The Olympus FE-300

The Olympus FE-300 is the current flagship of the entry level FE line of digital cameras from Olympus. The FE-300 is a 12 mega pixel camera, with a 3x optical zoom, 2.5 inch LCD, and a sturdy, slim metal body.

Nuts and Bolts
Sensor The FE-300 has a 1/1.72" CCD that can capture a total of 12 mega pixels. Full resolution images measure 4000x3000 pixels and file sizes of images taken in SHQ mode average just under 5MB a piece. Images can also be captured at 2048x1536, 640x480, and 1920x1080.

Viewfinder or LCD The FE-300 only has a 2.5 inch LCD for framing and then reviewing your shots there is no optical viewfinder. The LCD has a decent pixel density, with a total of 230K pixels. The refresh rate is a little sluggish, but still usable. In bright sunlight outdoors, the screen view ability is again not great, but still usable. The screen does a nice job of gaining up and down depending on lighting conditions.

Lens or Zoom The 3x optical zoom lens on the FE-300 extends from the camera body when powered on. While it's powered off, the lens lies almost flush with the body and is protected by a built in lens cover. The maximum aperture ranges from f2.8 at wide angle to f4.7 at telephoto. The lens covers a 35mm equivalent focal range of 35-105 mm.

Flash The built in flash can be used in auto mode, red-eye reduction, fill flash (always on), and disabled. According to the spec sheet, the flash has an effective range of about 1 foot to 20 feet at ISO 800 and wide angle. At telephoto and ISO 800, this range is 1.6 � 11.8 feet.

On paper, twenty feet looks pretty good, but keep in mind that this range is with ISO set at 800, which will lead to very noisy shots. The really unfortunate part is that the camera does boost ISO automatically up to ISO 800 in dark conditions. When I was using the fill flash in some bright back light conditions, the auto ISO setting stayed reasonable.

Memory Media The FE-300 accepts xD-Picture Card media, which is available in capacities up to 2GB. There is also 48MB of internal memory.

Image or Movie File Format(s) Images are stored as JPEG files only. Movie files are captured as AVI files.

Connectivity There is a single connector that can be used with the included USB cable or the included AV cable.

Power The camera is powered by a 740 mAh lithium-ion battery. The spec sheet says that you can get up to 300 shots per charge. In real life (and usage), I would expect around 250 shots. The included battery charger takes approximately 5 hours to charge the battery.

Included Included with the camera is wrist strap, the lithium ion battery, battery charger, USB cable, AV cable, and CD-ROM with the Olympus Master 2 software.

Performance One thing that Olympus really does well with these FE cameras is the ease of use. If you're used to the menu systems of other brands, then it may take a bit to get adjusted to the menu system, but otherwise, it's easy to figure out how to use the camera. It's also really nice that this camera has nothing resembling a "cheap" feel.

Image Quality Overall, image quality was pretty average. The FE-300 can make some nice shots, but in general, they're just so. Details were a little soft overall, except in the some of the macro shots that I took. I was also annoyed at a slight color shift when you take the same shot at wide angle then at telephoto. At the telephoto end, the shots had a cold look to them, so the auto white balance was having a little trouble adjusting to the different light quality coming in at wide angle vs. telephoto.

When the auto white balance was spot on, colors were reproduced accurately and were not over saturated. Shots taken with flash were not impressive. In fact, the only shots that I liked that I took with the flash were taken when using the flash as fill flash. Shots taken indoors, and especially ones taken in dark or dim rooms were not impressive since the camera increased the sensitivity up to ISO 800.