The best camera for frequent photogs

Author's Rating:

Pros: Great clarity, low pixelation, great B&W/Sepia tone features

Cons: Runs through batteries faster than any digital camera I've ever used

The Bottom Line: 
The camera is high quality, simple to use and small enough to carry everywhere. Would DEFINITELY recommend to anyone, no matter how much they're willing to spend!

Author's Review
The Olympus Brio D-230 was an impulse buy... I'd wanted a digital camera, so I picked this baby up online. The few reviews I'd read were good, and it had the main qualities I wanted - the ability to crop and the option to switch to black & white and sepia tones.

But the camera surprised me... it's SO much greater than I expected!!

Olympus introduced the Brio D-230 late last year as the lower-end of its digital photography line. But this camera cannot be considered a lower-end item! First of all, it offers a 2.0 Megapixels, which makes for EXCELLENT photo print quality up to 11 x 14 and provides excellent quality for Internet-bound images.

NOTE: If your photos are merely Internet-bound, however, be sure to turn down the quality - it comes ready-to-use with a high quality option set, and this takes up a great deal of room if you're only Web posting. You can get away with slightly lower quality for Web photos - just be sure to readjust the setting.


The camera has an auto-focus 5.5mm f 2.8 lens, which is pretty much the equivalent of 36mm in a 35mm traditional film camera, and has a digital telephoto up to 5X that increases and decreases with some simple touches of the compass-style button on the back of the camera.

NOTE: The auto-focus lens is employed for precise sharp focusing, which is not something generally seen with other digital cameras in this price range. That said, it also employs red-eye reduction and an automatic flash (although this can be altered easily with the settings menu.) For all you photographic junkies out there, rest assured that the color management is automated, as is the white balance.

The camera turns on and off in a heartbeat, the shutter release is really fast (good if you like that action-blur or to capture still moments as they happen, but quickly!) and it’s super-simple to transfer photos to your Desktop with the included USB cord and easy-to-install software.

TIP: You can bypass using the software if you like; using an PC, all you have to do is plug in the USB cord to the computer and the camera, then click on “My Computer,” then “Removable Disk,” then the camera folder, then you’re there! All your photos will be in the folder. Be sure to save them there, however - the camera automatically dumps all shots once they're downloaded unless they're "locked in;" see your manual for details. Locking photos down is easy.

This also comes with a 16MB SmartMedia card (which acts as your "film." It holds about 86-90 standard images, which is great for Web quality photos. Set to the mid-level for a capacity of 30-32 photos, and you've got shots that look great all the way up to 8 x 10 - some 11 x 14s, too!

All in all... a super fun, fairly inexpensive camera that's small enough to tote anywhere but big enough to capture fantastic quality without film!