The Olympus D460 digital camera is great! 

I bought it on ebay for $400.00U.S.   In Victoria the camera costs between $800.00-$850.00CDN.  It comes with a 8mb SmartMedia card and a set of batteries that they claim will last 1000 pictures.  

I bought an extra 16mb card for $59.00 at Future Shop and an Olympus battery charger for $99.00.   This battery charger is amazing!  It takes three hours to recharge the four double A batteries (1450mAh Nickel Metal Hydride).   

All digital cameras use prodigious amounts of battery power but this D460 camera seems to be better than most of the cameras I researched.  The first charge of these batteries lasted 2 weeks.  The biggest power drain is the downloading of the images from the camera to your computer.  The camera comes with a serial cable and it takes about 15min to transfer 40 pictures.  You can get an AC adapter for the camera but with these re-chargeable batteries it hardly seems necessary.  The company I work for, NewHeights Software, is making some USB (Universal Serial Bus) card readers that will be available in 6 months.  These card readers are 80 times faster than straight serial transfers.

The camera also comes with some excellent  image manipulation software.  You can do most of the effects normal situations require.  There is one called 'Instant Fix' that brightens dark pictures or darkens bright pictures, it also sharpens blurred pictures and can reduce red eye.  Very handy!

If you are interested in a first digital camera then this is the one.  If you wait a year then the cameras available will be stunningly effective.  I have printed a few pictures on a HP 712 printer using Agfa photo paper with very good results.   The images that the camera makes come in five jpeg compression ratios ranging from about 100kb to 400kb per picture at 1280 by 960 pixels. They call this 1.3 mega pixels(1280x960=1228800).  You can make a great 8x10 photo with this size and I do not think it is necessary to fall for the marketing of the 2 and 3 mega pixel cameras, though if you do you will almost be able to make poster sized prints.

Any questions please contact me web@philgraham.com

cheers, phil.

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