Olympus FE-45 in Digital cameras

Olympus has an illustrious history in digital SLRs, but it hasn't made a huge mark on the digital compact market in the same way as its old adversaries Nikon and Canon. Judged solely on the FE-45, it isn't too hard to see why.

First things first: this is a cheap camera at £100 inc VAT. Like the Nikon and Canon sub-£100 models it's powered by standard AA alkalines, but start using the FE-45 and it feels as if, instead of doing it the Canon or Nikon way and getting the basics right, Olympus has tried to stretch the budget too thinly.

Good points include 10 megapixels and a panorama-assist mode, giving you visual cues onscreen to line up your shots, plus a posh-looking menu system. But when it comes to taking pictures, frustration sets in.

Shot-to-shot time is poor at around eight seconds, but more importantly, image quality was a long way adrift of the leaders. Strong points were colour balance and superficially sharp results, but look closer and you'll see the sharpness comes from a high level of image processing, which obscures a lot of detail.

The lens was also one of the worst at full wide-angle, with a lack of focus in the corners. High-ISO performance is best forgotten, with results looking more like a still frame grabbed from a VHS video. Money spent on giving the sensor 10 megapixels would probably have been better used elsewhere.

If you have only £100 to spend, look at the Canon PowerShot A480 instead.

Author: David Fearon