Olympus' skinny metal point-and-shoot sure looks nice, but do its 12 megapixels do anything other than look gaudy printed on the case?
Review summary of the Olympus FE-300:
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 The FE-300 doesn't do anything poorly, unfortunately it doesn't do anything spectacular, either. We found it to be a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. The beefy stats and the slim metal design helped, but a few quirks that seem to span across all Olympus models still bother us. We're also not sure about the matte screen, and it will be interesting to see if/when Olympus uses it in the future. Release: September 2007. Price: $250.
Pros: Slim design, no fatal flaws, powerful image sensor
Cons: Low number of scene modes, no widescreen video, xD memory card
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Full review of the Olympus FE-300:
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Design - Very Good
The 2.5-inch screen on the FE-300 is about standard for a camera its size, but oddly enough, Olympus went with a matte as supposed to glossy display. The benefits (or detriments) of this type of display are arguable, so we won’t be drawing any lines in the sand. It lacks an optical viewfinder like most cameras in its class, including the Casio EX-S880, so if you manage to break the LCD, you’ve managed to create a shiny new paperweight. We’re still waiting for Olympus to catch up with Sony and release a touch screen model; were they to, this is where they would put it.
The concave buttons were comfortable and responsive enough, but we don’t really like the wheel on the back. We tend to shoot one- handed a lot, and wheels like the one found on the FE-300 are only convenient when located on the top of the camera. Externally, the FE-300 is a sleek, elegant camera. The slim metal body most closely resembles Canon’s Powershot SD line, in regards to screen placement and zoom control, the main difference being the FE-300’s non-flush front surface. Similarities aside, it looks good.
Shooting Features - Good
Being Olympus' most high-end point-and-shoot, we expected beefy stats like 12 megapixels and ISO settings reaching 3200. The 3x zoom was average, but we did like how we could use it while recording video. Without continuous autofocus, however, expect it to get blurry on occasion. We ran into the same brand-related xD card problems that we did with the Olympus 790SW, and our opinion hasn’t changed. We think it’s a cheap ploy to get people to buy their xD card instead of finding the cheapest one. So yet another Olympus camera with a Panorama mode we’ll never see. Bad form.
The 12 scene modes seemed kind of sparse, especially when we’ve seen as many as 25 on other Olympus models, but they still included document and auction settings in addition the standard indoor and portrait settings. The camera was also painfully slow, as evidenced by the nearly 5 second startup time (from off to a focused picture) and subsequent 5 seconds it took to capture a second shot. ISO settings were fully adjustable in ProgramAuto mode, which we liked.
Image Quality - Good
It seems that every high-end point and shoot, whether 12 megapixels or two, is handcuffed by its lens. The FE-300 is no different; yes, the sensor is high-powered, but don’t expect images to be that much clearer than your similarly-sized 8MP camera. Until the lenses get better, all the larger images do is take up more space on our hard drive. Images taken in our preferred resolution, the widescreen 1920x1080, looked great under good conditions—outdoors with lots of sunlight, indoors with plenty of non-flourescents—but didn’t wow us in the crummy conditions. With a high ISO setting we were able to get decent low-light shots, but even the slightest movements rendered the shots usesless. We’re still waiting for the slim point-and-shoot that takes great shots in a dark, crowded nightclub, but this one isn’t it.
While we had no 10-second video limitations like we did with other Olympus cameras, we would have liked a widescreen format option. That being said, the video mode was adequate, and the VGA (640x480) video mode looked decent.
In-camera editing options were sparse, limited to cropping and shrinking, in addition to auto settings like “red eye fix” and “lighting fix.” We sometimes wonder, with such limited options and a small screen to look at, why even include these features at all? While it didn’t bother us so much, the FE-300 was yet another camera we would not be editing images on.
Image Transfer - Very Good
The current version of Olympus’ camera software, Olympus Master 2, is one of the better proprietary pieces of transfer software we’ve seen. It can be set to start immediately upon connection of a camera or card (the convenience of which is debatable). When you load the software, you can import your pictures from the "My Pictures" folder on your computer, or if you have previous versions of the Olympus software, you can import from those as well. Upon startup, a quick-start guide pops up, which remains on top of the screen as you follow the directions it gives you. Considering it obstructs the view of the program, it's a bit cumbersome. It would have been nice for the guide and the functions to be integrated, or at least dedicate a part of the screen to the guide so we could follow along as we performed the tasks.
The software has lots of editing options, allowing you to adjust brightness, contrast, color, tone and gamma, with auto and fully manual settings. We liked that the software worked with Macintosh computers, providing considerably more editing options than iPhoto, if an admittedly less aesthetically pleasing experience. For those not looking to splurge on Photoshop, this seems like a pretty solid and easy-to-use photo editing option, one of the better that we've seen. It would have been nice to have an e-mail option within the program, however.
Transfers with the USB 2.0 cable were fast, especially with the 1920x1080 shots we took, taking a mere seconds to transfer. We suspect shots taken at full resolution would take considerably longer. One thing we didn’t like about the USB cable, was its proprietary connector. As bad as those are (we’re all about universality), Olympus took it a step further, and gave it a different kind of connector than other Olympus cameras, making it incompatible even with cables other cameras MADE BY THE SAME COMPANY. Ludicrous. Again, the memory card was an issue; we were troubled by the required xD card. It was more expensive ($39.99) than the 1GB SD cards we saw at our local big-box retailer ($21.99), and this is in addition to the aforementioned fact that in order to access certain features (like Panorama), you need an Olympus brand xD card. This is nothing short of shameful. If they want to include special features on their brand of cards, the least they could do is include one with the camera.
Accessories - Good
Accessories bundled with the FE-300 included a wrist strap, a Li-Ion battery, a USB 2.0 cable, a proprietary A/V cable, a battery charger and software CD-ROM. We like to be able to charge our devices through our computer and, barring that, at least have a dock with an AC adapter that we can set at our computer desk. We find removing the battery and placing it in the charger inconvenient. And about the USB cable; we understand the reasons behind proprietary cables, even if we don’t like them: if the customer is forced to buy your cable, you are likely to make more profit. But making different cables for different cameras within the same company makes no sense to us.
Price and availability
The Olympus FE-300 will start selling for $250 () in September 2007.
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