Olympus Mju 410 Digital Camera [4MP , 3 x Optical]

Picture quality is very good and it's 3 x optical zoom is versatile. It has a choice of modes to suit different situations like portrait, landscape, night scene etc. But it lacks a sports/action mode. I still haven't been able to capture movement without blurring even in daylight. It may be that I haven’t yet discovered how to do it or expecting too much.

The menus are intuitive and easy to use. I have turned off the startup screen and jingle so I can start shooting straight away after turning it on. The picture is taken almost instantaneously after pressing the shutter release. No annoying lag. Only a slight delay after the shot to save the picture. There are single shot and motor drive modes.

It has spot metering, white balance control and exposure compensation which are not common in compact cameras like these. I use these features a lot. There is a slide show mode too. This is handy for viewing pictures on TV with the supplied video cable.

The rechargeable li-ion battery charges quickly and lasts whole day for me (approx. 100 shots). Software is adequate.

I'll recommend it to anyone. It can't be compared to a SLR but who wants to carry a SLR around when you can achieve so much with this. I got the Olympus leather case too which is good. Get at least 128Mb card.

Using its highest resolution (2272x1704) it is possible to get results that compare favourably with anything you are likely to get from a high street photo lab. Obviously the 410 cannot produce the same quality results as a professional digital SLR but at less than a tenth of the price it represents great value for money.

It has many very useful features - a variable brightness screen, for using in strong sunshine; a macro and super-macro setting that allows focusing down to around 9cm; a 'motor drive' feature that will take about 2 frames per second and a 'panorama' function which (when used with Olympus cards) allows up to 10 consecutive frames (portrait or landscape) to be stitched together - I've tried it, it's not at all bad and significantly better than I thought it would be.

To be fair I have to admit that I have not used any of the supplied software (CAMEDIA Master 4.2) other than the 'Auto Panorama' feature. I use a card reader to download the images so I've no idea of the quality of the in-built download software either. I expect it is all adequate stuff but I imagine most users will already have their own preferred editing packages; I know I have.

If I had to find fault it would be with the accessories, not the camera: a larger capacity card would be better (but that would be true whatever the size of the one supplied) and a printed version of the Reference Manual would also be helpful. These would obviously put the price up without actually improving the quality of the product, so I can see why they don't do it. The supplied Basic Manual is enough to get you going and they even throw in a remote control so you can photograph yourself reading it.

The more I use this camera the more it grows on me - and you can't say fairer than that!