Why You Can Trust CNET Olympus FE-100 - digital camera review: Olympus FE-100 - digital camera
Olympus FE-100 - digital camera
The FE-100 and the FE-110 have almost identical specifications, from their 2.8X zoom lenses to their compact 7-ounce bodies. Both have tiny 1.5-inch LCDs that are difficult to view in both bright and dim light. Their chief difference is that the FE-100 has a 4-megapixel sensor instead of the FE-110's 5-megapixel chip.However, newcomers to digital photography may be pleased by this camera's low price tag and easy operation. It has enough onboard memory (28MB) to allow shooting nearly 30 full-resolution images; back in the analog-camera days, most rolls of film offered fewer exposures than that. If you want to save more shots, the compatible xD-Picture Card media is inexpensive. (The two more upscale cameras in the FE series include xD cards.)
The FE-100's controls are logically arranged and easy to access. On top are a shutter release and a power switch. The back panel includes six buttons, a mode dial (for Program Auto, Portrait, Landscape, Night Scene, Self Portrait, and Movie modes), and a four-way cursor pad. The buttons let you delete photos, access the bare-bones menu system, change flash options, and switch between recording and picture-review modes. The cursor-pad keys set exposure-compensation values, activate the self-timer, switch into Macro and Super Macro mode (taking you down to 2 inches), and restore the camera's default settings.
The 2.8X zoom lens extends from 38mm to 106mm (35mm-camera equivalent)--a basic but serviceable range that gives you a little more help shooting faraway subjects than capturing a crowded room at close range. Although you can't specify exposures, the camera will set them for you using shutter speeds from 1/2,000 second to 1 second (or 2 seconds in Night Scene mode). The FE-100's flash provides even exposures out to about 12 feet.
Performance is acceptable if you're a patient soul, but we fidgeted while waiting 8 seconds for the camera to power up and enduring intervals between shots that ranged from more than 5 seconds to nearly 8 with the flash activated. Shutter lag was acceptable, at 0.75 second under high-contrast lighting and 1.2 seconds in low-contrast illumination.
The Olympus FE-100's image quality was only adequate; if resolution is important to you, consider spending a few dollars more for the 5-megapixel FE-110 or splurging on the superior FE-120. Still, this model produced surprisingly good exposures, and in our test photos, defects such as JPEG artifacts, a touch of noise at higher ISOs, and a little color fringing weren't objectionable in smaller prints.
Score Breakdown
Design 5Features 4Performance 4Image quality 5