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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Everything you need, nothing you don't..., June 21, 2002
I actually own the IS-30, which is almost identical to the IS-20, the only difference being that the IS-30 has exposure compensation (from -2EV to +2EV in 0.5EV steps), but I don't know if its still available, so I'm writing this review instead. I've had it for 2 years and it is a marvellous camera.This camera has all the features that you need and none that you don't. It is essentially a fully-automatic SLR camera, so you have the best of both worlds. With an SLR, when you look through the viewfinder, you're actually looking through the lens, so what you see is what you get (with composition and focus). Unlike a fully-automatic camera, which has parallax error associated with its separate viewfinder.
The IS-20 is "zoomier" (28-110mm) than a standard SLR camera lens (28-80mm), but yet it is quite a small camera when compared to most SLRs. You can also get a telephoto extender that screws on the end making it effectively a 210mm lens; although you will have to use that pretty much at full-zoom and the camera lens cap won't retract when it is in place.
The other advantage it has over fully-automatic cameras is that you can use various filters on the end of the lens. You might first consider getting a 2X macro lens and a red lens for improving the contrast in B&W photography. I used my sister's Canon EOS-500N for two overseas trips and I found that about half of the features I just didn't use. With this Olympus, however, I use ALL the features. The two most commonly used modes are the scenery mode and the portrait mode. It also has spot metering, a timer, and a nifty lens cap. Plus it has full-auto mode; just press the green button and shoot! It has twin flashes, one for wide-angle and one for telephoto, and they are mighty-powerful! There are four flash modes: autoflash, no flash, red-eye reducing, and forced flash activation. They're all important. Having no flash is crucial for night time scenes; just put the camera on something steady, select the timer -that way the camera will go off by itself and you won't bump it- and you will take photos that look like a pro. Initially, the thing that bugged me most is that you can't manually set the shutter speed and have the camera figure out the correct aperture. But now I tend to think that the only time I really wanted to set the shutter speed myself is when I wanted the fastest possible shutter speed, and the camera has a mode that automatically does that for you (up to 1/2000 sec). You can only manually select the shutter speed for long-time exposures greater than 1 sec (1, 2, 4, 8, 15, 30 & 60 sec), but then camera fixes the aperture at f8, so you have to take a few shots to make sure the photo won't be under/overexposed. You can, on the other hand, choose an aperture from f4.5 to f22, and have the camera automatically use the right shutter speed. That allows you to change the depth of field of a scene. On the down side: for the smallish size, it is on the heavy side. But even though I am usually very obsessive when it comes to lightweight objects, in this case I can easily overlook that, because of its sheer convenience. If you're thinking of buying a digital camera, know that film has the equivalent of 1500 "pixels" per inch, so that a 24x36mm negative, assuming a good lens and fine-grained film, will have over 3 megapixels. Not only that, but this camera can use a wide range of film speeds, from 25 ISO all the way to 3200 ISO!!
The other reason I didn't want a digital camera, is that I've been known to take about a thousand photos while I'm travelling, and I refuse to fork out that much money for the high-capacity memory cards required. Remember that 35mm film can be bought ANYWHERE.
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