This is really a good camera and value for money. I am too happy that it already makes a lot of good photos for my family in just 2 month times.
It can focus very fast in day light and I just miss focus when shooting some fishes in a stretched plastic fish tank; but it can be easily rectified by switching it to manual focus mode immediately. I cannot differentiate the iESP mode and spot focusing mode, or my technique was not good enough to see the difference, so focusing still need time to adapt.
The photo colour is trending towards soft side but very realistic. Performance on shape colour is lovely, but I feel it performs a bit weak in light blue colour (just my feeling, I am not a professional photographer). The photo it takes can be very detail with very little distortion, and very realistic. I think this is the elementary requirement of being a camera and Olympus did perfectly.
The battery life is reasonable, but the zoom drive consumes a lot of power. The battery can run out very quickly if zooming too much. Normal photographing with flash can take over a hundred photos. Non-zooming photography without flash can fill up my 256 xD card without battery recharging.
With this good performance, its cost is only around HK$ 4k with additional battery, 256 xD card and lens adaptor / filter set. What else we can ask for?
The manual mode with F2.8 to 8.0 and 1/1000 to 15 sec shutter is already enough for taking semi professional photos and suitable for this camera class. A wider focal length and shutter is of cause better (just a dummy point).
缺點:
I am already very satisfactory with this camera and willing to state with all its demerits until I buy a real professional DC, or at the time when Olympus launches upgrade models of this camera.
I would only comment that the manual teach me very little about this camera.