Customer Rating: 
Summary: WOW
Comment: Purshased as gift for husband, it is light and compact for the features this camera offers. He has been very pleased. This camera offers a lot for the price, is a great point and shoot camera.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: pro/con
Comment: Pro: Good price for the camera. The picture quality is very good. Recovery is quick. Functions and options are plentiful. Tech support was helpful.
Con: The image stabilization doesn't seem very effective. Camera set up was a nightmare since I run a Mac. Could not get the install menu right so had lost the manual and had to order one. The absolutely worst feature of the camera, IMHO, is the lack of a view finder. Trying to focus and compose a picture in sunlight is very difficult.
Conc.: Overall it's a good camera and when I can actually shade the view screen, shoots excellent pictures. The zoom is wonderful but at full Optical needs a tripod or a very well grounded hand-held position. I do not recommend trying to shoot from a boat in rough seas or river rapids.
Customer Rating:
Summary: camera
Comment: love this camera but get a tripod for it it is very hard to hold still when using full zoom but pic quality is awsome
Customer Rating:
Summary: Slow, poor low light performance
Comment: I bought this camera at Costco as an upgrade for my point and shoot camera (Fujifilm F72Exr), with main goal to take pictures of my kids, and do some nature photography. I tried it many times in different conditions, and was not satisfied by its performance. I returned it after two weeks or so.
Cons:
- Poor low light performance (by low light here I mean indoor photography with normal room lighting, without using flash). Very noisy at high ISO (800 and more)
- Slow to focus and has a significant shutter lag. My kids run/turn away before it takes a picture.
- Image stabilization is ineffective with a long zoom (I guess more than x10).
- No viewfinder one might expect on wanna-be-SLR camera.
Pros:
- Beautiful colors (providing that there is enough lighting)
- Battery life is OK (enough for a day of shooting)
- Easy to use, controls are located conveniently
Conclusion: Get an SLR for taking pictures of kids in a low light :-) Or no more than x12 zoom camera for trips (a compact zoom, like Panasonic ZS-series or Fujifilm F-series). x30 zoom is useless without a tripod.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Little Camera; Great Value
Comment: What I was looking for:
-- More advanced than a point-and-shoot, but not as complex as a DSLR
-- Well-made
-- Decent, basic video capability
-- Comfortable to hold and manipulate
-- High level zoom
-- Price: Under $300
What's Great About It:
-- 2MB of internal memory in addition to a card slot. I find that saving images to internal memory is much faster than saving to a card. Camera also has functionality for transferring photos and video from internal memory to a card inside the camera.
-- Appears to be very well-made. Although the casing is made of plastic, the camera looks and feels very solid. My impression is that this camera will last a long time.
-- Weight: A bit heavier than a point-and-shoot, but light enough that I can easily carry it with me most places. Because of it's size, it doesn't fit in a pocket, but it does fit in a small carry-on or large purse.
-- Consistent photo quality. I'm consistently getting excellent outdoor photos and very good indoor photos.
-- The 30x optical zoom works great. I'm getting very clear outdoor pictures at full zoom. Indoor zoomed pictures are slightly grainy, but that's true of many cameras in this price range.
-- Option of varying the resolution from 3MP to 12MP. I rarely need 12MP, so by using a lower resolution, I get many more images before having to transfer them to a card or computer.
-- Video: Exactly what I was looking for. Great for capturing events with family and friends. Includes decent audio that can optionally be turned off. With audio turned off, you can zoom while filming.
-- Small, light-weight Li-Ion battery. I'm getting about 300 photos and 10-15 minutes of video per charge. Battery recharges in about 2 hours. I just keep two additional batteries on hand, and I'm good to go in pretty much any situation. (I found the best prices for extra batteries here on Amazon.)
-- Price: Great value for the price. I got it on sale at a big-box store; worth every penny.
-- Very good macro and super macro. After a bit of a learning curve, I'm now consistently getting great macro and super-macro pictures.
-- Filters: These are more fun than I expected. I didn't think I'd use them at all, but I do. The "coloring book" filter is great for making personalized coloring books for the children in my life.
-- Includes an option to add several seconds of audio to still pictures. Very handy for quick descriptions of pictures so you don't forget later.
-- Built-in Flash: I like the fact that it the flash never pops-up automatically. It will fire automatically in certain modes, but if you don't want the flash at all (and I often don't), you just leave the flash closed.
Could be Better, but Do-Able:
-- Size: From an ergonomic standpoint, I wish it were a little bit larger. Initially, my hands felt cramped when using the camera, but I got used to the size after about a month.
-- Menu-based controls. In terms of both convenience and ergonomics, I strongly prefer buttons and dials. Buttons and dials are easier for me than going through menus. Additionally, the control (a combination button/dial) that is used to access the menu is fairly small and almost flush to the back of the camera. I have average-size hands, and it took me awhile before I was comfortable with the menu conroller. I imagine this would be even more challenging for someone with larger hands.
I initially planned to return the camera because of the ergonomic issues. But I only found a couple of other cameras in my price range that were more comfortable ergonomically, and both of those had too many other negatives. I've since found a more comfortable way to hold the Olympus and am gradually getting used to the menus. The camera does such good job in auto mode that I often just leave it there and don't bother with other options.
-- No view finder: I wish it had one, but that is becoming less of an issue the more I use the camera.
-- User Guide: Entirely digital. If you want hardcopy, you have to print the 70+ pages yourself. The manual is pretty good, but I'd like to see a little more detail in some areas.
-- Focusing: It took me awhile to figure out how the camera focuses. But now that I've gotten through the learning curve, I'm consistently getting very good pictures.
-- Camera cannot be used right out of the box. It must first be initialized, a process that requires connecting the camera to a computer. At least for me, the initialization process was not very intuitive.
-- Error messages: This is probably the camera's weakest point for me. If I'm changing settings, I sometimes get an error message saying I can't choose a particular option because it conflicts with another setting already in place, but it doesn't tell me which one. The user guide doesn't have a chart or summary explaining this, either. So I'm left to either trial-and-error or digging through the lengthy manual to determine which settings work with each other and which do not.
Bottom Line:
I wanted a camera that was between a basic point-and-shoot and a DSLR and had basic video capability. I also had a limited budget. This camera fits the bill.
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