The $3999 E-10 lets users manually adjust focus, zoom, aperture, and shutter speed, and adapt settings to different ambient light conditions, providing creative flexibility for serious amateurs and professional photographers.

With 4 million pixels at its disposal, the camera captures handsomely crisp, uncompressed TIFF images at 2240x1680 pixels (its highest image-quality mode), which is great for achieving sharp 8x10in prints. However, at this setting the included 16MB SmartMedia card stores only two pictures.

The Camedia E-10 is a single-lens reflex (SLR) model, so the picture you see through its optical viewfinder is exactly the image you capture - a feature that most sub-$2000 digital cameras lack.

The shipping copy I examined was dotted with control buttons, making it look complicated to use. With practice, I found that changing settings such as flash mode and storage format with the buttons was easier than navigating through multiple menu layers on the tiny 4.5cm LCD monitor. The E-10 accepts both SmartMedia and CompactFlash memory card formats, but not IBM MicroDrives.

The camera can save photos at any of several compression levels (which gives you control over an image file's size), but you must click through a few layers of menus on screen to change the setting. The E-10 also permits you to print directly from the camera to a printer. The Camedia runs on two bundled Lithium-Ion batteries, but I suggest that you invest in four optional NiMH rechargeable batteries and a charger (price to be announced).

Transferring photos to your PC is easy with the included USB cable and Olympus Camedia Master 2.5 software, which also has some basic photo editing capabilities.

With so many flexible features, the Olympus Camedia E-10 is ideal for people who are serious about photo-graphy and can afford to splurge.

Olympus Camedia E-10

Price: $3999

Distributor: R. Gunz

Phone: 1800 802 665

URL: www.olympus.com