The new Olympus Camedia E-10 digital camera is one of those rare products that feels perfect the first time you pick it up. Even rarer is the fact that after several weeks of use, we couldn't find one major facet of the E-10 that we'd change -- except the price tag.

At first glance, the E-10 looks like a traditional 35mm camera and lens, with the left side of the camera body cut off. The E-10 feels solid in the hand, thanks to a comfortable grip. It has true SLR viewing but no interchangeable lenses. The included 9 to 36mm lens (equivalent to a 35 to 140mm lens on a 35mm camera) is permanently attached to the camera. An Olympus-designed 4-megapixel CCD image sensor produces some of the best images we've seen from any digital camera under AU$10,000.

The E-10's controls are laid out like a 35mm film camera, with the most frequently used controls near your right thumb and index finger. The zoom lens is controlled by a large ring around the lens; this encourages two-handed operation, which increases camera stability and produces sharper pictures. The zoom control is butter-smooth, as is the manual focus control.

The rear panel hosts a 1.8 inch TFT colour LCD screen that does triple duty as a digital viewfinder, playback screen, and control menu screen. Unlike conventional SLR cameras that use a moving mirror to redirect the picture image into the viewfinder, the E-10 uses an image-splitter prism. This means that the image is visible to the image sensor and to the optical viewfinder at the same time. The result is that you can use the E-10's LCD screen or the optical viewfinder to compose your pictures, much like a point-and-shoot digital camera. The LCD screen is mounted on a swivel/tilt mechanism that lets you easily see the screen at very low angles, much like the tilting LCD display on the Nikon 950 and 990 cameras.

Like the Fuji S1, the E-10 supports both CompactFlash Type II and SmartMedia storage. Olympus supplies a 16MB SmartMedia card with the camera, but most users will need to purchase additional storage.

The E-10 is powered by four double-A batteries or by two CRV3 lithium polymer batteries (supplied with the camera). Battery life was impressive: After 300 test shots, the lithium polymer cells were still going strong.

We think the E-10 will find a niche with hobbyist and business users who need high-quality images and accurate SLR framing without the SLR price tag -- as long as they can live with the E-10's single lens. The E-10 produces pictures on a par with those of the Canon EOS D-30 or the Fujifilm FinePix S1 Pro at less than half the cost.

Olympus Camedia E-10
Company: Olympus
Distributor: R. Gunz Photographic
Ph: 02 9935 6600; Fax: 02 9935 6622
Price: ERP AU$3,999.
Rating: 5 Star