The Olympus C-5500 Sport Zoom is, above all, a good compact camera for the money. Its 5-megapixel resolution, 5X optical zoom, solid build, impressive array of features, and very good image quality add up to a strong all-purpose option for the advanced snapshot photographer. That said, some of its features are compromised; for example, you can’t shoot in burst mode at the highest-quality JPEG setting. That drawback, in addition to some inconsistent shutter lag and focus-time performance, makes this camera less suited for shooting action than the Sport Zoom moniker might lead you to believe.
The Olympus C-5500 Sport Zoom excels in image quality, producing pleasing, clean photos with accurate exposure and very good detail and sharpness. Colors are saturated but natural, and photos exhibited very little noise at low ISO ratings, although at ISO 400, noise does tend to mar the photographs. Surprisingly little purple fringing was visible, even in branches and gate detail photographed against the sky.
The automatic white balance performed nicely both outdoors and in, making it generally unnecessary to take advantage of the C-5500’s many white-balance settings. Flash-lit photos were exposed properly too. Neither barrel nor pincushion distortion was noticeable in any of our test photos.
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The Olympus C-5500 is among the latest models in Olympus’ C-series line of digital cameras, and offers a versatile combination of image quality and feature set at a relatively low price.
Based around a 5.1 megapixel CCD imager and 5x optical zoom lens, the Olympus 5500 also includes some relatively unusual features that help to differentiate it from the competition, such as a “Direct” histogram option, which displays the white and black areas of the frame in red and blue respectively, showing you directly which parts of the image may be under or overexposed.
It also sports an impressive “Super Macro” mode that gets incredibly close to your subjects, and does better than most competing models at high ISO settings, perhaps the source of the “Sports” reference in its marketing materials. With a good range of manual controls, the Olympus 5500 is an excellent all-around point & shoot model that should appeal to novice users and more experienced shooters alike.
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The Olympus C-5500 has a full automatic mode, both Shutter and Aperture Priority modes, 11 scene modes, and a manual mode. These provide a versatile range of shooting options for both beginning and intermediate users. Beginners who purchase this camera can expect to keep it for several years as it’s easy to grow with and the pixel mapping function can fix dead pixels when activated. The 5x optical zoom lens offers a longer range than most digital cameras in its price range. The image stabilization function complements the C-5500’s optical zoom and movie modes. The 5.1-megapixel Olympus camera does disappoint users with a burst mode that is slower than the advertised frame rate and some vague icons in the menus which impede ease of use.
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Olympus C-5500 Sport Zoom’s performance is all over the map. The camera starts up quickly and there’s no shutter lag. In other areas, such as focusing times, the camera is average. And in some instances the C-5500 is sluggish. This includes shot-to-shot and playback speeds, as well as the sequential shooting mode. Come on Olympus, if you’re going to call this a “sport zoom” at least offer a decent continuous shooting mode. The one here only takes 4 shots in a row (at 1.2 fps) and you can’t even use the SHQ image quality setting! The camera makes up for these shortcomings in the image quality department: I was not disappointed, except for the colors seeming a little dull at times. Thankfully that’s easy to remedy — just boost the in-camera saturation setting. The camera performed well in our redeye test as well. So well, in fact, that I couldn’t even test out the in-camera redeye reduction feature.
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The Olympus Camedia C-5500 Zoom is a full-featured digital camera with excellent image quality, very low noise and fast operation with no practical shutter lag. It is all put together in a camera that is both comfortable to hold and operate.
It is extremely easy to take good pictures with the Olympus C-5500 and, after one month’s constant use, the overall feeling is that this is a camera that delivers for beginner and serious amateur photographers. It is put together well and pretty intuitive to use, despite Olympus’ traditional reliance on the menu.
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