[douthat]

I'm in the market for a new digital camera, and I've narrowed my choice down to these two cameras.

Does anyone have any experience with these cameras would could give me some advice?

Or: do you know of a great camera that is small and high quality?

[vasu]

I'd go with the 4300, I think you have more options with lenses, filters, zooms, etc. Also, it handles red eye reduction better.

It's just a great quality camera in general

-vasu

[yzeater]

4300. We've got it, and couldn't love it more

[motti]

the olympus seems more complicated to handle to me, not very "intuitive"..

[Hydra]

Originally posted by motti:
the olympus seems more complicated to handle to me, not very "intuitive"..

The Oly C-50 is one impressive little camera. It has a 5Mp sensor - (the Nikon has only 4Mp I think). It is TINY (half the size of the 4300) and has 98% the functionality of its bigger brother the 5050Z and has a removable Li ion battery for a good battery life. The Nikon is built very well but the real brushed aluminum case of the C-50 is a work of art and looks very impressive and sturdy - plus there is no lens cap - it has a slide over cover.

I really can't think of any downsides to it except as mentioned above that you can't really put any add-on lenses onto it but in all fairness the 4300's add-ons are not exactly SLR-grade anyway. It uses the new XD picture cards which are 1/2 the size of a US stamp - so if you have an invsetment in compact flash cards that could be a problem.

Bottom-line if you want a camera that has great picture quality (you can also crop the 5mp image quite a bit) that you can just throw in a pocket but still take an excellent image go for the Olympus. The Nikon is a bit bulkier but it is still an excellent camera.

It really comes down to what you want to use it for but i really don't think you'll go wrong with either.

_Jerry C.