Sample photos: Olympus FE-3010

Considering its price tag, photo quality from the FE-3010 is good. A lot of the credit goes to accurate, natural-looking color and solid white-balance performance. However, everything we shot--in the lab and in real-world testing--looked soft regardless of ISO. Fine detail wasn't very good, but available detail was decent up to ISO 800. Because of the lack of sharpness and increased image noise above ISO 200, the camera is only really suitable for making prints at 5x7 inches or smaller or for photo sharing on the Web, also at small sizes.

Taken at ISO 100 in the camera's Super Macro mode, this is about as sharp as things get.

Despite the modest width and length of the lens, there is slight barrel distortion (top) and pincushioning (bottom) at the extremes of the lens.

Purple/blue fringing is plentiful around high-contrast subjects. This is typical for point-and-shoot cameras in this class--and others, actually--so it's more of just a head's up.

Good color, exposure, and white balance go a long way. Again, if you're plans are just to view them at small sizes on a computer or make 4x6 prints, the Olympus FE-3010 is an inexpensive way to get there.