Summary: Well, it JUST NOW happened to me: The aforementioned SDS phenomenon! My beautiful, reliable C-2100 is deader than a doornail, and NOTHING will bring it back . . . short of another $300! For that price I believe I can do a lot better than this. I must concur with several others here: DO NOT BUY THIS CAMERA OR ANYTHING ELSE FROM OLYMPUS. I know I won't!
Rating Reviewed by: A Davis(Unregistered User)
(Intermediate)
Review Date January 23, 2004
Overall Rating 1 of 5
Value Rating 1 of 5
Used product for 2-5 years
Review 2 of 77
Price Paid:
$699.00
from Circuit City
Summary: This was a great camera, but I too am a victim of the SDS. Camera won't power up for no appearant reason. $300 to fix, I'll put that into a new non Olympus before I spend that to fix it.
Rating Reviewed by: Rex (Unregistered User)
(Expert)
Review Date July 6, 2003
Overall Rating 1 of 5
Value Rating 1 of 5
Used product for More than 1 year
Visitors rate this review 3.00 of 5,
3 votes
Review 3 of 77
Price Paid:
$650.00
from Online Retailer
Summary: The camera is (was) feature rich and the quality was exceptional for a 2.1MP device. As described by the previous reviewers, the manual and non-program AE modes offer SLR-like creative control, but beware of the dreaded SDS (sudden death syndrome). After having 35mm SLRs that have performed flawlessly for decades, this is hard to stomach.
Strengths: Feature-rich, excellent stabilized 10X optical lens, exposure manipulation, and again, the lens!
Weaknesses: An inherent design flaw somewhere in the power delivery system that dies and cost $300-$400 to repair! This is unacceptable. My camera was treated like a baby, I know how to take care of them, I was in the business 20 years ago. Olympus knows about this as it's easy to search this problem out on the web, it is common and yet they don't seem to care.
Similar Products Used: 35mm SLRs from Minolta, Olympus, Nikon, Pentax, and Canon. Medium format from Pentax and Hassleblad.
Summary: The camera HAD a lot going for it, great zoom, quick flash, adequate picture quality, image stabilization... TOO BAD the company ripped me off. This one died and will cost another 300 smackers to get repaired. I only used it according to the manual, I never got it cold, never dropped it, kept it in a nice little satchel during transportation and then the dreaded SDS (sudden death syndrome) got it. Will not turn on. I actually got a little over a year of use and now it's toast. Technically, it is past the warranty. I will never buy another OLYMPUS product again. I contacted Olympus and they will not back their products up. DO NOT BUY!!! I wanted a camera that has some more advanced features, and am very reluctant to look at digital formats now. The industry giants seem to offer a new camera almost weekly (new and improved) I will look at repair records as a higher priority IF I get another. This does an injustice to the consumer. I should have stayed with film... Better picture to start with and I can always scan if I have to. Plus the dyes don't run or deteriorate.
Strengths: Like I said, some decent qualities, even in the "movie modes", it was fun while it lasted.
Weaknesses: Now what? The camera's dead and I refuse to pay that much to fix a problem the company knows about, but won't come clean on it. Also, the 2.1 meg lacks detail. Go with more next time (IF)
Similar Products Used: First time digital camera. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth...
Customer Service: After it died, I went online to discover this is a recurring problem with several of their products. A long time trying to reach the company on the phone (on hold over ten minutes), then they won't ta
Summary: This is the best camera i've ever owned!! It does so much: 10x optical zoom (which is crystal clear), black and white, sepia, black contrast, white contrast, AF, silohoutte, digital zoom (which is better then the optical), and so much more. I've owned this camera for about a month and have taken around 600+ pictures ( you can see them at:
http://community.webshots.com/user/photoqueen8602 ) . As long as you have the mode in "P" it works really well. If you are reallyyyyyyy into editing, you can use the other modes...The ONLY things i don't like about the camera are: it eats batteries like crazy (i go through about 4 or 5 SETS in one day), and everytime i turn on the camera i have to go into the menu and make sure the af is on, (which kinda sucks cause i usually take action shots and i don't want to miss anything). I figured out all the camera's functions in about 3 hours. And the manual actually makes sense. I recomend this camera for people that will take plenty of action shots, or is really into portraits. If you're not one of those kind of photographers i would not bother with this camera, instead buy a standard camera (olympus d-series). Oh and by the way...support SUCKS!!! I have windows xp and no matter what i did i could not get the camedia 2.5 (olmypus should have that on there website for free, but they don't, they only have the "patch"). Finally, i found the software elsewhere then the olympus website. In the manual that olympus provides for windows xp, they don't tell you what you're going to go through, or see on your computer when installing the camera. But after a lot of frustrating hours i got it to install. Overall, it was definetly worth it.
Sample Images
More Products from Olympus
Link to this page
1 of 5
5 of 5
