Customer Reviews

Olympus Camedia D-380 2MP Digital Camera

5 star:		(47)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

The Olympus D-380 is my first digital camera. I did my research, using online reviews and consumer publications. I wanted something high quality, user-friendly, and well built, at a reasonable price. I concluded that Olympus makes products that fit my criteria. This camera is everything I hoped it would be and more!

Upon opening the box, I was pleased to find an attractive, sturdily constructed camera. Though there's nothing cheap-looking about it (it's all classy looking metallic surfaces), it is very lightweight and comfortable in my hand. The lens cover slides with precision and covers the lens securely (many of the cameras in this price range don't have an integrated lens cover). The wrist strap attaches easily. The covers for the battery compartment, memory card, and USB and AC adapters are well designed and look as if they will last a long time. This camera is manufactured in Japan.

It took only about a minute, after scanning the "Quick Start" guide, to insert the included batteries and SmartMedia memory card and start taking pictures. The very first picture I took was a keeper; I was very pleasantly surprised at the quality. I handed the camera to my 6-year-old son, who snapped off a shot of my daughter and me, which I then printed on glossy photo paper. It looks so nice that I'm actually going to frame it and hang it on the wall. I have since taken pictures at all the different resolutions, and all look great when viewed on the computer. I have settled on the 1024 x 768 setting as my "standard", since it matches the resolution of my monitor, and makes for reasonable file sizes (around 180 KB per photo). 640 x 480 works great for e-mail, and 1600 x 1200 turns out beautiful results for printing, or those special occasion "keepsakes". Even the QuickTime movie mode does a decent job, certainly much better than those grainy webcam captures.

There is a 5X digital zoom (no optical). I detect a little graininess when using it, but for the money, it's fine and it's simple to use.

I am running Windows 2000 Pro, and setup for transferring files to the computer couldn't have been easier. Simply plug the USB cable into the camera, then into the computer. That's it! Open My Computer and you'll find a new removable storage drive. From there it's a simple matter of dragging and dropping files to wherever you want to store them. You can delete the files from the SmartMedia card from your computer, which is easier than doing it with the camera. The included Camedia software looked fun, but I haven't had a need to use it yet, so I can't comment on its functionality.

I received a free 32 MB Viking SmartMedia card from Amazon with this camera. Together with the 8 MB card in the box with the camera, this is enough storage for roughly 200 photos at 1024 x 768. The only thing I needed to buy to complete my setup was a carrying case.

I highly recommend this camera to anyone looking to enter the world of digital photography. It is stylish, extremely easy to use, very well constructed, takes excellent pictures, and is an unbeatable value!

I'll admit I'm no expert when it comes to photographic equipment but I CAN recognise a bargain when I see it. Olympus are a manufacturer who have always had my utmost respect and when it came to upgrading my 1.3 megapixel digi-cam to something with a little more juice they were once again my first choice. The D-380 was released around Feb 2002 (I believe) and is one of the few 2.0 Megapixel cameras... at a price you simply can not argue with for this kind of quality.

What you get for your money is a camera which is aestetically pleasing as well as functionaly impressive as well. It's not too bulky, around 5" wide and sub 7 ounces in weight, with a sliding lens protector to make transportation a breeze, a wrist strap, 8MB Smart Media memory card (although it takes upto 128MB) as well as 1MB onboard memory, USB connector, built in flash and a 1.5" digital viewfinder at the back for live preview or viewing of your snapped images...a good size for a small camera.

The camera requires 4AA batteries to operate and unlike the previous model I owned uses some kind of battery saving technology to give you more operational time before run down. It still gobbles the things like nobody's business though if you use the viewfinder at the back too often so you are best advised to buy a set or two of rechargable batteries for this camera...but it is MUCH better than the previous models.

When it comes to using the camera you'll find it a doddle. I'm not going to run through each and every thing it does or I'll bore the pants off you, ...[but] if you want a list of specs, then visit the Olympus website. What I will say is that it is dead easy to use. The menu system is accessed through 4 buttons on the back, and is very intuitive - you'll have no problem with using this unlike with some others. If you've ever used an Olympus camera around this price range before in the last couple of years then you'll be more than familiar with the set up because it doesn't seem to have changed much in this respect.

The most important thing of all though is the quality of the pictures and I have to say that once again Olympus has come up trumps with this camera. Colour saturation is generally excellent and whilst bright sunlight and very murky conditions give you somewhat under/over-exposed results at times, it is otherwise faultless for a 2.0 megapixel camera. There are various image manipulation options such as switching to black and whire/sepia tones built into the camera as well and an option to record video footage as Quicktime images which is great as well.

The only thing which is missing for the average user (no, it's not a pro choice obviously) is a zoom lens. You can digitally zoom if you so wish, but I find a slight jagged edge appearing on the images if you do, so it's not optimal.

Overall, for the price you can't fault it and I'd be happy to recommend it to anybody in the market for a 2.0 Megapixel digital camera without any qualms that they would be disappointed in their purchase. If you want professional quality images then look elsewhere, but for the general user this is a great purchase.

This camera is great, I was very surprised at how good the movie mode was. I know that in the editors review it says it won't place your camcorder, but for the average user it is great. The pictures look fantastic, and the software that comes with it is very user friendly. It's much simplier that Adobe products. It's easy to learn some of the beginner elements of changing photo's color, and croping, things like that.

I was a little dissapointed with the movie mode because it doesn't have sound, but I plan to one with it soon anyway. The batteries that came with mine, lasted me 1 full day, and they still hav'nt run out yet, I was using the LCD screen and everything. But it's true they do drain fast.

The paranorma feature, is best used for landscape shots, but it is cool, once you learn how it works. Some my outdoor shots came out a little dark when flash is not on. But the software that comes with it, changed that very quickly. All in all, I think this camera is a great why for someone to make the step into digital, I'm never going back.

Recommended: It does not come with a carrying case (what is that about!?!) so pick up on of those. Rechargeables are a must, unless you plan to use it just for an trip or something. And a bigger memory card would be nice to, go with a 64MB and your set. And if you are thinking about getting a 128MB card, I'd advise against it if you have frequent access to your computer, because you will just be wasting space.

The D-380 is another of the Olympus line of clam shell cameras dating back to the old (non-digital) Stylus models of the mid-80s; this one is an update of the successful D-370. The design is tried and true and I like it for its compactness and its ability to protect the lens from those with a penchant for losing lens caps. The D-380 offers adequate resolution at 2 megapixels. As I have stated in numerous reviews of other digicams, resolution much beyond 2 megapixels is worse than useless for most applications, it is costly. It not only costs money in the sense that it raises the initial price of the camera, but operationally, it requires greater battery use, usually involves longer lag times between shots, takes much longer to download to a PC and especially prolongs both phases of e-mailing photos (your uploading the file and your recipient opening it). These latter issues are, in my opinion, the most important, as the real purpose of digital cameras is their neat integration into the world of personal computing. [note: For those folks whose needs are enlarging photos beyond 8" x 10", higher resolution is required] The downside of the D-380 is the lack of an optical zoom. Digital zooms are in no way the equals of optical zooms. What these digizooms do is enlarge the center of the image captured by the zoom's stated power. In this case, using the full 5:1 zoom will take the central 20% of the image and stretch it to fill the entire frame. Unfortunately, this degrades the image by an equivalent percentage of pixels. Therefore, a 2 megapixel image digitally zoomed 5X begets an image with a resolution of only 400,000 megapixels. The result is a grainy picture suitable only for emailing or website posting, but not for any sort of printing or enlarging.
Aside from the zoom issue, the camera is a winner. Its ability to operate off readily available AA alkalines (though it will accept rechargeables and these make more sense in may ways), its easily expandable memory (it uses SmartMedia, not quite as good as CompactFlash cards, but close enough) and its adequate number of user-controllable settings all combine to make this a very serviceable camera at a very attractive price.

Just got this camera on May 31, 2002, there were not many reviews so I vowed I would respond when I had made a quick review of the product. Here goes:
Camara came with the non-lithum batteries, but I have used the ones in the box now off and on for two days. It was very intimidating with all the multiple books included, but mostly that's because they duplicate each book for each language. It took me about an hour to feel comfortable shooting the camera, but I took several pictures in the first 10 min.
Camera feels solid, light and comfortable. The LCD menu is intimidating and I think I will still have to do more research, but it looks promising for advance features. The panarama works with the card that comes with it, so use it for just those shots, cause it won't work on any other smart media cards like the free one that was given with the promotion. I went out and took two dozen pictures of my chickens on the free media card and never got to the end.
The quality of the pictures are excellent, especially for web design or email. Printing I haven't done on the good quality paper but appears that it could successfully accomplish that also.
Overall I found the auto light and point and shoot ability with this camera great...even went outside at dusk and took great shots. The software is fair, but I fell back on JASC Paint Shop. The connection was exactly like connecting an external USB external hard drive and works the same so you can drag and drop things to whatever location you prefer.
If I come across any downs for this camera I will write an additional review. But my conclusion is...
This is a great camera for my needs and most needs and is awfully fun to work. Excellent for the price...and if it last for a good long while I will be tickled to death.

This is an easy to use, high quality digital camera.
The images are sharp and clear. If you want a simple camera for taking travel pictures, the Olympus D380 is ideal for you. Indoor pictures with flash are good. You can easily transfer photos to your computer and send e-mails to your friends. The timer function is very convenient. A 64 MB card and a bag are highly recommended accessories. This camera does not have optical zoom. With the alkaline batteries you can take a lot of photos, but be careful and turn off the camera when not in use.

After three years of wanting and drooling, I finally bought a digital camera. Now of course, I had my doubts and worries, so I held my breath with each click I made which led me to purchase the Olympus Camedia D-380. My fears subsided when I began to test the features of this camera when I received it the next day. This is a great beginner's camera. At the highest resolution (1600x1208), you can take 5 photos. At the lowest resolution (640x480), you can take up to 47 photos, although it's not the best quality. By default, the setting is at 1600x1200, which allows for 16 photos. I use 1024x768 which gives me 29 photos. Keep in mind that these number of photos are on an 8MB memory card. A higher card will produce more clicks for your buck. For the most part, I didn't need the instruction booklet to guide me through the steps. I find it simple to operate, and mainly used the booklet to understand what the icons represented. There was very little which I couldn't figure out where I used the booklet to understand. This camera is simple to operate. This is my first camera of any kind, and I found it worth my money. The first thing I noticed was how light this camera was. It felt like a toy, but it's functions proved otherwise. The four AA batteries will add some weight to the camera, but not by much. After every photo, the image will freeze for less than a second in the LCD screen. You can view your photos through the thumbnails offered, and delete those which you don't want, saving space and meory for those good photos. The Olympus Camedia D-380 can also record mini movies (without sound of course). The more difficult aspect I found was the application which comes with this Camera, but the problems where easily worked through. Over all, I found this camera to meet my needs. I'd recommend it to anyone first starting out.

I just got my new digital camera yesterday. It's the first one I ever owned and it couldn't be simpler! I was taking pictures within 5 minutes of opening the box. I had the software installed, the pictures downloaded, cropped and edited in 30-60 mins (I wasn't keeping track of time because I was having SO MUCH FUN with the camera) with no problems whatsoever: the editing software that comes with it is really easy to use, I found the instructions simple and the camera's controls intuitive. I researched cameras a lot before deciding on this one and I couldn't be more pleased. I am an average home computer user and a VERY novice photographer, but I thought the first pictures out of this camera were great. You can see them all at [URL] if you want to check out the quality for yourself.

I've had my D-380 for a while now and continue to be very pleased with it. I notice several of these reviews mention bad battery life; this has GOT to be an error. The D-380 had the best battery life in that recent Consumer's Rpts review, and I'm amazed at how long a set lasts. I charge my NiMH AA's about every two weeks and have never had them go dead--and I use the camera nearly every day. My wife shot 100+ snapshots at a party, almost all with flash, on a set of batteries that hadn't been charged in over a week and they STILL went for another week without going flat. Amazing battery life. The "degreed engineer" who found it hard to transfer pictures may have some sort of problem, or may not understand something. Moving pictures is easy enough for a grade-school kid. In Win XP and 2000, you simply plug in the camera and it appears in your system as a removable drive; the pictures are files that can be moved around like any other files. Simple as can be, and very convenient. I'm _very_ pleased with this camera overall. My only reservations: the digital zoom is not terribly good, and 2mp will just *barely* give you a good 8x10. At the price of the D-380, those are very minor drawbacks; this is a GREAT camera for casual snapshots. I like it better after using it for 2 months than I did when I got it--not many things earn that kind of praise. Great little camera at the price!

I just got this camera a few days ago, and I love it already. I don't usually take many photos, because I never remember to buy/develop film. So, I decided to get a digital camera - if I could find one in my price range, with the high quality I was looking for. The D-380 is just that. Two megapixels is more than enough for the average point-and-shooter, and the camera itself is easy to use. The LCD screen is very sharp and easy to see in all conditions. And one particular, minor feature that I noticed (and liked)- the button that turns the LCD on and off is set lower in the plastic, so it's not easily bumped (thereby rendering your batteries dead, hours later). Smart thinking on somebody's part ;)
The camera's video ain't that shabby either - and the Quicktime movies aren't as big (in filesize) as you'd think they'd be. I could email somebody a 10-second, lower-quality movie without clogging their inbox.
Adding on to what somebody said below, about the Camedia software not letting you send pics via email or save them to disk - who cares? You don't need any kind of software to do that. Just drag the files off of the SmartMedia disk, and on to your computer. It can't get any easier!! I haven't even bothered to install the software - you don't need it.