Customer Reviews

Olympus Camedia Brio D-100 1.2MP Digital Camera

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Have used it for 2 weeks (40 shots) and so far a happy camper. I post a long comment hoping to save some aggravation to digital cam newbies like me.

I wanted a simple, practical, medium priced, good optics, moderately featured, small digital camera that allowed me to put up pix in a web site or send via email with an easy to load into PC procedure. No sound, no video, no super ultra resolution (no memory, no printer, no special paper, no patience and no need for more than 640x480 pictures).

In the Olympus the USB solution is the best part (although I agree the manual does not make it clear how simple it really is): hook the USB cable into the PC with the camera turned off and without doing anything else you have another disk drive instantaneously, with the Windows File Explorer, click down two directories into your new disk, then click to view or select and drag and drop to copy all your pictures in your PC into any directoy like any old file. No need to even install the included Camedia photo editor (of which I already have 3 in my PC that do the simple retouch things I need to do to family pix for sharing).

I bought and returned a Polaroid PCD 240(?) that cost a bit less as the "hassle free" software did not install at all and I had no way to transfer the pictures into the PC. And when it worked (in my old PC with the broken screen, to add to my frustration) I realized had to suffer a rotating parrot flash screen from Polaroid and use a program with special buttons and a slow 3 step process every time wanted to download pictures and the loading procedure worked 2 out of 3 times I tried it. So much for user friendliness. The USB port is quick: less than 30 seconds to download 20+ or 1.6MB worth of pictures and no extra program to run with the Olympus.

With the initial Polaroid purchase I discovered ALL digital cameras have the same Alkaline battery gobbling problem, as this Polaroid came with regular AAs and it ate them up in some 20 shots plus the normal testing and showing off you do with any new gadget, I read up a little and discovered this is not a specific problem of the D-100 but of all digital cameras.

Accept the fact that you need better (1600mA Ni-MH batteries) if you want to use a digital camera, as you accepted the need to replace your regular AAs for long lasting Alkalines when electronics got more complicated than transistor radios. The business here is consumables. Think Polaroid instant photos and the roll prices, think bubble jet printers and cartridges, think Microsoft Windows and PCs, think Internet and DSL monthly bills. They have to make money somehow. After all, you are buying a product that is more powerful than early PCs and you want it to use the same power source as your flashlight? Think again.

The previous comment about the D-100 lacking the see through viewfinder is plain wrong: that is one reason I preferred it over other other models in which you had to aim through the digital screen, which makes for awkward and shooting. In the D-100 you can turn off the digital viewer and it only comes up for a couple of seconds after a shot, displays it briefly and then shuts off again to save power.

Other issue is memory size vs resolution. The Standard (Low) Quality mode alloes some 80 shots at 640x480 resolution with the included SmartMedia 8MB card. This resolution makes 80KB-120KB files per picture, which actually bigger than they should be for email attachments or to put several shots in a family web page. In a web site with several pictures per page, a large graphic item should be 50-80KB so it downloads at a reasonable speed for regular earthlings. Sending email attachments over 500KB to international friends which may hook up via a pay-per-minute setup is not a polite thing to do.

Finally, I have read in several places (and believe it from Olympus) that the optics top quality for a low-end camera and the that it makes pretty smart corrections to color/focus/lighting and its reaction time is pretty fast. This was not an initial worry of mine but realized after using two models that it makes a big difference as subjects (especially babies) don't wait too long in the perfect picture taking position. The D-100 allows you to take 2 pictures per second in its Continuous Shooting mode.

The only (very minor) criticism access to some functions like the picture review function (press and hold the TV button: sounds easy but I could not remember it 2 weeks after I read the manual and tried all the options) and what some options mean, as due to the small size it crams several functions into 6 buttons, but this is a reasonable sacrifice for having a pocket camera that easily fits into your shirt or pant pocket (try that trick with the Sony Mavica or any of the semi-pro models). Again, for family uses or with newborns around, pockets and shoulders are a precious commodity. It much smaller than most other models and its shape feels very comfortable to handle. The zoom models felt awkward. Again, for amateur/email/web use, you can do all the cropping in your PC in 4 seconds flat AND reduce file/image size. Printing digital photos is not for me. Regular film is more practical/quick/cheap if you want hard copies and I believe will remain so for amateur needs for at least 5 more years.

This is my first Olympus digital, but it will not be my last. It is a very nice beginner's purchase, and would also make a very good backup for a more dedicated digital photographer. The size and weight make it a breeze to carry in a pocket, purse or glove compartment. It has good quality optics, a 1 megapixel resolution (that will allow pretty good 5" x 7" prints), good battery life (and can use readily available alkalines) and easy USB connectivity to your PC for transferring images. The included 8 meg card is adequate, though it seems to me this camera, which when attached to your PC is automatically recognized as another drive (a nice feature requiring no software installations), would have benefited from some on-board memory. Furthermore, I do not like cameras that require using the LCD panel to view & frame the image, much preferring a traditional through-the-lens viewfinder, which is absent on the Brio. However, its most glaring short-coming is the lack of an optical zoom (it has a digital zoom, but these are vastly inferior digital tricks that halve the resolution while doubling the size of the selected portion of the photographed image), but if that's not a problem for you, you'll be happy with the rather handsome Brio.

This was my first digital camera. I found it very easy to use with the quick start intructions. The pictures came out nice and they downloaded easily into my pc. I took 8 pictures, downloaded them, and spent some time learning the menu options. I figure about 60 to 90 minutes. I turned the camera off. The next day I went to take pictures and the battery was dead. It was late, so I used some Duracell AA batteries, which the instructions said you could use. It took 8 new batteries to take one picture and download it. Forget about making any changes to the settings. I had to put batteries in and take picture right away. These AA batteries lasted about 30 seconds if that much. The next day I went to Walmart to get another battery, the lithium type that it came with. They had several sizes, but they did not carry the size for this camera. And they sell Olympus cameras there, although not this model. It must be an odd size available at camera stores. I called tech support and asked him if this is the normal life span of the so called long life battery. He said that it did not sound right and something must be wrong, he had never heard of this problem. He put me on hold to check it out. When he came back on he said, and I quote, "This camera is battery intensive and we reccomend the rechargeable nich (?) batteries" I asked him again if this was normal for the other batteries or was something wrong with the camera. He replied" The only thing I am allowed to say is that this camera is battery intensive and we reccomend the rechargeable batteries." His attitude leads me to believe I had a bad camera, but that they were not admitting to it. I would be interested in future reviews to tell how the batteries lasted.

I must say that for my needs this camera was perfect. I've got one of the larger "uber-pixel" cameras already, and wanted something smaller, lighter and less expensive that I didn't have to worry about losing when I went to parties, camping and other misc. activities... This one's perfect! The 1.3 megapixel is perfect for simply saving to my laptop on the road, desktop at home or simply printing out 4X6 or 5X7 prints, the 640X480 mode is perfect for posting to the web... The included SmartMedia card stores 8 in SHQ mode, 24 in HQ and 82 in 640X480... The other two modes provide and ample 1280X960 resolution. I also purchased a 32meg SM card for 35/99/331 photo storage respectively.

Image sizes are roughly 800k in SHQ (1280X960), 300k in HQ (1280X960, more compressed) and 80k in SQ (640X480).

Image quality is better than I expected. As I said, it fits my needs perfectly. And about complaints about battery life? I can't say that I agree, I bought the camera (As well as four NIMH rechargables) two days ago, and it's still using the provided Olympus battery after several hours of tinkering, downloading (downloading is very fast, BTW)... etc.

All in all I'll say this is a wonderful camera for this pricepoint... Check it out!

So, I'm new with digital cameras and I'm not a photography buff ... but I have been surprised (happpily) with this camera. I also bought the 32mg SmartCard and some rechargeable batteries, based on others' reviews. I've only had it a month, but was on a 2-week vacation during that time and took maybe 200 pictures. I'm very pleased with the quality of photos I'm getting; some of them are astonishing (a lighthouse at sunset from maybe a quarter mile away! Beautiful!). I expected a significant difference in quality from my 35mm but did not see much, if any. I post photos to my web site where they look great; I also printed some 4X6 in color and BW and they turned out wonderfully. An added plus: It was very easy to learn to use.

This camera seems to be a pretty good choice for someone new to digital photography. The price is reasonable and it has all the basic features. It is very easy to download pictures to the PC via the USB cable. The only complaint that I have so far (I have only had the camera for 1 week) is that the documentation is not user-friendly. I had to call customer service to find out how to use the USB download. Their Customer Service Technician provided excellent support. The software instructions that come with the camera do not address the D-100 model download. They have added the instructions to their web site. Overall I think this is a good choice for the "novice" that doesn't want to spend a lot for a digital camera.

The Brio D-100 is a great little camera. It is easy to use and and even easier to download the pictures to your computer. Just plug the camera into your USB port and your computer recognizes the D-100 as an attached hard drive. Then just drag and drop the pictures from the D-100 folder to your hard drive. There is software to install - but I haven't installed it - no need to. The LCD monitor display which is used to the review pictures you have taken and to set your various settings works great. You may preview pictures without turning off the camera by pressing the monitor button twice. (One review said this was not possible - but it is). There's just enough features to give you some good options but it is easy enough to set it, forget it, and shoot to your heart's content. I recommend it!

I received this D-100 as a gift. Compared to my friend's Olympus D340R, this camera come with USB interface(finally!) and works fast & great!

You don't need to pay extra to buy a USB smart card reader. And standard 640x480 picture looks good on my 19" ViewSonic monitor.

I think D360L (no USB) will be priced down quickly. I highly recommend this to 1st time buyers.

This is my first digital camera, and I am very happy with its ease of use and performance! I spent a few months looking for a digital camera and this is the one I ended up with based on price/performance ratio calculations (in my head). True, it may not have as many features as some cameras, but then again it is meant for one thing: taking easy digital photos! I love the size too. Complaints? None so far.

I was unable to find a battery like the one that came with this camera (3v lithuim battery, LB-01 CR-V3) here on amazon.com and the recommended battery charger & batteries set does not use these batteries. I wrote to Olympus and this was their reply.

The D-100 can use both CR-V3 lithium batteries, which are not rechargeable, and Ni-MH AA rechargeables. It is also possible to use other types of AA batteries, but we generally only recommend lithium or Ni-MH.

This makes it easy! The Olympus charger kit is more expensive than the Kodak options. You can get a Kodak K200 charger on here for $25 (does AA AND AAA sizes) and a pack of 4 Kodak NiMH rechargeable AA batteries for $19. There is also a kit with AA charger and 4 AA batteries for $40, but I don't think that charger will charge AAA batteries. (4 rechargeable AAA's are $12.)