Click here for more information I currently own an Olympus DSLR (E-410), along with a Olympus SP-550UZ super-zoom camera. I decided to buy this camera because I wanted a pocket camera with a nice zoom lens that can take decent quality photos and I received an email from Olympus saying I could get $50 off at select retailers. Disclaimer: I have only had this camera for a couple days thus this review is only based off of a small amount of time of hands on time with this camera.
First -- Image quality. If I compare this to my DSLR; the DSLR will beat this camera and my SP-550UZ hands down. There really is no comparison. But if I compare the image quality to other camera within the VR-320's class my opinion would be that this camera easily succeeds the other cameras in terms of image quality. The color is outstanding; oranges are ORANGE, blacks are BLACK, blues are BLUE, reds are RED, etc... Detail in the photos is also great. I don't really know how to describe detail but I will try. Ex) Took a photo of a person holding a Cheeto. The person's face, clothes, Cheeto bag, and Cheeto were all extremely crisp and well defined. The photos I took that achieved this image quality was on a moderately cloudy day with plenty of light. ISO was set at 80 and white balance was on Auto resulting in the camera using an exposure time of 1/1600th of a second and an F-stop of f/3. Jacked the ISO up and took some pictures at ISO of 400, 800. Well, I'll just say that you should never use an ISO of 800 or more on this camera unless you have a program to remove all of the noise. Even at an ISO of 400 there will be plenty of noise to be concerned about. Also, even if you have a program to remove the noise you will lose most if not all of the sharpness/crispness of the photo. (Neat Image works pretty well to remove the noise)
Second -- Ease of use. Well, this is purely opinion so I won't elaborate. Since I own two other Olympus cameras I found the menus to be well thought out and easy to navigate. Much better than my 4 year old SP-550UZ and my 4 year old E-410. I really like how when given the option to change the Exposure Compensation and the White Balance it has a real time view of the current setting along with a real time view of the other settings right next to the current setting. That's just pretty sweet! Body is very nice and small. Great pocket camera.
Third -- Video quality. Wow, just wow. In a bad way. 720p HD video at 30fps. Sounds pretty cool. But no, it really isn't on this camera. As a previous reviewer mentioned; yes, the colors were there. The quality was atrocious though. I'm on a college track and field team and we videotape each other usually using my SP-550UZ. Decided to try this camera due to the 'HD'. Just downloaded the videos, so much "noise" within the video itself. Not sound noise but just artifacts within the video. My blues are blue and so on but the quality of the "video picture" makes the video basically unusable. This was on a bright sunny day. Looks like it was a lower resolution video just unconverted by the camera itself to 720p. Not good. But, I bought this camera to take pictures, not video so I will only knock a single star off for this inconvenience.
Fourth -- Performance. Right around 1 second from power button to ready to take a picture. Nice. Focus was much better than I expected; thus it was very fast for a point and shoot camera. Once you start zooming in focus will start to take a little longer but this is understandable. Zooming is pretty fast. Really like how you can change the Auto Focus Mode to AF Tracking. Position it on the subject, press OK, and the camera will do it's best to continually keep the object in focus. Pretty neat. Position of the flash = horrible. That is right where your finger goes so be careful. Outside in bright sunlight the screen works remarkably well. Still pretty crisp and vibrant and not too washed out. Very easy to use outside and achieve great photos, inside will be difficult due to keeping the ISO down. This is where you would use the flash, which seems to work pretty good resulting in decent pictures. Image stabilization works, not much to elaborate on here. Works pretty good taking action shots, wouldn't buy it just to take action shots but it works.
And lastly just my 2 cents. Even knowing these faults I believe that I would buy this camera again, there would be a slight hesitation but I would buy it. I was looking forward to the HD video but all's that I wanted was a point and shoot pocket camera with a nice zoom lens. Which the VR-320 fulfills very nicely. I am a very experienced photographer and always shoot in full manual. Going from being able to adjust everything to only being able to adjust the ISO, White Balance, and Exposure is not fun but this is a point and shoot camera - period. Truthfully, it's kind of fun just taking this out and taking a picture that you know will be good! Hopefully this will help you make a decision as to whether or not you will purchase this camera. We all have different needs and wants and this camera fit what I needed and mostly of what I wanted.
If you have any questions just comment on this review and I will try my best to answer the question completely. Olympus VR-320 228125 14 MP Digital Camera with Super-Wide 12.5x Zoom and 3.0-Inch LCD (Black)
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