Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Features wins over looks

[Possible Target Audience: Canon/Olympus wanting n00b digicam buyers]

It was for me to choose between the Olympus Mju 700 and the Canon Powershot A540. Both would have cost me about 15k overall. The Olympus is thin, and has looks (to repeat the cliche) "to die for". It just fits in one's palm so easily, and has dimensions just like some Sony Ericsson Walkman mobile. It's about 20.4 mm thick. The Canon on the other hand is 44 mm thick, and I suppose barely fits in my pocket. The Olympus was a 7.1 MegaPixel, and the Canon was just about 6.2. These facts made me lean in favour of the Olympus, mainly the sleekness. Upto last night, I was sure of buying the Olympus.

Still, the Olympus didn't have a viewfinder, which would most probably be useful shooting in daylight when the sun shines down into the LCD screen making its display invisible.
Also, it shot video at 15 fps only, which I guess is nearly as good as no video at all. And also I didn't want to take a chance on the other features Olympus might have cut in order to get that cam that thin (that cheap).


So, now, I am the somewhat-proud owner of the Canon Powershot A540.
Here's the bill details for reference:
The cam : 13,095/-
Sandisk SD 1 GB : 1,395/-
Uniross Charger 104865: 897/-

All these are inclusive of VAT (and other taxes). Because of the sale, I got discounts of approximately 10% on each of their MRPs.

I thank you all for your inputs.

2 comments:

Devadutta Ghat said...

Congrats!!
Well the Canon A540 costs less than 200 Dollars and you get a Free 1GB card here :)

Here are some reasons why I decided against buying the Olympus Camera

> No view finder. So if you are running low on battery, you can take more shots with a cam with a viewfinder.

>LI-Ion batteries means when you are traveling, you need to carry around a charger and if you run out of batteries, your camera is as good as a paper weight, until you find the next power plug.
*Srikanth enlightened me about this

> Olympus has one of the best lenses in the market, but slim cams have few manual settings and if the anti-shake DSP is bad, then the photos will be terrible. I have not seen the cam though.
*Reading a lot of theory enlightened me about this


Here is a cnet review
of a cam similar to the one which you wanted to buy.

Lastly,
Lets follow this convention. You reply to my comments on your blog entries on your blog under the same entry. (Vice Versa of course :) )
So that it will be easier for the rest of the world to understand whats happening.

Abhijit Pai said...

Thanks.

The cam was available on ebay.in for about 10.5k, but...

Anyway, the next time I want some electronic item, I'll just ask you to get it ;)