Hands-On, Olympus

• 08/01/99

Olympus

Seems that everybody from George Lucas to the average amateur photographer is talking about 'digital photography' these days. With the arrival of the Olympus D-620L Digital Camera, we began to understand why. Versatile and easy to use, this camera is loaded with features and, as we soon discovered, its abilities are many.

As simple to use as any standard film camera, the D-620L's wide array of capabilities make it stand out. It has an awesome 3x zoom lens system that can bring distant subjects surprisingly close. Exposure, flash and focus can be adjusted automatically or manually. A built-in LCD screen lets you preview images instantly. If the image is not to your liking, a simple erase function eliminates it. The camera can also fire off a series of five shots at any resolution in less than two seconds, with the burst-shooting mode.

Once taken, the JPEG images can be downloaded directly to a computer. There are three levels of image quality. On the 8MB card, 8 shots can be stored at SHQ mode, 24 shots at HQ mode and 99 at SQ. In short, we found the Olympus D-620L to be a very good camera. The image quality is great (The photo above was taken by T.H.E. staff using the D-620L) and the functions are very easy to use, even for users averse to actually reading the manual. The 12-second timer is handy, as is the great zoom capability.

Also from Olympus, we received the ES-10 Parallel Scanner. Once again, this unit is as easy-to-use as it is functional. Because it scans film directly, from slides, 35mm film negatives or APS film cartridges, it produces high-resolution 3.8 megapixel images without the loss of detail that often results from scanning photographs.

It scans all common color or black and white 35mm films, negative or positive, mounted or strip negative. A preview mode allows you to make adjustments to the exposure bias, color balance and focus, tweaking the image to your liking before actually scanning it.

Overall we found the Olympus ES-10 to be very good at what it d'es. The quality of the scanned images says it all, really. They come through with crisp resolution and vivid color, ready to be used in electronic slide shows, classroom presentations, newsletters, Web-publishing or any other place you may need them. Olympus, Melville, NY, (800) 622-6372, www.olympus.com.

-Jim Schneider
[email protected]

This article originally appeared in the 08/01/1999 issue of THE Journal.