Olympus Stylus Epic QD CG Date 35mm Camera

Other products by Olympus

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 2.8 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000021YU8
• Item model number: Stylus Epic QD CG
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (75 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #6,178 in Camera & Photo (See Bestsellers in Camera & Photo)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: November 1, 1999

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

The durable Olympus Stylus Epic offers full-featured, high-quality 35mm operation in an affordable package. With this ultra-portable point-and-shoot--one of the smallest 35mm cameras available--you'll never leave your camera at home.

While it's extraordinarily light and small, the Olympus Stylus Epic is heavy on styling and great features. It sports a miniature version of Olympus's signature clamshell sliding case, making it easy to turn the camera on and off. Its good-looking, high impact case is durable and splashproof.

The Olympus Stylus Epic offers the advanced features of Olympus's larger camera lines, including quartz date and time imprinting and a self timer. The Olympus Stylus Epic also has a whopping six flash modes, including automatic, red-eye reduction, and night scene.

The Olympus Stylus Epic was a pleasure to use--it was as small or smaller than many of the new Advanced Photo System (APS) cameras, but uses standard 35mm film. Its tapered design made it easy to slip in a pocket, and since it was little larger than a deck of cards, we found ourselves carrying it everywhere. If you hate lugging even a normal-size point-and-shoot around, the Olympus Stylus Epic has the portability you need.

Pros:

• Extremely lightweight and compact
• Durable construction
• Wide range of flash options
• Affordable

Cons:

• Battery compartment is hard to open

Product Description

Precision-crafted and styled for success, the Stylus Epic has an ultra-compact, all-weather body so it's easy to carry and easy to hold, and a high-resolution 35mm f2.8 lens to help you capture high-quality images. Fully automatic operation, intelligent variable-power flash, and lots more of the advanced features that have made Stylus cameras famous worldwide are included.The powerful six-mode flash lets your pictures come out just the way you saw them. Auto color-balancing fires automatically when your subject is backlit or under artificial light so your pictures display more natural color tones. And red-eye reduction helps the subject's eyes adjust to the light level of the flash to minimize the red-eye effect. There's also Variable-power flash, Night Scene Flash, Fill-In Flash, and Flash Off to help ensure your pictures are properly lit.

See all Product Description

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

418 of 428 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Clear pictures, November 13, 1999

By	Rico (College Park, Maryland) - See all my reviews

The Epic QD CG is the Epic model that I bought, with the quartz date imprinting (which I've never used) and the attractive metallic "champagne gold" finish that aren't in the base model, but without the "panoramic" image-cropping in the more expensive DLX model.

The f/2.8 lens is sharp and bright, and the camera is small enough to carry in my pants pocket. But the feature I like best is the accurate exposure system. The default automatic mode uses fill flash effectively. You can also force the flash off or on, or combine foreground flash with long exposure for night scenes.

The flash is bright enough to reach 27' with ISO 400 film, and its brightness is automatically reduced to prevent overexposure of subjects as close as 1.1'. The flash is close to the lens, so you should use the red-eye-reduction mode when the ambient lighting is dim and your subject's pupils are dilated. Using this mode, I have never shot a subject with red eyes.

If you don't absolutely need a zoom lens, this is a handy camera that takes great pictures.

68 of 69 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Camera in Amazon, June 2, 2000

By	Anton Beletskii (Niskayuna, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

After you do photography for a while you start to understand that all that matters in a camera is the lens. The Olympus Epic had the best lens out of all point-and-shoot cameras (and most of SLR zoom lenses) here as of June 2000.You may ask are there better lenses in P/S cameras? The answer is yes; for example Ricoh GR1 has slightly better lens. The price is $450, and it is unavailable in the US. The only P/S camera in Amazon with comparable optics is Lomo Automatic, but it is very strange camera - you have to read the reviews and decide for yourself if you like Lomo. It is much easier and cheaper to construct high quality fixed focal lens than zoom lens which is the reason for high lens quality in Olympus and Lomo. Unfortunately, this creates the only problem I experienced with Epic. Its fixed focal length is 35 mm (this means that camera has 1.5 larger field of view than human eye, so everything looks 1.5 times smaller than in real life) which requires moving really close to the object to fill the frame. So, it is not very good for portraits, but excellent for buildings and landscapes. The bottom line: as many advanced amateurs and pros believe the camera has the best quality/price ratio in the world

34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Pictures - Fantastic Size - FANTASTIC Camera, October 10, 2000

By	Michelle (The Great Pacific NorthWET) - See all my reviews

I purchased an original Olympus Stylus when it was first released in 1990. Enamored with it's small size, and rave reviews I plunked down my [money] and was off.

Fast forward to 1999 - Averaging 2 rolls of film a month for 9 years, my Stylus began to sound a bit tired and was going through batteries at a quick pace. I began to look for a different camera and was certain I would just replace it in kind. However, with more rave reviews, the new Olympus Stylus Epic was released and I made the decision to replace my trusty little camera with the new version.

The size of this camera is absolutely wonderful. In the point-and-shoot 35mm category it has been the smallest affordable camera to come down the pike in a long time. It is easy to take with you anywhere, and if having a small, easily tote-able camera will get ANYONE to take pictures, it is well worth it. You don't take the pictures if you don't have your camera with you - with this camera, there are no excuses for not having it with you.

The pictures I've taken have been nothing short of fantastic. Always a clear image, colors are rendered appropriately, even spectacularly. The lack of a zoom has never been an issue, here In fact, I purchased a Stylus Zoom thinking it would enable me to take better close-ups, but quickly found out the closer I get to the action myself, without relying on a zoom lens, the better my pictures are. I returned the zoom camera without a regret. (If you REALLY need to zoom in, odds are you would be better off with an SLR and a real zoom lens, or a telephoto lens - we have those too - the size of this camera is much more practical!)

We've given two or three of these as gifts to family members and have a number of extended family members who have purchased this camera based on it's size, and the fantastic pictures we've happily passed around. Everyone is thrilled!

I don't think you will be disappointed should you decide to chose this camera!