DPInterface Olympus FE360 Review
Brad Soo - September 8th, 2008

Several days before the announcement of the new UZ ultra-zoom and Stylus cameras, about three weeks ago, Olympus also announced a pair of new entry-level digital cameras. One of them is the FE360 you see over here. Featuring 8 megapixels and coming in a variety of colors, the FE360 aims to be a stylish, pocketable camera that you can have without breaking the bank. And the Olympus FE360 is very thin for a camera at this price as well. Wanna find out more about the FE360? Read on...

The Olympus FE360 is a brand new camera at the moment and this review happens to be the first one on the net by an independent review site.

Size and Weight

(200.6) 104.8 x 55.1 x 40.7 mm (165 g) - Canon PowerShot A460
(196.4) 101.2 x 63.8 x 31.4 mm (160 g) - Canon PowerShot E1
(163.8) 94.2 x 54.6 x 15.0 mm (113 g) – Casio Exilim S10
(168.0) 91.0 x 55.0 x 22.0 mm (110 g) - Fujifilm FinePix J10
(167.7) 92.0 x 56.5 x 19.2 mm (116 g) - Kodak EasyShare M883
(163.0) 90.0 x 55.0 x 18.0 mm (145 g) – Nikon Coolpix S210
(161.0) 89.0 x 55.5 x 16.5 mm (104 g) - Olympus Stylus FE360
(192.8) 97.5 x 62.0 x 33.3 mm (141 g) - Panasonic Lumix LZ10
(182.0) 98.0 x 59.0 x 25.0 mm (130 g) – Pentax Optio E60
(170.1) 91.4 x 58.4 x 20.3 mm (110 g) – Samsung SL201
(181.5) 91.4 x 61.0 x 29.1 mm (140 g) - Sony Cyber-shot S730
All the weight figures above show when the camera is empty without a battery or memory card

The Olympus Stylus FE360 is obviously one of the slimmer entry-level cameras because it uses a lithium-ion battery instead of AA ones (which are bigger in size). The FE360 is also the lightest camera in its class.

Box packaging

Along with the Olympus FE360, you'll also find:

  • LI-42B rechargeable lithium-ion battery
  • Battery charger LI-40C
  • microSD to xD-Picture card adapter
  • Wrist strap
  • USB and A/V cables
  • Camera software CD
  • User's manual

The Olympus FE360 has an xD-Picture card slot, but you don't get a memory card in the box. Instead, the camera has a tiny 20.5 MB of internal memory. I would recommend a 2 GB memory card to begin with.

Olympus has been including a microSD adapter with almost all their cameras lately, that includes the FE360... could this be a hint of things to come? So again, I'd recommend using microSD cards with the FE360 unless you already have some xD-Picture cards lying around. MicroSDs are more widely used in electronic devices and have larger maximum capacities (up to 8 GB) versus xD-cards.

Unlike typical entry-level cameras which usually take AA batteries, the Olympus FE360 uses a lithium-ion battery which allows for the camera to be slimmer in terms of design. The battery is rechargeable and a charger comes bundled with the camera.

400 shots - Canon PowerShot A460
450 shots - Canon PowerShot E1
280 shots – Casio Exilim S10*
150 shots - Fujifilm FinePix J10*
200 shots - Kodak EasyShare M883*
220 shots – Nikon Coolpix S210*
160 shots – Olympus FE360*
200 shots – Olympus FE370*
460 shots - Panasonic Lumix LZ10
620 shots – Pentax Optio E60**
Not rated – Samsung SL201
440 shots - Sony Cyber-shot S730
* indicates the camera uses a proprietary lithium-ion battery
** the Pentax Optio E60's battery figure is based on lithium AA batteries

All the cameras above are rated with rechargeable batteries according to CIPA Standard

The Olympus FE360 is rated to take up to 160 shots on a single battery charge (CIPA Standard). 340 shots is the average for the group of current entry-level cameras. Unfortunately, with a tiny battery, the FE360's battery life takes a toll and is very much below average compared to its most of its competitors which use AA batteries. So if you expecting to use the camera a lot (especially if going on a long trip or night out), you should think of picking up an extra battery.

Extras

There are few accessories available for the FE360; various camera cases, 'premium' colored wrist straps and an underwater case for the camera.

 

Camera Tour

The Olympus FE360 is as thin as you can get for an entry-level camera. The FE360 feels plastic, and that includes the tripod mount and compartment door, but it doesn't feel too 'cheap'. The FE360 comes in your choice of several colors; silver, black, blue, pink and red. You can see that I'm reviewing the most conspicuously colored FE360 over here - pink!

Usability wise, the FE360 has very few buttons, all of which are clearly labeled. In case you still don't get the camera's functions, the built-in guide and help system is here too, as it is available on all Olympus cameras nowadays.

The Olympus FE360 has a standard 3X optical zoom lens, equivalent to 36 – 108 mm and having an aperture range of f3.1 – f5.9. This lens sounds really familiar and I'm sure it's the same one used by other manufacturers on some cameras of the past as well.

There's a microphone for the camera's sound recording to the bottom right of the lens. To the other side of the Olympus FE360 is the built-in flash unit. The flash has a working range of 10 cm to 4.0 m at wide-angle and it decreases 60 cm to 2.0 m. The flash figures are rated at ISO 800 where noise levels are quite high, so the flash won't be as powerful as you lower the ISO value.

On the very left is the self-timer lamp acts as a visual indicator in self-timer mode. There's no AF-assist light on the FE360.

The Olympus FE360 has a 2.5 inch LCD unit on the back. The screen has 154,000 pixels and it's viewable in low and bright light, especially using the backlight boost function that I'll mention in a bit. Directly above the LCD, you'll find two buttons for the camera's modes. The left button puts the camera into either still picture, scene or movie mode, while the one on the right enters playback.

There's an indicator light between the two buttons and it glows solid red in shooting mode and yellow for playback mode. When the light blinks, it shows the camera is processing a file.

There's the zoom controller to the upper right of the camera and below that is the DISPlay button which toggles the information shown on the FE360's display. The display button also doubles to bring up the Olympus FE360's guide and help system. The guide is like a user's manual built-in into the camera itself and contains "how-to" tips about the shooting functions. There are also scene mode descriptions and information on menu items available. I think the help feature on the FE360 is very user-friendly and assists in taking better pictures.

Then you'll also see the five-way controller which also allows direct changes to these settings:

  • Up – Exposure compensation (+/- 2 EV in 1/3 steps)
  • Down – Self-timer for 12 seconds (Off/On)
  • Left – Macro mode (Off, macro, super macro)
  • Right – Flash setting (Off, on, auto, on with red-eye reduction)

The center OK/FUNCtion button is a bit tiny for my liking and probably needs to be pressed with the tip of your thumb, if you have large hands of course. The FUNCtion button grants you quick access to several settings as well (with most of them only available in Program mode):

  • Sub-mode (Automatic, program mode, digital image stabilization or portrait mode)
  • White balance (Auto, daylight, overcast, tungsten and three fluorescent modes)
  • ISO sensitivity (64, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1000)
  • Image size and quality

The final two buttons are the MENU button (self-explanatory) and the backlight boost button which turns up the LCD display brightness in shooting mode, so you can see what you're framing outdoors. This same button also doubles to delete photos in playback mode.

The only things of interest on the top of the FE360 are the camera power button and shutter button.

Both sides of the Olympus FE360 are blank, with the wrist strap mount on the right side.

At the bottom of the camera is an off-center plastic tripod mount, connector port and the battery/memory card compartment. The compartment door is a little flimsy so don't treat the camera too harshly! On the good side, there's enough spacing from the tripod mount, so you can change memory cards and batteries when the FE360 is attached onto a tripod. Finally the port over there is used for USB and A/V out connections, with the FE360 supporting USB 2.0 High-speed.

Taking pictures (Shooting mode)

The Olympus FE360 displays a very simple display of information on its display. It shows the mode you're in, camera settings and of course the picture you're framing. There's no live histogram or exposure information (shutter speed and aperture indications) in shooting mode. A camera shake warning also appears if the shutter speed is too low for a sharp photo.

One thing about the FE360 is that it makes some very loud beeps to let you know you're pressing its buttons... if you find that irritating, you can put the camera into 'silent mode' described below. The FE360 has a main menu which is divided into a few sections:

  • Camera menu – Change settings on the camera, there's only five things over here: white balance, ISO, sound recording, panorama and face detection.
  • Setup menu – For your first time with the camera when you set the date/time, language, screen brightness, etc.
  • Panorama – The camera sets itself up to guide you to take up to ten photos so they can be combined into a single large 'stitched' photo. An Olympus-branded xD-Picture card is required for this.
  • Reset – Reset the camera to its factory settings.
  • Scene mode – Pick another scene mode (only availablE using scene modes, of course!)
  • Silent mode – Turns off all the camera sounds; great when taking photos during a presentation or play.

You can select a range of image resolutions from 8 megapixels (with a widescreen 16:9 option) down to VGA with two compression options. The widescreen image option shoots at 1080p resolution (1920 x 1080) which is essentially two megapixels and enough to fit your television perfectly. The settings that I would normally use and recommend would be full resolution along with 'Fine' compression.

Like other Olympus cameras, the FE360 also comes with Perfect Shot Preview. This splits the screen into four areas, each showing the photo effects of various settings. For example, when you select exposure compensation, Perfect Shot Preview shows the outcomes of different values of compensation simultaneously before you take a photo. So this actually allows you to preview effects and make changes to achieve the desired effect before taking a photo. It's a good thing Olympus introduced such a great feature; it saves a lot of time and hassle to take multiple photos with different settings and picking the best one.

The Olympus FE360 features two macro modes; the first 'normal macro' mode has a minimum focus distance of 10 cm, which isn't quite close enough. The other macro mode, Super Macro, reduces that minimum distance to 5 cm onwards which is more like it.

There're many scene modes available on the FE360: Portrait, landscape, night portrait, sports, indoor, candle light, self-portrait, sunset, fireworks, behind glass, cuisine, document, auction, two underwater modes and underwater macro. Of course, Face Detection is here too. Olympus doesn't say the maximum number of faces it can detect, but based on my testing, most of the time, the FE360 got 4-5 out of 10 faces.

The Olympus FE360 has a shutter speed range of 1/2000 to 1/4 second. The slowest shutter speed available in 4 seconds, available in certain scene modes (like sunset mode), and noise reduction automatically kicks in at speeds lower than half a second. Of course, this is an entry-level camera so you are unable to select shutter speed or toggle noise reduction. The FE360 did cut a corner or two in other areas though, as it lacks any sort of burst mode and custom white balance.

The Olympus FE360 doesn't have optical image stabilization; you'll have to shell out an extra $50 for that on the FE370. Instead, the FE360 features a digital image stabilization mode which just automatically boosts ISO. The side effect is a decrease in image quality. It's best to not use digital image stabilization and turn up ISO manually instead.

Video Recording

The Olympus FE360 has a very common 30 FPS VGA movie mode with sound. A 2 GB memory card holds around 20 minutes of video at the highest settings. You can also reduce the resolution to QVGA (320 x 240), cut the frame rate by half (15 FPS) or do both, which lets you to record longer video clips.

There's nothing else to the movie mode: Autofocus and zoom are fixed while recording while brightness is automatically adjusted by the camera. Video and audio quality were both average.

Performance

The Olympus FE360 takes roughly two seconds to start up from the moment you press the power button. Focusing isn't particularly speedy, taking around 1/3 to a full second to focus; and you'll notice that most often at telephoto and in low-light. The FE360 has trouble focusing in low-light since there's no AF-assist lamp, so it's best to stick to one of the scene modes which use fixed focus and a tripod in dark areas.

Shot-to-shot speed - 1 shot every 3.5 seconds, below average
Flash recharge time using a fully charged battery – Usually around 9 seconds

The Olympus FE360 manages a fairly low shot-to-shot speed due to slow writing times to the memory card. It takes about 3 seconds to process a full-resolution shot and you cannot take another picture while the camera is busy. As I mentioned as well, the Olympus FE360 doesn't have a burst mode whatsoever so you're stuck to taking one photo at a time.

For lens timings, the lens zooms from wide-angle to telephoto in a second and a half and it takes about 1.4 seconds to retract the lens and turn off the FE360, provided that there's no processing going on. Overall, performance of the FE360 leaves much to be desired with slow shot-to-shot (and no burst mode!) and bad low-light focusing. Startup and power down times are average, but they don't help much in taking pictures quickly, do they?

Image Quality

And now, it's time for image quality tests with the Olympus FE360:


ISO 64 (f3.1, 1/6 sec)


ISO 100 (f3.1, 1/8 sec)


ISO 200 (f3.1, 1/15 sec)


ISO 400 (f3.1, 1/30 sec)


ISO 800 (f3.1, 1/60 sec)


ISO 1000 (f3.1, 1/80 sec)

Photos shot at ISO 80 look pretty clean. Then I can already see some noise being introduced in the ISO 100 shot, and then again at ISO 200. You can still use the photos made straight out of the camera at those settings.

By ISO 400, noise becomes an issue, and is quite a bit higher than average, comparable to ISO 800 on some other cameras in the market nowadays. If you're willing to spend some time on the computer to use some noise reduction software on ISO 400 shots, then you'll probably be able to get away with at least a bit of quality.

Noise becomes worse at ISO 800 as it increases further and photo quality becomes rather soft - I don't think you'd want to use this setting at all. ISO 1600 is completely unusable since noise is so apparent that photos get a bluish tint on them and details are lost.

You'll get some redeye, slight barrel distortion and some vignetting in the FE360's photos while pincushion distortion isn't really a problem. Chromatic aberration (color fringing) is an issue though, you can see it even in the ISO 64 crop above and it only gets worse in real life photos. Overall image quality of the FE360 is not fantastic at all - there's already some visible noise at ISO 200, color fringing and soft corners most of the time.

Photo gallery

View full-sized photos in the Olympus FE360 photo gallery!

 

Playback

 

The Olympus FE360 has a pretty basic playback mode. Besides viewing pictures and videos you've taken, you can also protect and rotate images, perform print marking, single erase, play slideshows and attach a voice clip to photos. Photos can be enlarged up to 10X so you scroll around using the five direction controller.

Images can be displayed as single photos or in thumbnail sets of four, nine, sixteen or even twenty-five tiny little thumbnails! A useful calendar view is available too so you can see the days you've been out and about taking photos. For movie viewing, you can fast-forward and reverse, that's all.

The "My Favorites" feature lets you store your favorite photos in an album so you can quickly access them and show them to family and friends on the FE360. Everything you need to know about your pictures are shown in playback, and that includes exposure information. The only thing the FE360 doesn't display is a histogram.

Conclusion

The Olympus FE360 is an 8 megapixel, stylishly designed entry-level digital camera; coming in your choice of five colors. Unlike many cameras in its class, the FE360 comes with a rechargeable battery and a charger (instead of bundled throw-away batteries on AA based cameras). But with the thin lithium-ion battery that keeps its design slim comes a downside - whether compared to other li-ion battery cameras, or just other entry-level camera of its class, the Olympus FE360's battery life comes in below average.

The FE360 is capable of using xD-Picture cards natively and also the microSD format via the included adapter. The Olympus FE360 makes taking photos an easier task by having the very useful Perfect Shot Preview feature which allows the previewing of multiple photo effects beforehand, a very usable LCD and lots of scene modes. In case you need help with picture taking, the FE360 also features a built-in guide.

Unfortunately, the Olympus FE360 cannot seem to have everything. For its $150 price tag, some corners were cut - there's not a single manual control on the camera, a continuous shooting feature is completely missing and its overall speed which kept me waiting longer than I would've liked wasn't that great. Photo quality was not good either; pictures become plagued with noise starting from ISO 400 and color fringing and corner blurring were both prominent too. I suspect the last two image quality issues have something to do with the camera's (cheap) lens that has appeared many times before...

Based on my time with the Olympus FE360, I don't think I recommend it. Sure, it may look stylish, but in other areas, you'd be better off looking elsewhere for an entry-level camera that doesn't cut as many corners. If you like Olympus cameras, then the FE370 may well be worth a look; its larger, stabilized 5X lens, 25% better battery life and extra functions are worth more than the extra $50 it costs over this camera.

What's hot:

  • Slim and stylish design, available in five colors
  • Comes with a rechargeable battery and charger
  • Compatible with both xD-Picture card and microSD memory format
  • LCD viewable in various conditions (Especially with backlight boost)
  • Perfect Shot Preview is very useful
  • Decent VGA movie mode for a budget camera
  • Many scene modes available, including underwater and sunset (slow shutter) modes
  • Helpful built-in guide and help system

What's not:

  • No manual controls; not even custom white balance
  • Below average battery life
  • Lack of continuous shooting feature
  • Below average performance; poor low-light focusing and slow processing
  • Tiny center 'OK' button, plastic tripod mount and compartment door
  • Plastic tripod mount and tiny zoom controller
  • Photo quality leaves something to be desired (noise, color fringing, corner softness)

Recommended Accessories:

  • 2 GB microSD/xD-Picture card
  • Spare rechargeable lithium-ion battery

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