My new camera

I am now the proud owner of an Olympus C5050 zoom digital camera.
I can’t stop beaming.
However, the rechargeable batteries are still getting initiated, so I feel like an anxious groom who can’t kiss his bride yet.
I can however tell you that I spent nearly two hours at John 3:16 at Funan Centre this evening, talking it out with them. They could’ve convinced me to go for the more expensive Nikon Coolpix 5700, but they told me the C5050 was better overall. All right: they suggested the Nikon D100 digital SLR (nearly $3000 just for the body) if I was really serious, but since I wasn’t serious or overflowing with money, they let me be!
What I liked best about the C5050 was the fast shutter speed. The 5700 was slow, they said. I recalled that my dad’s Coolpix 880 was also slow to respond, resulting in many people’s backs being taken in my futile attempts at candid shots.
The next thing I liked was how quickly it focussed on objects, and how easy it was to take artistic-looking shots with blurred backgrounds. I know, I sound like a real amateur but it’s gratifying to find a camera you can – literally – click with.
What was also impressive, was how you could do a little Photoshopping in the camera itself. Samuel took a shot of me with Denyse (who previously bought her Nikon F55 at this same shop). Then he cropped Denyse’s face, and voila, it was saved as another photo! You can even adjust levels with the same sort of graph you’d see in Photoshop.
And the icing on the cake was the price. S$1300 for the camera, INCLUDING all the freebies offered by Olympus during the PC Fair, where innocent customers were fleeced $1514 (ha!). The rechargeable batteries and charger were sold seperately at $55. I’m not going to use the two $25 disposable batteries that came with the camera, until I really need to!
All in all, I’m so glad my intuition was right.
And I still can’t stop beaming.
Read detailed reviews: DPreview, Steve’s Digicams.