Olympus FE-200 review

Budget cameras aimed at casual snappers tend not to have a lot of photographic controls, but it's rare to find one as lacking in features as Olympus's FE-200.

While it predictably lacks aperture and shutter speed settings, we were surprised to find ISO speed and white balance missing. The only photographic controls are for flash, macro, exposure compensation and a collection of scene presets.

There's not even a continuous mode for taking a quick succession of photos, but the reason for this became clear when we measured the camera's performance. An average of five seconds between shots is slow. There's a three-second delay between pictures when reviewing shots and no way to get rid of the text information across photos as you browse. However, most annoying is that the flash setting reverts to Auto every time you change the scene preset, which wastes valuable time.

The FE-200 has its good points: a 2.5", 150,000-pixel screen, a li-ion battery and 5x zoom lens, all wrapped in a smart metal case, which is impressive at this price. The lens is particularly welcome, extending further than the usual 3x zoom. However, its impressive features don't add up to high picture quality. Detail was soft at best, and the unreliable auto-focus and poorly judged automatic settings meant that most pictures were hopelessly blurry. With no manual controls, we couldn't compensate for the problems.

The saving grace was an Image Stabilisation preset, which increased the ISO setting for faster shutter speeds in low light. Colours were no better though, with frequently under- or overexposed pictures and a yellow cast under artificial light.

We expect point-and-click cameras to have excellent automatic settings, but the FE-200 takes poor shots and offers no manual correction. Sony's Cybershot DSC-W30 is cheaper and better in every way.

Author: Ben Pitt