I bought this camera last month and my husband loves it. He loves the 2:1 feature, the 15 second movie bit, and the ease to look at pictures already taken without having to close the camera. I bought an extra battery and larger XD card. These items go a long way to a better experience. All Olympus cameras have very similar menus to work with so it is easier to navigate through the menus if you are familiar with Olympus cameras. This is an easy camera to operate.

This camera is very easy to use. I took it to a bird show at an amusement park. We were sitting way in the back and I took a picture of a bald eagle. I didn't know if it would come out or not since it was so far away. When I increased the size on the computer, it was still clear and I have a beautiful picture! It's small, easy to carry holds lots of pictures. I also took it on vacation and my traveling companion ended up getting one, too!

This is an excellent value for the price. It has very little shutter delay, is compact, and very good to stop action. It can pick up amazing detail and one can do severe cropping in a graphics program with very little reduction in quality to the photo.
Sample photos taken with this camera at:
http://poodle.bizland.com/photos.html

I intend to keep mine for a very long time.

This is the third Olympus camera I have owned, with the last one being a C50. Overall, I am very pleased with the camera.

PROS:

1. Great metal body. Very sturdy and fashionable
2. Takes great pictures for a point and shoot. Bright pictures and the color is very good
3. Nice size. Can fit in a pocket, but you will notice it, but easy to carry around at parties and family functions.
4. Simple point and click if you want, or you can customize almost all aspects of a shot. It's the best of both worlds.
5. Great camera for the price. A ton of value at 300 bucks.

CONS:
1. Load time when turning camera on with a large memory card is very slow. Plan on waiting 5 seconds for the camera to enter "ready mode" with a large memory card.
2. Could do better at taking wide angle shots. Canon is better in this area.

Overall, I recommend this camera for those looking for a great point and click camera.

I recently fell into a river and irretrievably destroyed my C-50 (not Olympus's fault, obviously). Having been so happy with that one, I immediately replaced it with the C-60. What follows is a comparison between the two, in the form of a user review I wrote for the C-50:

[The C-50 is] a very powerful, versatile, and impressive little camera. For taking shots in conditions of plentiful light, this camera was hard to beat, at least when it came out (it's since been discontinued). When it hit the market, it was unquestionably the most powerful digital camera of its size.

There are problems, however:

1. On the little movies, there is no "sound" available.
2. You have to turn the camera off and close the cover to review the picture you just took!
3. This camera cannot take pictures in low lighting conditions at all. Not without the flash, at any rate. Starting from about the late afternoon on, this camera is all but useless for natural-looking shots. They'll be far too blurry; this is a constant annoyance.

Olympus recently came out with the C-60 Zoom, which is the new version of this camera. With that one, they have fixed problems 1 and 2 but not 3: still a major problem, but this is not the only brand of digital camera with this problem.

Also note: if you're replacing a c-50 with the new c-60, you'll be able to use your batteries, your battery charger, and your memory disks with the new version. You'll also be able to recycle the little cable that connects the camera to your USB port.

Also, the C-60 can take memory cards of up to 512 MB! This is pretty impressive (on the highest-quality setting, for example, this will allow you to take 118 pictures; on the lowest-quality setting, 6390!), although that's a pretty expensive little card. With the C-50, coming out of the box the most it would take was a 256 MB card, unless you bodily sent the camera in to Olympus for a "firmware upgrade," which was free if you provided proof that you had bought a 512 MB card. This is not necessary with the C-60.

Two pieces of advice:

One, despite the vast memory attainable with the 512 MB card, I would suggest merely buying two 256's. This is because, with this camera, the manner in which the card is inserted seems to increase the possibility of fatal scratches. And if you have all your eggs in one basket -- thousands of pictures on a single card -- and you get that "CARD ERROR" message, you'll be up the creek, my friend.

Second: when you're buying it, you'll probably want to stock up on a few extra batteries. The technology with the memory card and the image resolution is nothing short of astonishing, but it's surprising that the technology of these rechargeable batteries is not further along by this point. The batteries only last a couple of hours before they need to be recharged! If you're out shooting pictures all day, it's much more likely you'll need a new battery long before you'll need more memory. Keep this in mind.

Excellent pictures so far and I have not yet begun to use all the many features included with this camera! I haven't had time to read the manual - but have been able to use it right out of the box because the automatic mode is easy to use. Picture reviews are very convenient, too. You don't have to turn off the camera - which is great. I researched a lot of cameras before making a final decision and believe I got a great deal for the money spent - especially for a 6 megapixel camera.

First let me say, I am a longtime devoted customer of Olympus and have owned several of their pocket cameras, going way back to the original XA-2 model in about 1979-80. I have found my older Olympus digital a pleasure to use, it gives me surefire results, and it has been reasonably reliable despite less than optimum working conditions (two small children in the house.) I decided to replace it with something smaller and more powerful, and since I had Amazon gift certificates to use, I purchased it through Tiger Direct/Amazon.

The first frustrating thing was that in the 10 days or so it took to receive this camera, it went down in price by $40 through another vendor featured on the site. It has gone back up, but still--this left a bad taste in my mouth!

I thought I had researched pretty well before purchasing this camera. Initially, I was very pleased with the ease of operation. It is (naturally) faster and more powerful than my 4-year-old C-2020. It shares the same basic commands and setup, so the learning curve was minimal. However, I was expecting the photos to be dramatically better. I would say they were about the same, and some were more blurry than I would have expected. Maybe I had finessed the focus on my old camera, or maybe there was something wrong with this one, I don't know. I was not blown away by the image quality, and as others have mentioned, the flash really is weak. This camera performed best for me in natural light, where I was able to get good closeups as well as scenic shots.

More distressing, it didn't even last a month! On the last day of preschool, I dropped it--gently--from knee height. The shutter button popped off, never to be seen again, and the door to the USB port would not shut. (Sadly, I did not realize the extent of the damage until kindergarten graduation, which I therefore didn't get on film--BOO HOO!)

Now, I realize this was completely my fault and I take the blame for dropping the camera. However, these point and shoot models do take some abuse, and I've seen other models survive much worse. This was a relatively minor bump, and the camera is virtually totalled. It is obviously not covered under warranty, and I can't return it. I sent it to Olympus and was quoted 2/3 of the purchase price to fix it. I don't think that will be happening! My next camera may still be an Olympus, but I'll definitely buy locally with a generous extended warranty, as I have in the past. Seems to be the only way to go with more delicate items, particularly those which are carried in purses, backpacks or diaper bags! :)

After reading the 1 star review by the person who abused her camera , I was somewhat confused. Why blame the camera? I find the picture quality excellent. Haven't used all of the features, but that's because Ive been too lazy to read the manual. The only problem Ive had is turning the camera off when I change settings. I need to learn not to get my fingers in the way of the front cover. I read a review of someone not liking the battery. I guess if I was isolated from electricity for a month, I would have a problem. But I put my battery on the charger at the end of the day when I have taken alot of pictures. I took a few viedeos with the camera and was surprised of the quality. I use a Sony DVD ($799) camcorder for videos, but for a shorty, the C60 performed well. For a $249 camera, the C60 is a real bargain.

I bought this camera a year and a half ago because I was looking for a decent camera for a trip. This camera has been great. One of the deciding factors for me was that it has a metal body as opposed to plastic. I absolutely love it. It is nice and compact and produces great quality images. I also have been really pleased with how rugged yet functional it is. A must buy piece of equipment for any beginning digital photographer.

I received this camera for Christmas last year. I purchased my first Olympus camera in 1999 and because of was very pleased with it's performance, I didn't want to switch to any other brand. I had played with my brother's Kodak digital camera, but I wasn't impressed, that made my love my Olympus even more. After a year of using my C-60 I am just as tickled pink with it as I was with my last one. If I ever decide to upgrade camera's again it will be with an Olympus!

Jodee
(...)

This is a great, great digital camera. I love the many, different settings that it contains, as well as the stylish look that it carries. It's compact and easy to use, and the LCD display is quite big from other Digital Cameras.

I love the recording mode. I like to make little vids that I can send out over the net. I also love the setting that's set exclusively for taking your own picture, while you hold the camera pointed towards you. This camera is just fun.

The downpart is that it almost REQUIRES a tripod or some sort of stand. There are some settings (like the night setting) that can take pictures of exactly what you're looking at... exactly the way that you see it. But, since the lens needs to be opened for more time, you need a tripod.

Also, I love taking pictures with natural light, but the pictures tend to come out blurry... this didn't happen with my previous camera.

Overall, this is a great buy for any average Joe photo aficionado. Easy to use and a lot of fun to share!

Olympus C60 is an awesome camera. I bought it a year ago and still works perfectly. The quality of the pictures is amazing, with a 256 MB card you can take almost 200 pictures (with just a charge of the Li-Ion battery; It allows you to take pictures at night (I took some incredible pictures at Niagara Falls at night; my God, they look like postcards!! the same when we went to Disney World, Universal, Sea World...forget about buying postcards, just use this camera). The zoom is about 12X, very good for taking close-ups; the design is compact, attractive and strong; it has a dial on the top that allows you to change from one mode to other in seconds, so easy!. The menu inside the camera is organized and easy to understand.
The video mode is ok, obviously it doesn't replace a camcorder, but it is pretty accurate. And it has audio too!
I knew about the quality of this label because of their microscopes (Olympus); I had worked with them for years and can say they are one of the best on the market.
In summary, I am very happy and satisfied with this camera, and can strongly recommend it. Definitely.

This camera served me fairly well for about 2 and a half years, enduring many of the offenses of world travel, before finally breaking. The proximate cause of breakage was rough handling in my checked luggage, but a smarter design could have easily prevented this (details below).

Good points:
Overall it was functional, and if you are a casual photo-snapper this camera will be OK for you. It survived an occasional fall to the floor, battery life is OK, and it has a lot of setting options. Macro pictures usually came out very well. Works well with the underwater case.

Bad points & pet peeves:
Despite taking good close-up pictures, I often found that the automatic settings took particularly bad/faded/washed-out pictures on regular landscape/portrait/etc mode in bright outdoor light. Sure you can fiddle with the settings every time you want to take a picture, but there are plenty of other cameras on the market that do a much better job at balancing color/brightness/etc. I was generally unhappy with how the pictures came out when compared side-by-side with friends' cameras.

Lens-cover mechanism. You turn on the camera by sliding the lens cover open. Camera turns on, and a motor drives the lens out. Sounds ok, but in reality this was one of my biggest pet peeves. Even when the camera was kept inside a case, the lens cover sometimes was knocked open by the action of traveling around. Then the motor would try to push out the lens, but if it's packed in a suitcase or stuck in a camera case, there's nowhere for the lens to go. Mine ultimately broke when this happened. I consider it a fatal design flaw. Furthermore, when you turn on the camera, it takes quite a long time for the camera to "wake up" and be ready to shoot. If you are doing certain types of photography, this is a huge disadvantage. If you are just out with the family on a ho-hum trip, then this won't bother you. If you have to turn the camera on and off a lot, this is a big drain on the battery and will detract significantly from the battery life.

Video is recored only in quicktime's MOV format, which I HATE. The color never seems to come out right on Windows machines, the codec seems to be inefficient in terms of speed and compression size, and this particular camera seems to always produce "choppy" videos.

Battery indicator only tells you "Full" or "almost dead". It doesn't give you any clue whatsoever as to how much longer the battery will work, until it's gone. What's the point of a battery meter then?

Like many digi-cams there are some delicate plastic pieces, such as those that hold the batter in. That piece broke fairly early for me, despite the good care it was receiving at the time. No biggie since the little door holds the battery in place anyway.

Summary: This camera took some abuse during it's life, but ultimately succumbed to a design flaw. If you are an average user with average needs, it will probably be OK as long as you don't expect too much in terms of color balance. If you are nit-picky about your equipment, stay FAR AWAY from it. Overall, I consider myself fairly dissatisfied with this purchase.