Olympus E-500

The Olympus E-500 is my first camera so i don't have a frame of reference to compare it with. I am really pleased with the way the camera has performed. Standardised lenses that fit on all Olympus cameras. Does not have the ability to take panorama shots. You will have to take individual shots and then stitch them up if you want a panoramaThe customer support in uk is also very good.

good all round D-SLR.

While the Olympus D500 is not the best digital SLR in its class, it may be the best value. It offers a lot of features, good performance and photo quality, and a nicely designed body that costs less than you'd expect. If you're moving up to a digital SLR and don't currently own any lenses, the E-500 should be on your shopping list

The Olympus E-500 is just a brilliant digital camera. I mean, what in this world is perfect? But the camera seems to be, so what if the manual is not!

Make sure you buy real Olympus lenses in any package deal. Some Amazon sales were not really up-front on this. Be surprised and try PC World for a package deal. You can only ask and be surprised! I was surprised!

My first SLR camera was a Pentax K100, which was fabulous for its time, if a little heavy and bulky. I used that for about 10 years until the viewfinder packed in, and the body rusted up after much use in Central America. I guess the high humidity there finally got to it. Since then, I went digital with a Pentax followed by an Olympus (non-SLR) camera, but I concentrated mainly on video filming. Non-SLR cameras, starting at 2mps and going up to 6mps, gave mixed results. OK for snapshots but nothing to excite the serious photographer.

It was about time I got back to my roots and went for an SLR. The trouble was, the cost was prohibitive with 4mps body only SLRs being around the £800 mark.

Then came the Olympus E-500. I bought it online from Dixons UK at an excellent cost of £549, which includes the two lens kit, a 1Gb CF card, an Olympus p100 photo printer, and to top it all off, a pretty naff camera bag. The only thing it didn't come with was a rechargeable Li-ion battery or charger. These, however, were bought as extras online for about £24.00 unlike the £129 quoted by Olympus.

The camera far exceeds my expectations. It feels good, and it is not heavy like some reviewers have mentioned. It does feel slightly overbalanced with the extra zoom lens fitted, but generally it feels like a good camera should.

The photographs are of excellent quality all round, and it has a laser probe to measure light levels on AF mode, which means near perfect pictures in almost pitch black surroundings. Very impressive! The amount of features on this camera is truly amazing. Some have already been mentioned in reviews and I haven't yet had a chance to try them all out, but the Auto-Focus and Portrait settings are truly excellent. The default picture type is HQ and set Vivid. I found the Natural setting to be better for photos which need to be enlarged. So far I have got up to A3 size pictures with brilliant clarity.

The only gripe (and it is only me being picky) is that, while the camera is excellent from medium to long zoom ranges, there is no macro setting, which was a feature on my old Pentax K1000. Olympus do provide a very good range of Zuiko lenses which includes macro, but these appear to be almost as much as I paid for the whole camera package.

All in all, it is an excellent, well-priced SLR camera which I unhesitatingly recommend to beginners and high-expectation users.

My Olympus E500 digital camera gave me near perfect results in good and bad light, and with a FL36 flash under flash conditions.

It feels built to last, has a well balanced feel, and it has straight forward menus. Great lens definition on both standard (14-45mm) and 40-150mm lenses. No aberrations noted either chromatic or distortion at wide angle - there may be some if examined in an optical lab, but I don't notice it in critical results.

A class act.

I have owned both a Nikon D70 and a Canon 350d digital camera, therefore putting my expectations of the Olympus E500 digital camera high.

This really is a great piece of kit!! The colours are intense and rich, and the AF system is smooth quiet and reliable.