Olympus 7030 Point & Shoot

When you buy a camera, first thing that you consider is your budget and then the purpose. When the budget is fixed you start looking for features (some may look for brand and looks), for some, very soon they get confused whether you want to go for something fits in your budget or pay little more and get a more feature rich camera. Same happened for me, I use DSLR as my primary camera, as a secondary camera which I can use anytime without many fuzz I was looking for a P&S camera within Rs.10000, with a optical (or sensor shift) image stabilization, minimum 5x optical zoom. I was not cynical about mega pixel anything above 6 was good for me. I browsed through camera's from Sony, Nikon, Canon, Olympus and Panasonic; upto range of 15k (though my budget was not that high), and I narrowed down my choice within Sony W570 and Olympus mju7030/mju7040. Others simply cannot stand the features within this price. either zoom is less or there is no optical image stabilization, has problem of too much red eyes or slow load time etc etc. However at last I decided to buy (and bought) Olympus mju7030. Reasons, it's image quality, 7x optical zoom, sensor shift image stabilization (better image in low light condition) and last but not least price. Compared to Sony W570, it is couple of grams heavy and does not have HD movie recording (which I do not think is properly used by anyone). Compared to its bigger sibling 7040, it misses a 3" screen and HD movie recording. However It saves a huge Rs2500 to Rs3000 from the Oly 7040 and Sony W570 respectively, when you buy from Flipkart. Apart from these, there are some nice feature I would like to mention

- Pretty fast load time (from the time you switch on and the camera is ready to shoot)
- a shutter speed of 1/2000, no other point and shoot provide in this price
- great sensitivity option and ISO400, ISO800 and ISO1600, pretty usable image
- if you are willing to use, you can change quite a lot setting using the jog dial control
- as said above, easy to use jog dial control to navigate menu
- you can directly charge the battery in the camera from a PC/Laptop - just like your iPod
- in-built 1gb memory (a reserve in case your SD card is full)
- in camera creative photo filter (like in Olympus E series DSLR)
- In camera panorama (almost like Sony's swipe panorama)
- in camera user manual, so you can happily misplace your hard copy of user manual

rest of the things are pretty similar to other P&S cameras under Rs10000 budget. I highly recommend this camera for those looking for a good (well, a very good) P&S with all round and rich features.

This is one of the best camera below Rs8000/-. Picture quality is very good and very easy to use. If you are looking for a good point and shoot camera, look no further, just go for this camera. you will never regret your decision.