Customer Reviews

Olympus FE-190 6MP Digital Camera with Digital Image Stabilized 3x Optical Zoom

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

This camera is exceptionally compact. Place a credit card on top of it, and only a tiny area of the camera is visible around the edges. Incredible!

I'm a point-n-shoot photographer, and the only complaint I have about the image quality is mild red-eye.

The image stabilization feature is amazing. With image stabilization enabled, I've taken one-handed pictures while driving down a mountain road with the other hand, and their clarity has turned out remarkably well. Photos of text taken in dim lighting conditions with deliberately shaking hands also turn out well. Image stabilization is quite remarkable.

I also found the menus well designed and the in-camera review features excellent. For example, one can zoom in on a particular area of a photo, right on the camera's LCD screen. That's very helpful for culling photos without first loading them onto a PC.

Battery life with the included lithium ion battery is fabulous--far longer than the other digital cameras I've used.

This camera begs to be kept in a pocket and whipped out on the spur of the moment, with image stabilization counteracting haste to deliver good picture quality. Unfortunately, the physical construction is not rugged enough to endure that kind of use. The flimsiness is exemplified by the "door" covering the USB port, which consists of nothing more than a rubber pad attached via a thin rubber stalk that will undoubtedly break after a few hundred uses.

Apparently, the lack of durability extends to the internals as well. I accidentally dropped this camera a modest 30 inches onto a plastic chair mat on a wooden floor, and now its picture quality is terminally damaged. The camera massively overexposes everything, and can no longer focus properly. If I'd dropped the camera from a standing position onto concrete, I could excuse this failure. But a drop from a sitting position onto a chair mat, when the lens didn't impact anything on the way down, should have been survivable.

Since the camera is now useless, I tried dropping it several more times from the same position to see how it would fare. Even though neither the lens nor its housing ever came into contact with anything, they became stuck in a partially open position after the third drop, and the lens housing now feels wobbly.

So:
5 stars for compactness, features, and price.
2 stars for durability.

So when I bought this I noticed that there was no reviews on Amazon for it. I was looking for a small camera that was around 5 MP, had at least 3x optical zoom, and had rechargeable batteries. I was actually going to buy one of those Casio Exilims. But I noticed this camera in a Best Buy advertisement and it was about $50 cheaper than the cheapest Exilim. But like I said, there were no reviews so I was a little anxious about buying this. However, because I had my mind set on buying an Exilim, and this had all the same features it seemed but was so much cheaper, I decided that this was a steal and went with it.
Ok so it came yesterday, finally, and here are my first impressions. The first thing I noticed was how small it was. I thought it would be a little bigger, but small is good. It is pretty much the size of a pack of cards. The case is all metal, not painted plastic. The construction of the camera seems to be pretty solid (not cheap). So far, the pictures I have taken seem pretty sharp. I have a have problem which is that I keep on taking blurry photos, but I think that is my fault. Like the camera has a clever system where if you press the trigger down halfway, it focuses, and only when you press it down all the way it takes the picture. The picture taking speed is pretty fast--hardly any delay, which is something I was worried about. The rechargeable battery seems pretty good so far. When I popped it in without charging it, it never ran out. Later on I charged it up (which is good for Li-on batteries apparently) and that took a while, which is the only drawback. However, since I have charged it, the battery meter hasn't shown any decrease.
So this camera has been everything I wanted so far, and for $50 less. I'm very pleased with it.
Hmm what else... the camera has a bunch of settings, but I end up using "AUTO" for everything because the settings dont seem to make a difference. After you install the software that comes with the camera, you can access the camera like any USB drive from your pc (using the USB cable of course). You have to install the software first though.
Some notes:
When I first ordered it, Amazon had this little thing like "buy this with an SD picture card and save!!" or something, so I did. But DON'T do that! It's a trap! This camera doesn't use SD memory, it uses xD memory, which is different. So I had to cancel the memory and order the correct one seperately.
Secondly, if you're going to buy this, don't pay for shipping! I paid like $6 for shipping, but used the free shipping on the memory, and they both arrived on the SAME day! Needless to say, shipping is a total rip off. So don't pay for shipping.
Oh yea, and this is my first camera I have ever owned. Like I said, I'm pleased with it. I would totally recommend this camera to anyone, simply because of the quality you get for the price.

I bought this camera for my birthday. I had another Olympus that worked well, but I wanted something that was slimmer, and that took better pictures at low light.

Now, the Olympus fe190 is definitely nice and slim-- it fits into a small clutch purse for going out, and that's great.

This camera also takes beautiful pictures of landscapes and the outdoors, and of people and things in good natural light.

HOWEVER pictures taken indoors with flash are very much hit-or-miss. I've gotten some very cute pictures with friends and family, and others where the picture quality just... sucked. The picture looks washed out, not sharp, and just... not good. Some of these would have been great shots of people and I was very disappointed when I viewed the pictures on my computer and discovered the poor quality.

Also, the flash seems to give everyone really bad red eyes. When I've tried to use the anti-red eye flash it hasn't seemed to really help.

I'm so frustrated by this that I'm now debating spending another $200+ to buy a different camera, as I'm tired of great pictures getting ruined by a sub=par camera. Maybe I just don't know how to use the best settings to maximize pictures, but it also shouldn't be this hard to figure out.

I got this about 2 months ago, used it a couple of times and just took it with on vacation with me. The pictures are no where close to being 6mp quality. I have another Olympus 4MP form 4 years ago and it blows this one away on picture quality. I would say the pictures look like they where taken with a 2MP camera.

I just called Olympus for help and the tech mentioned that this model has generated lots of calls and there is nothing they can do to sharpen the quality. They got me over to customer service where they said if I would "surrender" my FE-190 to Olympus they would sell me a FE-200 at a discounted price of $226. The FE-190 can be purchase on Amazon for $50 less without trading my FE-190 in. NO WAY is this an acceptable option.

This is not a good value.

This is a great little purse cam, which is what my wife uses it for. We have had Olympus compacts since the C-3030, and I have to say this one is the most "stylish" and convenient... built in lens cover, very small size, great large viewfinder, etc.

My only gripe: image quality. While the image quality is passable for snapshots and so forth, upon enlargement one can see a significant amount of fringing and chromatic aberration. Our previous model, the C-50, has fewer megapixels and takes better photos, ones that will withstand some enlargement.

Overall, it's fine for what it is, a very inexpensive pocket shooter. I actually wanted to give my wife the Nikon S7c because it had the large LCD and very good image quality, but alas it wasn't available -- also the WiFi feature seemed "sexy" and she would have loved that gadgety feature.

I settled on this Olympus after also looking closely at the Pentax Optio S7, which, at almost $100 more than the FE-190, took pictures which were (IMO) no better...

Despite what other reviewers have said, I haven't had any of those troubles yet with my Olympus FE-190. The images turn out great, the camera is easy to use, and I'm very happy with my purchase. It's compact size is also a huge benefit and the battery life is great. I haven't really had it run out on me yet. It does have a lot of features and different shooting modes, but I haven't really explored those too much. It's a great camera for a casual photo taker. Also, on the 2nd to best photo quality (high quality 2816x2112) and with a 256 mB xD card, it can store over 170 pictures. I recommend it!

I'm baffled by the people saying this camera takes blurry photos or that the photos don't look good full-sized. One reviewer below me writes:

"Those people giving it five stars are not seeing the pictures at 100% enlargement. When you do - you'll find edge sharpness to be so bad - its like you are not wearing your glasses. Trees look like masses of green."

Well, I'm looking at the pics 100 percent on a very large computer monitor. Trees are so sharp I can count the leaves. I can see individual blades of grass. These people are not doing *something* right.

Image stabilization works fine, too. You will get some grain if you take pics without the flash at night, but that's normal per my experience. I've had other brands too and they are the same in this regard. The camera isn't especially flimsy in my experience either. I dropped it once on a carpet from a dining room table and it's fine, but it's not something I'd recommend for this or any camera. Still, if you're going to be roughing your camera up and need a heavy-duty model you should look elsewhere. This isn't made for that sort of treatment.

It is small and battery life is great. (A charger is included. Battery fully recharges in about three hours.) There *are* lag-time issues when using the flash. If you're looking for super-fast point-and-shoot, look elsewhere. My biggest complaint is how the on-screen menus keep reappearing every time you change a setting. I don't need to be told I'm in Portrait Mode 15 times during the course of using the camera. To the best I can tell, there's no way to turn off these annoying on-screen menus.

I also find that, despite the fact that there are settings for everything from photographing cuisine to fireworks to documents, there are about three settings that work best for everything. For the flash I only use Night Portrait--gives the softest look in any situation. For others I use either Auto or Dis with the flash turned off. Gives good images even in large size, though as I said with lower light levels there will be some digital noise. But I've found that true in every camera of this type.

The one thing I will say, however, is that the camera comes with various manuals, both on screen, on disc and on paper--all pretty useless unless you already know what you're doing, in which case you wouldn't be reading it. Can't anyone write coherently anymore?

If you are looking for a camera to pop in your pocket with a large 2.5" viewing screen and easy to use, this is the camera for you! This camera takes incredible pictures. Priced just right for 6 Megapixels. The FE-190's image stabilation is great for someone with shaky hands. Olympus is our favorite brand of camera. We have another Olympus digital that is larger - with greater zoom capability and we love it but it is very bulky to take to the beach, park or hike. We will be using this camera much more than our larger Olympus.

I purchased this camera for my boyfriend's birthday back in november and he loves it! Its slim and packed with all the different settings you could want. I compared the price listed on the website to that of my local electronics store and u cant beat it...6MP for under $200 and the trusted name brand of olympus makes it a great buy!!! I even bought one for myself!!! ooo and the delay time in between taking pictures is not long at all (better then most cameras i've used)

I bought this camera a month ago, and it has been a great purchase. It was affordable and offers a lot of quality and features for the price. I have no had any of the problems that other reviewers have had, but I will mention that there can be minor problems with red-eye. This seems to be very easy to edit out with basic software. I highly recommend this camera for the easy use, slim design, and the long-lasting battery. I've only had to charge it once.