Olympus C-730

I just got the 730, but I had owned a 700 for quite a while. I recently went to the Grand Canyon and lost my 700 there :-(. I bought the replacement, a 730 from Fry's for $400, but outside of the 3MP pictures, both cameras are pretty much the same. Since I bought my 700, I have never for a minute regretted the purchase. The 700 I bought refurbished but the 730 is new. There is just no substitute for a good optical zoom lens on a digital camera. If you look at the 3x cameras on the market, most just get you where you thought you would be at 1:1. Next to the zoom, the best feature on the 730 is the fast exposure, mode when doing action shots. (I coach a roller hockey team) It is flawless on action shots. The battery life is great. I use 2 sets of NI-MH and a fast charger.

The main pain is the lack of an optical viewfinder. When you are taking rapid-fire pictures (machine gun fashion), the viewfinder freezes the last frame shot and you have to guess where the camera should be pointing. If this camera had an optical viewfinder, the problem would go away, but it is something you need to learn to live with. Another area where the viewfinder causes problems is night flash photography. The viewfinder will be very dark and once again, you need to guess how the subject will be framed when the flash goes off. Outside of that, I am hard pressed to complain about anything else. There is a tough learning curve, and it would really be cool to have help screens in the camera, but for the most part, this is the best camera your money can buy. I will never be without a good digital camera and I cannot imagine not staying with this line of Olympus cameras. I just hope I don't lose this one.

I started in digital photography about 3 years ago with a Canon "Digital Elph." It became obvious to me that the limited optical zoom range of the Elph (3X) was not enough, so I looked for cameras with more optical zoom range. I considered really expensive cameras with large zoom ranges but became convinced that the digital storage requirements (5 megapix/image) were too extreme. Then, I found the Olympus C730. 10 X Zoom. Perfect for the snapshots I wanted to take. Really perfect with my laptop as a "photo album."

Brought mine in Singapore at the equivalent of £290. This in comparrison with the average UK price of £450 ish at the time.

So who's conning who when it comes to fair prices in the UK?