180° About Face

What it comes down to is this: the Olympus 8080 camera takes fantastic photos. It's the lens. Leaving aside the noise issue (only visible at "actual pixels" and if you know what you're looking at), the quality of the glass leads to magnificent photos: sharp, well exposed, accurate.

And though I was annoyed that it (and most other current models) uses a Li-Ion battery rather than AA rechargeables, the battery does last ages, so you can shoot away to your heart's content.

You need a huge memory card or two, because on SHQ, you get about 3-4 images per 16MB of card. I only borrowed a 16MB CF card for the weekend, because I didn't want to open the packet of the 32MB xD card supplied with the camera, so I was running up and down stairs to transfer images to my Mac the whole weekend.

I got some great pictures. But I'm still not keeping it. For two reasons. On its own, it's too big and heavy for the kind of photographer I am, and while I'm happy with it around the house and in the garden, I'm not going to like keeping it with me for a whole day when I'm out and about. Just thinking about the strap round my neck on a hot day produces phantom chafing.

And because of the noise issue, there's no option other than to shoot at 50 ISO all the time, and that requires the flash for indoor shots. And the built-in flash isn't powerful enough, and can't be angled to avoid harsh lighting. I'd need an external flash, so I could bounce it off walls and ceilings, and that would double the size and weight.

So the Minolta G600, 6 megapixels and about half the price, is on its way. I'll let you know...