Absolutely love the Pentax Optio 550 and so will you!

Author's Rating:

Pros: The battery lasted approximately 2 weeks! Small size.

Cons: It only comes with a 16MB SD card; only stores 11 pictures on default setting.

The Bottom Line: 
This is the perfect camera for someone who wants professional looking frame-worthy pictures and pictures that can be edited and not lose their quality. Buy it, you won't be sorry!!

Author's Review
Can't say enough about this camera! How did I survive without a digital camera?

This camera is about the same size as the Olympus C-50 Zoom. The difference is the Pentax Optio 550 has an impressive 5x Optical zoom and the Olympus only has a 3x. I love its size - allows me to toss into a pocket and go. Most of the other 5MP, 5x optical on the market are all the SLR size which is just too cumbersome.

The Optio 550 has a bunch of cool settings that I haven't fully explored yet such as: Landscape, Night scene, Flower (I have used this one a lot for closeups of my spring flowers. They have turned out frame-worthy! All of my co-workers are very impressed), Portrait (I used this one to take a head shot of my niece for a dance program; worked great, looked almost professional, if I do say so myself), fireworks, text, surf & snow and autumn colors.

In researching this camera, I went to www.dpreview.com. They have some good info regarding this camera. In their battery test, the Pentax lasted longer than any "prosumer" digital camera that they tested. It lasted 4 hours and 36 minutes on a single charge. I have borrowed a friends Sony Cybershot and the battery would die after about 10 minutes.

I have been using the HP Photosmart 230 printer and can have wonderful printed pictures from point-click to print in under 5 minutes. Truly amazing!