Photography User Digital Camera Deals And Basic Photography Information

This camera is a complete POS. Its too slow. Every picture I take out of doors is over-exposed. Its terrible for action shots. You can not move at all when you take the picture or else everything is a blur. Same goes for your subjects, if they move in the slightest they come out blurry. So unless your subjects are frozen and you have a tri-pod, your photos will suck.
Rating: 1 / 5

i recently just bought this camera, i was so excited to use it, and to try it under water. The underwater pictures came out great, but the outdoor pictures came out horrible! The image was dark, and not very clear. I reccomend getting the stylus 850 sw, its alot better, but more expensive, but its definitly worth it.
Rating: 2 / 5

This being the first digital camera I have owned, though I have used several extensively (including Olympus & Canon DSLRs semi-profesionally), the reader should bear in mind my limited frame of reference to other digital cameras. I am and have been for 35 years an avid film photographer. As digital photography has finally advanced to the level where a comparable finished photo can be taken with a camera affordable to non pros (or at least non-photogeeks!), I took the plunge.

The waterproof function was an afterthought in my case, though a welcome one. It has performed well in this regard. I mainly wanted not to worry or think about water and I haven’t had to. The 550WP is not at all bothered by steady rain, splashes, and a dunk or two in streams, lakes, tubs, etc. Score one!

I am generally frustrated and critical of digital cameras (save DLSRs) for their automaticity. I have yet to see a model that allows manual and independent adjustment of shutter and aperture, so lets forget that here. The manual features available on the 550WP took a while to get used to (white balance, shot-by-shot ISO/ASA, exposure compensation, flash mode, etc.), but give predictable and useful results, if with less fine control than I would like. Again, apparently a very common if not universal attribute of point and shoot digital cameras.

Finished image quality, without further editing or processing is excellent, and I found none of the issues with grain, washed out images in bright light, shadows, or poor low light non-flash images. The one qualification I have here is also a bit of a compliment: flash shots, indoor and out are generally excellent, without much if any harsh reflection washing out, or other defects. Remarkably and easily so, such that I found it very easy to get very good shots, especially indoors (where reflection and overlighting are the most problem). My old Olympus and Canon film slrs, circa 1990 and 1994 are must more complicated to yield such flash shots. Where this is a criticsm is that there is a gap (how many lumens/lux I don’t know, haven’t had a seperate light meter in ages) between the light level where flash is neccesary and where not so. The camera, if allowed to, defaults to using the flash, if at low instensity, where if aperture, shutter, and ISO were truly and independently adjustable by the user, the picture would be well lit, and more naturalistic than any flash photo ever could be. But as above, the flash is remarkably unobtrusive and yields uniform lighting. Outdoors the flash shots are good also, and in all cases the flash is both ample, and finessed, by which I mean the flash does not simply ignite, nor simply alter the synchronization between flash and shutter, but flashes before, during, (seemingly) after the shutter, in pulses of varying intensity/width, which clearly alter according to lighting conditions and other factors. Good photos all around.

The various modes and settings seem intimidating even to an old shutterbug like me. In the end it took less than a week to master basic functions of what, where, and when. And again, these are all mostly comparable to other models/makes. My criticisms seem all to level at digital cameras in general (save DSLRs), rather than this model: lack of manual modes, inadequate audio or other feedback on shutter release, slowness of “winding”(it takes a second or two after a shot before the camera is ready even to begin composing again), and the lack of an optical viewfinder (the LCD is nice for review, but a real viewfinder is much easy and faster, things being equal, to frame and set shots).

I should say that I have fairly extensive experience using Photoshop (and earlier, more primitive photo editing software), going back to the early 1990′s well before digital cameras were either affordable or of a quality that could then even compete with an Instamatic or Polaroid. That said, for purposes of retouching, color correction, or other processing to produce a finished straight photograph, the Stylus 550-WP largely shoots and prints without *any* need for post-camera work (effects for artistic and dramatic reasons are another matter). I count this as a big deal, since the early digital cameras I used around 2001 were not just lower resolution (MP rating is the most oversold spec besides), but full of defects: bad color, ‘noise’ and other digital artifacts, over-under exposure, distortion, et al. This model is mercifully free of virtually all of these. All of the criticisms in other reveiws of this model I have read, that weren’t based on irrationalities, seem to me to be expecting images typical of a camera with a street price of OVER $500, rather than this model, in the $140-170 range.

As an experienced photographer making a beginning at digital photography, I can recommend this camera and a very good model for people like me and for others wanting a solid, basic model that produces excellent prints (I do print, a lot, and the final determiner of what is a good photo should be held as such an object rather than an image on a computer screen, no matter what the resolution; no display commonly available for under $5000 can display at full resolution a 10 megapixel image anyway). The addition of video w/ audio (I know, that is most models now), and a number of fine details of design and finish make this camera a great package for me. (I don’t think I’ll ever get over being able to shoot away with no concern about the cost of film or processing! You’d think there would be a real surge of nascent Annie Leibovitzs and Alfred Steiglitzs out there with all the practice this technology allows, but so far I don’t see it. . .) A good buy, good optics,solidly built, dependable, from an exteemed camera company, with the limitations and caveats mentioned.
Rating: 4 / 5