Olympus FE-5000 has excellent built quality. It has metal body coloured in black with two thin silver straps all the way lateral sides that additionally accentuate elegancy of this model. Screen is framed with shiny plastic and you must count on evident fingerprints at least on area around screen and keys. As much as we liked elegant contours of chassis, we were displeased with looks of buttons that spoiled overall impression. Keys for menu, erasing and multifunctional cursor are whitish, centrally positioned key “OK/Func” is silver, while the rest of keys are black. It looks like it’s done with lack of a taste, and leaves impression of a cheap toy, especially if we take into account that keys are actually transparent, and their bottom is coloured (with marked function). On the front side dominates lens that is protected with slide curtain protection. From below, beneath the cover, is place for Lithium-Ion battery with 740 mA/h capacity and slot for xD card (in package is provided also adapter from microSD to xD), and beside those is located unprotected USB connector. On the upper side is placed trigger button and On/Off key.

Characteristics

Olympus FE-5000 has 10.7 MP CCD sensor (effectively 10MP) and concerning its size from 1/2.33”, it has density from 36MP/cm². Built-in lens has focal length in range from 36 up to 180 mm (5x optical zoom), so it won’t be suitable for you if you are looking for camera with wide range lens. Minimum shutter aperture is F3.5 while maximum is F5.6 which represents standard for this class. So, in this field the FE-5000 doesn’t much differ from most compact cameras on the market. Shutter speed is from 1/2000 to 1/4 seconds. All mentioned parameters you cannot change manually, because camera doesn’t have any kind of manual photo modes, which will for certain push away all photographers that love to have control over, at least, basic parameters. Screen with 2.7inch diagonal and 230,000 pixels resolution, is not so easy to use on day light or sunlight because of noticeable reflection.