Olympus FE-140

Reviewed August 2006

Image Quality

The Olympus FE-140 is a camera conceived to take charge of nearly all photographic decisions, and to be adaptable with as little difficulty as possible to most of the subjects that an average user would want to photograph. Moreover, although it offers a 6-megapixel resolution, a 3X zoom and 2.5-inch monitor, it is very reasonably priced.

The FE-140 is clearly a beginner's camera, and even its manual can be circumvented, as it is equipped with a Guide mode that walks the user to the appropriate mode selection.

Indeed, functions on the FE-140 are nearly all automatic. For example, the camera automatically chooses the ISO sensitivity of the CCD according to the ambient light, giving priority to as high a shutter speed as possible to avoid camera shake. In fact, we observed that the camera's program will even boost sensitivity when there would have been a sufficient amount of light to capture a sharp image at 80 ISO as long as the user exercised some caution to avoid camera shake.

Noise is actually one of the weak points of the FE-140. While at 80 ISO and with good light the images are free of any overt noise, as soon as the camera increases the sensitivity — even just past 100 ISO — noise can be detected in shadow areas. But, while the sensitivity range of the FE-140 extends to 800 ISO when the Blur Reduction mode is used, it does go past 320 ISO in all other modes. Moreover, unless the flash is used, the camera has a tendency to stay below 200 ISO, limiting the quantity of noise in the images.

The Auto white balance, on the other hand, is usually quite reliable. The colour the camera captures look natural and are well saturated. Even with a variety of light sources such as those of a city at night — see the night shot in the Test Photos section of the review — colours are accurately rendered. But, the Auto white balance seems to be less accurate when the flash is used as a supplementary light source in an indoor environment that has a mix of artificial lights.

Optically the FE-140 seems to only have a few problems at the wide angle end. While barrel distortion is minimal at the wide angle end, images loose sharpness towards the edges, and also show a marked chromatic aberration along the edges of strong contrasts. On the other hand, at longer focal lengths these problems evaporate and the images have good sharpness from edge to edge. Finally, at the maximum telephoto, images show no trace of pincushion distortion, or chromatic aberration.

The FE-140 only has three possible image sizes, and only the largest size, the 6-megapixel format, has a choice of two compression levels. With the least compression, the SHQ level applies a compression of approximately 6:1, and normally yields images that are quite detailed. However, the noise that creeps into the images that are captured at sensitivities above 100 ISO seem to engender some artefacts during the JPEG compression process, artefacts that can be seen when the image is scrutinized at 100% scale on a monitor.

The Olympus FE-140 seems to be ideal for those that want to acquire an affordable digital camera without sacrificing resolution, or the advantage of a large 2.5-inch LCD monitor. The FE-140 is a camera that allows new users to become familiar with the principles and terminology of digital photography, but avoid its more technical and occasionally daunting aspects.