Its not too heavy, not too light, its just right for my hands. Almost sounds like Goldie Locks and the three bears story tag line… However, this is no story. The Olympus E-volt 500 is one serious digital single lens reflex (D-SLR) camera. I already have a HP 945 point and shoot camera, but have been hesitant about getting a D-SLR, simply because of the price, but I could not turn away from Broadway Photo price of $545 that included both lenses.

Anyway, lets start with the image quality. At 8 mega pixels, its considered a standard camera. However, 8 mega pixels in a D-SLR camera and 8 mega pixel in a point and shoot camera are not the same thing. Sure both cameras will produce 8 mega pixel images, but the quality of those images will differ greatly when they are zoomed in or blown up to make larger 8x10 or even poster sizes of 20x30 pictures. Digital SLR cameras and any SLR camera for that matter use a solid prism for accurate and true to life image reproduction. What you see in the viewfinder is what you will see on the computer screen when uploaded. This EVolt 500 produces some extremely high quality pictures the likes of which I have never seen before (mostly because this is my first D-SLR). The setting for the images are fairly simple and straight forward. The highest quality images are the TIFF and RAW image formats which can make the pictures be as large as 20-40 megabyte each photo, but its worth every it. I took a macro photo of a tomato plant, and when zoomed in, I could count the time hairs that are on the plant stem. Even in SHQ mode which means "Super high quality" close up details are still available, so I kept my camera on SHQ since then because the TIFF images were too large and I didn't have a large enough memory card.

Speaking of memory card, the Evolt 500 come with the capability to use 2 memory cards at the same time. Just stick a XD card and a Compact Flash card in and you can easily switch between the cards when taking photos. The camera does not support USB2 speeds, so your uploads will be slow. However, if you purchase a high speed card reader and attach it to your computer like I did, everything will be fine.

The only issue I have had with this camera thus far is the red-eye flash system. The camera takes too long and too many "pre-flashes" before the actual picture is taken. I counted 3 pre-flashes before the actual picture is taken and that is just crazy. I hope there is a software fix for this in the near future.

The menu interface is simple to use and there are a number of useful pre-programmed settings there for picture quality. I especially like the photo option of Natural, Vivid, Black and White and Negative. I primarily use Natural color, because is shows the true to life image, but if I want to brighten the colors of a dress or show-off the beauty of a landscape, I quickly switch to Vivid and boost the colors. For the more serious photographers, it's a full features SLR camera, so everything can be set manually by selecting the "M" on the dial. We recently went to Luray Caverns in Virginia and got some spectacular images using the manual options and slowing the shutter speed the capture the natural beauty of the under ground formations without the use of a flash.