Olympus Stylus 780 7.1MP Digital Camera with Dual Image Stabilized 5x Optical Zoom (Black)

For the money (I paid about $300) and have been using in for about 6 months in a variety of situations, it is not a good deal. I bought it for the water resistancy, which is about the only good thing besides the size. The LCD is impossible to see in bright light. The icons on the buttons are wearing off already. In very bright light, there is often a white circle near the center of the photograph. I have a 2G card and shoot at high res. At this setting, I get 1163 photos. When I get to about 700 images, I get card error messages. Once I download the photos and re format the card, it was fine. I have used an Olympus C3000 for a long time. An excellent camera, just too bulky. I am so disappointed in this 780!

I bought this camera after doing a lot of comparison shopping. I find the camera to be just fine although nothing spectacular. The pics are good but not great. The scene guide is great for an amature like me. The dual-image stabilization seems to work very well. I am often outdoors when I use this camera so the all-weather nature of this camera is great. The LCD screen is quite nice and big but is worthless in bright light. Attempting to use the panorama mode (if you can find it) is hard and Olympus doesn't publish any information that I have found on how to actually use their software to link images. The image is not clear, washed out, and just plain poor. Another problem is that the video is absolutely terrible. The videos are hazy, blurry, washed out. Pity. My cell phone takes much better videos and it's 2 years old. Anyway, overall, I would not recommend this camera.

UPDATE: I've used this camera for many months now and and ready to throw it in the bin. What a piece of junk. The movies mode is absolutely horrible. The videos are next to useless and the audio cuts out. Additionally, panaorama mode is nowhere to be found, even when using Olympus xD cards of which I have 2. I will not buy another Olympus product!

Olympus Stylus 830 8MP Digital Camera with Dual Image Stabilized 5x Optical Zoom (Black) My wife had problems with blurry pics and now she is very happy with her picture taking abilities ... she loves this camera!

I have used this camera in a variety of situations and it doesn't disappoint. The pictures are clear, the zoom capability is a real advantage over the normal 3X optical zoom, and the closeups are awesome. Took pictures in the near-dark of historic potato houses and it brought these musty rooms to life. I could see in the picture what my eyes couldn't see, without glare or unnatural looking light. I put the case on my belt, let the sweater hang over and can draw it out like a pistol. So different from the SLR days when tourist was written all over me. Also my blow-ups have been very clear, at least to 11x14. The only problem is the wash-out on the screen in a bright, sunny day. I learned to compensate for that by holding the camera away from my body and aiming under those conditions. Works about 80% of the time. One usually tries to avoid the sun anyway

I've owned numerous Olympus cameras, and our family uses them to take photos and videos for family DVDs. Being able to take 640x480 video at 30 fps is the main feature I'm looking for.

The specifications said the camera takes 640x480/30fps video, but you have to read the fine print in the instruction manual to see that 640x480 video is capped at 10 seconds. It's difficult to make much use of a 10 second video!

Previous Olympus cameras limited video length only if you didn't have a Type H memory card, but this camera limits video even with a Type H card. The video format has also changed from Quicktime to AVI - perhaps these movies are too large for the speed of the memory card.

Anyway, a 10 second video limit basically makes the camera useless for me, and anyone trying to capture useful video. I feel a little ripped off, because I made my decision specifically on the 640x480/30fps video feature.