has a 5.0 optical zoom.  Not that this means much to me, but in short the picture quality is good.  The zoom works well in normal light too.  The camera struggles with night time shots, even if the camera is set to settings designed for this environment, but a fair picture is able to be taken when set on “Auto“.  Using zoom at night, is out of the question.

Battery life

Battery life is fine for general picture taking providing you remember to switch off the camera between shots.  Where the battery is a little weak is when you are uploading pictures, as this seems to zap the battery life in minutes.  I would recommend using a SD card, and SD card reader to transfer pictures.

Criticisms

I have two criticisms with this camera: 

• Without an SD card the cameras memory is limited to around ten pictures, which is not the best lets face it.
• The camera batteries are disposable and not rechargeable. This can be annoying at times, especially if it keeps draining.

Overall, I would say this is a very good point and click camera. See others for sale. The price varies from £80-120.  I would say for someone who is a beginner, or you just want a good basic camera with a few features to explore, you could do a lot worse.