I expected a good camera when getting this model due to prior experience with the Olympus digital line. This camera is wonderful! The comparable Stylus had a few more features, but I'm very happy to save a few $ in buying this one on sale. Video quality is good. Night photos are surprisingly good for the specs. Macro shots are amazing. I bought the camera just in time for the California desert bloom & an Hawaii trip. On video of a cheetah running by 2-ft from me, you can hear its paws beating the ground. The photos are unbelievable - even with hyper, shaky hands. People rave about my photos. The camera's performance offsets my shortcomings as a photographer.

I bought one of these as a backup to my more expensive camera, so I didn't use it much for the first 3-4 months. I took it to a company event about two months ago and the thing actually shorted out: I took a group photo and then shut the cover and when I opened the cover a few minutes later, the camera body was very warm and none of the LEDs would light up. I took the batteries out and they were too hot to touch.

For the past month I have been haggling with Olympus. They do not seem willing to perform warranty repair even though I've still got 6 months left on the warranty. Every time I contact them via e-mail it is a couple of weeks before I hear anything again.

This was my first Olympus camera and I guarantee it will be my last. Bad product, terrible customer service.

Batteries: I bought Olympus Ni-MH batteries. By the time you go through a few menu items red light on battery starts to come out. When it goes dead, you cannot even close the cover.

Usability: Everything in menus which eats up battery power. Menus are confusing, blink out instantly and I thought Hieroglyphics went out of fashion with egyptians. You make changes, but the camera like resolution of the picture but it reverts back to another resolution all on its own.

Quality: snapshots of landscapes are OK, but the camera cannot focus anything closer than 10 yards.

I think the name fits this camera: Camedia but I think it is misspelled it shoud read "Comedy" of a camera.

I own 5 digital cameras, this one is a big dissapointment.

I used to always borrow my dad's C-5000 (I think that's the model... now I can't remember!), so my parents decided to buy me my own camera for Christmas. My mum picked this one for me, and I think she made a pretty good choice. The camera is very easy to use. At first it may seem intimidating to have to flip through the digital menus to change settings, but it quickly becomes second nature.

All of the pictures that I have taken using just the point-and-shoot method have come out very well. The flash is sometimes over-powering, but for the most part it does its job well. Pictures taken in the auto mode are generally very crisp, unless I turn the flash off anywhere other than outdoors (in which case the shutter speed is longer and my hands shake too much to get a clear picture.. I also have this problem in night mode).

I love this camera because it makes playing with different settings -- flash, white balance, macro mode -- very easy. It's much, much easier than the C-5000. It's a very good camera for anyone who wants to dabble in photography but it's ready to drop the money for something more serious. And it's also a great little point-and-shoot camera.

Of course, a big complaint is the batteries. Don't even think about using regular AAs. I found an Olympus package at Best Buy for about $30 that solved my problem... It included two sets of rechargable batteries with charger, a camera case, and a (very) mini-tripod. With regular batteries, I think I took about 20 pictures, but I can take many more with the NiMH batteries the package included.

Another thing -- don't bother with Camedia software! We have it on my parents' computer, and it's a hassle! If you have Windows XP, bypass Camedia and use the default XP programs, they're much better!

Overall, I think this is a wonderful starter camera, and have been very pleased with it. I'll drop the money on something more sophisticated when my photography skills get better, but in the meantime I'm a happy girl. Even if you just want this camera for point-and-shoot purposes, I advise that you play around with the different settings (I like to practice on my dogs, so I'll know what I'm doing when I have to take real pictures) -- they can improve your pictures greatly!

I have been a huge fan of Olympus cameras and I totally adore my 4-year old 2.1 megapixel Olympus D-490. I thought the D-580 would just be an upgrade to my camera because there are a lot of passing similarities between the two, but in its guts the D-580 is a horrible re-design with almost nothing good about it.

For starters, if you select anything less than the highest quality image-format, you'll find that the pictures are totally unacceptable. They are blotchy and jpegged to death. It's shocking and disgusting how bad they are. With my old camera, I would sometimes select a slightly lower quality image in order to speed up photo-taking, but that just won't work with the D-580.

The 580 is unusable without the flash, but the flash is such a bright and focussed white light that reflections often blow out the CCD and colors look washed out and artificial.

The viewfinder lens is so small that the LCD is the only reasonable way to line up a shot, but that runs down the batteries in no time at all.

The LCD is large, but has funny problems, like when the camera was pointed at a bright metal building, the whole thing appeared in reverse-colors.

The menu options are arranged in such a manner as to obscure the most simple tasks. Where my old Olympus automatically compensated for all but the most extreme lighting conditions, this camera needs tweaking for every different environment. Changing a setting involves navigating through an awful round selection-menu, followed by choices from a sub-menu and finally tuning the options in a totally separate menu.

Comparing images from my old camera to the D-580, the old 2.1 megapixel camera wins every time. Images from the old D-490 are sharper, the colors more accurate and the flash produces warm living tones.

Yes, the D-580 is small and light and it can do a lot of nice tricks, like shooting panoramas or QuickTime movies with audio. But the sacrifices aren't worth it. I can't recommend this camera for anyone. Olympus needs to re-think their consumer strategy!!

Several of these reviews sound like they are talking about a different camera than the one I'm using. Or they didn't read the manual and don't know how to use it. I've only had my D-580 a few weeks but couldn't be more pleased. It's compact and stylish and has Olympus's trademark sliding lens cover to protect the lens.

The sliding lens cover does seem a bit stiff, but so does the one on my Stylus 35mm camera. I've been using that for 5 years and it still works just fine. The thing you have to remember, and they tell you about it in the manual, is to close the lens cover in 2 stages. You slide it part way to the detent, the lens retracts, and then you can close it the rest of the way. I like the sliding lens cover.

The D-580 has 4MP resolution with 4 settings: SHQ, 2288 X 1712; HQ (the default setting), also 2288 x 1712, but more compressed; SQ1, 1600 x 1200; and SQ2, 640 x 480. The included 16MB xD card will hold up to 19 pictures in HQ. In SHQ, it will hold only 6. Obviously, you will want a larger card. They're available all the way up to 1GB. Using Olympus cards and the Camedia software, you can stitch together panoramas from as many as ten images.

It has several modes accessible through the menu: Program Auto, Portrait, Landscape, Portrait-Landscape, Night Scene, Self Portrait, and Movie. Most of the time you'll get the best results by using Program Auto, the default setting, and letting the camera do the thinking.

The easily accessible macro setting (there's a separate button for that) allows you to to take pictures from as close as 7 cm. The macro pictures look great and I've been using the macro more and more. And you can use the zoom in macro, allowing great flexibility. Apparently the zoom is disabled in super macro mode, which is accessible through the menu.

Speaking of zoom, it has a smooth 3x optical zoom, and 4x digital. Thankfully, the digital zoom has to be turned on whenever you want to use it. I don't ever see a need to use it, since with 4MP to work with, most of the time you can just crop the picture and still end up with resolution to spare and much better results.

The numbering system used for pictures is P + month + day + number of the picture for that day's shooting: e.g. P6070001, for June 7, 2005, picture number 1 (the year doesn't appear in the file name, but is recorded). That ensures a unique filename for each picture. One little quirk is that the date resets to January 1, 2004 if the batteries are taken out for 3 days. Not a problem, just something to be aware of. Resetting the date is pretty easy.

The included Camedia software seems fairly useful, especially if you want to do panoramas, but since it mostly duplicates software I already have, I didn't install it.

Picture downloading on the Mac is simple, and you don't even have to turn this camera on. When the USB cable is plugged in, the LCD lights up and gives you three choices, the first one of which is PC (the others are Print and Exit). You just click the OK button and iPhoto launches. The camera shows up in the finder as a drive, so it must be ejected before you can unplug it. Unplugging it without first ejecting it triggers an error message.

It is powered by 2 AA batteries, and while power consumption is heavy, it isn't quite as heavy I expected. I used the supplied alkaline AAs for about a week before they gave up the ghost. Then I switched to rechargeable NiMH batteries, and it did much, much better. I use the Monster Cable MB 4-DCRC, sold by Amazon. I prefer cameras that use AA batteries over cameras that use proprietary lithium ion batteries because AAs are cheap and available and in a pinch you can drop in some alkalines.

Overall, I'm very pleased with the D-580. Picture quality is consistently great with Olympus's new image processor (TruePic Turbo), and it has enough settings to fiddle with to keep a person amused for hours. Not that you have to -- on Program Auto, it does everything for you and does it very well. I highly recommend this camera for the amateur who likes uncomplicated cameras, but occasionally likes to dabble in creative photography.

Honestly, I don't know why people are complaining about this camera. It is a simply designed snapshot camera that offers great resolution at an extremely affordable price!

What more could you ask for
4.0 MP
3x Optical, 4x Digital Zoom
larger LCD screen
Weight: 5.8 oz

PRICE: just over $100!
I cannot believe you have anything to complain about
simply a great camera, and I have tried them all

The instructions were not congruent to the actual camera settings. However, after just a few minutes, I had it figured out. This camera is BY FAR easier to use than the D-510 that it replaced. As per the "beef" about battery life, that I have read: What is the difference if you change two batteries every 20 or so shots or four batteries every forty shots? Thus far, I am very pleased with this camera.

Have bought 3 D-580's for wife and daughters. Very good camera with exception that it likes batteries. Picture quality very good (remember to use back flash for scenes with sunny background). Easy to upload to computer

I bought this camera about a year ago, as my first digital camera. I love photography as a hobby, and this camera takes beautiful pictures. I often get asked if I am a professional photographer. I recently upgraded, but love this camera so much, I stayed with the Olympus brand. I still plan on using this camera often.

Only con: It is a battery hog, but you can fix that by getting rechargeable batteries, or the Energizer e2 lithium batteries.

I bought this camera for $199 in November of 2004. It stopped working within 6 months. I sent it back to Olympus fully expecting them to repair it under warranty. Instead, I have gotten a complete run around about how the camera is unrepairable and that my warranty is invalid because there is battery corrosion. They did not say that they were sure that the camera stopped working due to the corrosion, only that the corrosion is present. They then pointed to the fact that battery corrosion invalidates the warranty. I explained that I used all the original components that came with the camera, including the battery that they shipped with it. If their battery is faulty, why isn't it their problem? They repeated that the battery corrosion invalidates the warranty, so I get nothing.

And to add insult to injury, they oh so kindly have offered to ship me a reconditioned replacement for only $138.54. I pointed out to my repair technician that I can buy a reconditioned model of this camera at Amazon.com for $128, so why would I buy it from them for $138.54? He then recommended that I use their "Trade-Up" program to buy a better model from them to replace my broken model. They offered me a Stylus 500 for $250. I quickly Googled that and found it online at 17th Street Camera for $219.89.

I asked him why they would insult me this way? I have a camera of theirs that I have used properly for less than a year. It stops working and they won't replace it under warranty and then they try to rip me off by offering me replacement cameras at prices above retail.

I told him that I would never consider buying another Olympus product.

Whatever anyone says, the battery is zapped by this little handy camera. If you like to take plenty of pix, be ready to shell out for the batteries.

The pictures are great, easily handlable camera. Love everything about it. but the battery life.

I've tried the lithiums, i have recharagables, but they all get wiped out by the powerusage on this machine.

I like this camera a lot, but as other reviewers have noted, it eats batteries in no time at all. I orginally bought rechargables but found that they didn't have the power depth to last more than a few shots (like maybe 10 or 20). I switched to alkalines, which last a little longer, but what a waste of money to keep buying new ones.

It seems like the problem is that there is a huge drain on the battery on each shot taken because if you let the camera rest for a while, the batteries will eventually allow it to take another shot (after you turn the camera off, of course).

I bought this camera based on Amazon reviews, which were very helpful. Next time I'll wait until the product has been on the market long enough to find out about these kinds of problems.

I own one of these. Bought it based on past Bought it based on previous Olympus film camera experience.
Big f-ing mistake! Kinda like buying a Jag; better buy two. So you have one to use while the other is in the shop for whatever is wrong with it this time.
Worked great, except for slowww shutter response while we were in Switzerland. Did I say slowwwwww?
It's been all down hill since then.
There seems to be an issue with the battery door, or contacts. When one opens the lens cover at times, the lense does not move out and the monitor does not illuminate. Great for Xmas 2005!
Open the battery door and close it...we're back in business!?#
Yes and no! Sometimes it does, other times, your screwed. NOTHING!
Also, the cards seem to have contact issues. My two 256 cards each had 20-40 pictures on them when alas, I turned on the camera to take a few family Xmas pictures and after getting no response from the camera before reloading the batteries, the first card came up with a format message! I changed cards, while everyone else was clicking away with their SONYS and NIKONS. The other card came up with the same damn message!
No xmas pix this year...Sh*t!!!
I have spoken to Olympus and they require $99.00 to make it seem new again and warranty for 6 months.
You should be aware, I treat my cameras and all of my possesions with the utmost care and respect. so this is not a note from someone who beat-up his camera and expected it to take it. If it costs mone I treat it like money.
The new Sonys and Nikons look pretty freak'n good about now.

I bought a D580 because I had an earlier model Olympus digital camera that was OK and I thought that an upgrade would be an improvement. Picture quality was great with the 580, but hard to get what you shoot because of the l o n g shutter lag and the l o n g start up time, I really grew to HATE the cute little camera for those two reasons. I was using high mAh NIMH rechargeable batteries and had no complaint about battery life at all, just missed a lot of shots because the thing wasn't ready or because of the shutter lag. It does have a happy ending, on a boating trip in the Gulf of Mexico, I bumped the rail and the case with a velcro belt loop came loose and it got dumped in the Gulf, good riddance. I promptly bought a Fuji because it uses AA batteries and the other XD memory cards that I had, I'm now a happy camper.

I had this camera for about 2 years and I truly enjoyed using it. Great outdoor and indoor pictures. I was especially impressed with the indoor pictures as not that many cameras I owned or tried were able to take great bright pictures indoors. Beautiful, rich colors and very sharp images - it was hard to take a bad picture. It did use alot of batteries, but Rechargeable CR-V3 Li-ion batteries would make a great difference. The only problem was the sliding lens' cover that I think was the reason why my camera broke down. Or may be the batteries were running out of charge - but all over sudden it started bipping, the lens wouldn't come out and then the power would go off. I'm still giving it 5 stars because I was very happy with it and would recommend it to everyone.

This was my first digital camera & I am so happy I bought it. I have had it for two years & have taken several hundred photo's if not over a thousand with much satisfaction (I also get alot of compliments on my pictures). I am a scrapbooker & I take this camera with me wherever I go....it stays in my fanny pack unless I'm using it. I do not use the software that came with it as I already had Google's Picassa2 & was happy with that. I see many complaints have been made that this camera eats batteries. I buy Walgreen brand photo batteries & they last a long time. I will probably upgrade to a new camera this year but I will most likely buy another Olympus camera I think.

The camera takes nice pictures but even with rechargeable batteries, they have to be replaced after about 20-25 pictures, maybe more depending on how often you open and close the camera. I always have to have extra batteries charged and with me because we never make it through an event without having to replace the batteries at least once, ofter more. Also, there is a long delay between pressing the shutter button and the actual taking of the picture. I have missed so may shots because of this!

By Kathy "kainesis2" (NJ USA) - See all my reviews

It's about 3 years old now and I have never had one whit of trouble with it. My 6 year old granddaughter has been taking pictures with it also, since she was 3 and she has become quite the photographer (though she's dropped the camera from time to time and it survives!). The pictures are always crisp and clear, with great color. Sometimes there's red-eye with flash photos which is normal, and I can easily take care of with Picasa. Family members have other more expensive digital cameras, but mine (around $250 at the time) takes the best photos, in my opinion. I have been extremely happy with this camera.

PROS: Ive had my Olympus D-580 for about four years, and I have finally decided to upgrade. I have to admit that for what I paid (around $250) it has been a great little camera with a lot of features. My most-enjoyed feature had to be the video, which has zoom feature. I took my first video at Niagara Falls and was astonished at the quality of the picture and sound, even when at max zoom. Since then I have taken countless videos of my children, and aside from needing a lot of lighting (outdoors is best) I have no complaints.

I like the fact that it uses AA rechargeables, and it isnt a big battery burner. I could take about 250-400 photos, depending on size, before needing to change the batteries. Carrying a spare set solves any worry about running out. And, if you forget your spares, you can always buy a pack of AAs in an emergency. I say this is a bonus because the lithium ion batteries dont offer such convenience. The night scene also performs remarkably well, if a bit grainy.

My main reasons for the upgrade, and the reasons this camera gets 4 stars instead of 5, are the following CONS:

* Very slow picture-taking. It can take up to three seconds from click to capture, which is just completely unacceptable to me. In fact, I would rate that part of the camera a 1 star because it has caused me to lose SO many great shots. By the time the thing gets around to capturing the photo, my scene was gone.

*Auto-focus can be sticky. Sometimes the three-second delay becomes a permanent one when the auto-focus seemed to get stuck mid-thought and the camera just didnt take the photo at all. Adjustments to scene would probably help a bit, but honestly, it didnt help me much.

*You have to hold PERFECTLY still to get a nice, clean shot. Thankfully it's digital so I could toss the many blurred pictures I had throughout the past few years. This problem seems to have worsened has the camera has gotten more use.

*Unexplained grainy pictures. Sometimes, without any apparent reason, the camera will take a few really grainy photos.

*Lens is prone to spots, and boy will those ruin some great photos. This is easily remedied, just keep a good lens cleaner on hand and always check your lens before taking photos.

Overall, I would recommend the Olympus D-580 to anyone looking to go digital. The 4MP offer surprising clarity and beautiful, bright photos. It's a great family camera (aside from being slow to capture, which people trying to photograph small children may find very frustrating) and performs well in a variety of lighting situations. It's nice and small, lightweight, but not so small and lightweight that you're half afraid of losing the thing.

The reason I am upgrading at this point is that I am more into photography as art in addition to wanting the great photos this camera can offer. I'm a feature creature! I will definitely be keeping my Olympus D-580 for a backup though, it's been a great little camera.