Olympus FE5020 12MP Digital Camera with 5x Wide

GREAT LITTLE CAMERA
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I really love the Olympus FE-5020. It produces very acceptable images for this price range. Olympus is a brand you can rely upon. I also own an Olympus Stylus 500 which I bought 5 years ago and it has produced many great images.

I see that the two previous reviewers here have decided to return their cameras. Don’t let that turn you off this camera. I am very fussy about picture quality. I was a professional photographer for 20 years before I left the business. Sure, there will always be cameras that take better pictures, but for this price range you won’t go wrong.

The thing about this camera that really appealed to me is the 24mm lens. I also own a Panasonic FZ28 and a Sony HX1, and while they are both superb cameras, they only go down to 28mm on the wide end of the zoom. The Olympus FE-5020 nicely fills that gap. Another thing I love about the FE-5020 is it’s compact size. It fits in my jacket pocket and will go with me everywhere. That’s a bonus because you can’t take photographs when the camera is sitting home because you didn’t feel like lugging it around.

I don’t find the controls too small. I’m a guy with large hands and have severe carpal tunnel syndrome but I manage nicely in navagating the camera settings.

It is true that you will probably need to manipulate the photographs on a computer. I believe that the beauty of digital photography is the ability to work on a computer rather than breathing the toxic fumes of a darkroom. To me, digital photography is 50% camera work and 50% computer enhancement. If you’re not onboard with this, you may want to look elsewhere. The images I enhance on the compter are great. You can either use Picasa which is free or the Olympic Master software included with the camera. I start out with Photoshop Elements 6, enhancing contrast and color saturation.

I opted for the dark gray FE-5020 because I’m old school and think a camera should only be one color–black. I was happy to discover that the dark gray is actually closer to a dark navy blue so I got pretty close to having a black camera.

The neopryne Olympus camera pouch advertised by Amazon fits the camera beautifully and is very nice. I’m going to order another Lithium battery because I’m running it down in about 2 hours of shooting. It would probably last most people longer than that, but I’m always checking each image, zooming in and out of the captured image which really eats up power. I also walk around with the camera powered up when I prowling for shots.

I hope this information is helpful to anyone interested in the camera. I’ve had mine for about 5 days and just love it. I will try to post a photograph in Customer Images, but I’ve tried this before and my pictures exceed the size they allow you to post.

Enjoy your image making. I hope you enjoy photography as much as I do.

Phenomenal Features, but Poor Picture Quality
Rating:2 out of 5 stars
The features offered are excellent. And the wide angle is unsurpassed–from about 4 feet distance from the camera lens to my object, it captured the 20 ft. to its side which I’ve never seen capable without a special wide angle lens attachment.

The camera is light-weight, very slim and the menus are easy to access and understand and navigate. There is a built-in memory that will allow for a minimum amount of photo taking and video. You can even put approx. 4 seconds of voice recording to still photos which is great for memos or things you want to remember with a particular photo.

The features allow one to: add brightness in several different levels…select objects in photos to make a 2nd photo out of the original…rotate photos…resize photos…remove red eye…remove shadows…14 different scene modes from portrait to landscape to night to sports to candle to sunset to documents to beach to pets, etc…stabilization mode…fine and standard quality…macro for 5.9″ proximity and super macro for 3.9″ proximity…10 second self-timer…7 image sizes and each one can also have fine or standard quality…2 movie image sizes with 2 frame rates…lighting features for cloudy, sunny, indoor home, indoor office, indoor lamps, etc…panorama images can be created from 3 images with the software provided…auto focus and auto focus for moving objects…a magic filter which offers special effects and distortions for fun…silent mode if you don’t want to hear the sound effects the camera makes…all kinds of fancy playback and viewing/editing features…and even a few more features than this.

I took a dozen photos with the Olympus and then took my 4-to-5-year-old Sony DSC-P200 7.2 megapixel camera and took the same exact photos just seconds apart–same proximity, same lighting, same everything. Then I put them up on the computer. The photos from the Olympus were grainy and bland and the colors were the absolute worst I’ve ever seen! The photos from my old Sony were crisp and clear and sharp and the colors were vibrant and rich and lustrous. I could not believe my eyes. The green trees with the Olympus looked washed out and with the Sony it was like I was in person looking at the vibrancy of the green palm fronds. Same with skin color, wood cabinetry, and the overall “atmoshpere” around everything. With the Olympus it was washed out and bland and muted, whereas Sony was so crispy, so sharp, and I just can’t say enough about the difference in vibrancy and richness of color.

Thus, I have no choice but to return the camera. I will miss the ease and convenience of the wide angle and the menus. But that’s why there is such a price difference between a Sony and an Olympus. You get what you pay for. I paid about $300+ for my Sony when it first hit the market years ago. But the most important features are richness and color and clarity of pictures for memories, and this Olympus just does not deliver.

Looks good for the price, but lots of flaws
Rating:2 out of 5 stars
My Canon SD850 got claimed by the sand dunes recently so I needed to replace it. I was looking for something with a wide angle lens at a decent price. After some research I decided to purchase the Olympus 5020 and here are my thoughts after some time with the camera:

First off the image resolution is decent, but the colors are very flat and don’t seem very accurate. Sure you could fix this in post processing, but you shouldn’t have to do that. The camera does seem to do well inside with flash as long as the subject is within a few feet. I actually probably could have dealt with the color issue, but the more I played with the camera the more I got annoyed by some other things. Olympus boasts about AF tracking and face recognition, but these modes do not operate simultaneously, you have to pick one or the other and at that neither seems to work well. Also, the stabilization that is a standard feature on most cameras doesn’t operate all the time, but has to be selected as a separate shooting mode. One really odd thing that I couldn’t figure out is when in the standard “P” mode the camera doesn’t shoot in full 12mp, but only 5mp; I went through all the settings, but couldn’t figure out why this was happening. Macro mode leaves a lot to be desired, the documentation claims 3cm, but the best I could do was about twice that distance. There’s pretty much 0 user control; in some settings you can change the white balance and ISO, but that’s it.

Most of the controls are within the menu system, which is easy to navigate, but it means a lot of button pushing to change the type of AF or shooting mode. There are a lot of different scene modes to choose from, but if you want to change the one you’re using you have to cycle through all the shooting modes back to the scene mode and pick the new one you want. In my opinion all this stuff should be at the fingertips; not buried in menus. The construction of the camera also feels cheap, the D-pad on the back feels very flimsy and “clicky” when used and the battery door feels like it would snap off very easily. Overall the construction and controls are very clunky and poorly designed.

The bottom line is that this might be a decent first digital camera for someone, but if you’re someone like me who has used digital for 7-8 years you’ll quickly see that Olympus left a lot on the table with this camera. I really wouldn’t recommend this camera to anyone as there are many cameras of this size and resolution out there; I had hope for the 24mm wide angle, but more cameras are offering wide angle now too.

Mine is going back and I decided to spend some more money and get the Panasonic Lumix FX580

poor quality camera quality isnt there
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
just wanted to start off this review i bought this camera cause i wanted to try out olympus. I will never try there cameras again. First off i want to make a note you cant turn the flash on in super macro thats one limition the camera has. the pictures indoors have purple tint especially on the walls. camera is made very poorly. If you put it on iauto or dis mode if you turn the camera off it will revert back to p mode which will allow you to pick a scene mode under scn. this camera is horrible. just wanted to tell you my thoughts about it.

Could be a great camera – - buy from a local vendor!
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
Ordered this camera a week before Christmas as a present for my young daughter.

Paid the extra $’s for expedited shipping.

Was just told by UPS that I need to be home tomorrow between 8:00AM and 7:00PM for delivery (the Amazon vendor will only ship with signature).

Saved $20 buying through Amazon. Now I have to use a vacation day to get it.

Unless you can afford to stay at home for 13 hours to accept shipment, purchase this from a store where you can pick it up!