You pays your money, you takes your choice. If you want quality, you have to pay for it. You have a camera lens with a very wide zoom range. This is convenient, but the compromises in the design are very high to get this kind of range, in the package that fits, at a cost that is affordable. You can't have something for nothing.

Yes. But bear in mind the cost of not only the body, but the lenses you would have to buy to get the range you have with your Olympus. Buy a cheap 70-300 lens for a dSLR, it will be better than the Oly for image quality, but to get ultimate sharpness, you would have to buy a very expensive bit of glass.

Eliminate is a strong word. "Reduce very considerably" would be my description. Most entry level dSLR are relatively noise free at ISO800, but push them up to 1600 or 3200 and the problems will still be there. Nowhere near as bad as your ISO800 example, but the laws of physics still apply.

Duncan

James. I concur with Duncan ( yelvertoft ) and postcardcv. A zoom lens that has a 35mm equivalent of 26mm to 520 mm is being asked to do an awful lot and is not going to be as sharp as a good prime DSLR lens. You need to fix the ISO within the range of 100 - 400 at most if you want sharp pictures and once you crop them any flaws are going to be magnified. If you want an expanding system then the Nikon D40, a Canon or Sony DSLR are the way to go.

Would it be a good idea to get the Sony DSLR-A200K and then think about upgrading the lens at a later date?

Will the A200K produce nice quality shots using the lens that's already attached? I'm not too fussed about the magnification, the 4x or so optical zoom equivalent of the A200K's lens will be enough for me.

The simple answer is there would be a huge improvement but of course to get the lens range you already have will cost a lot more money.

Depends how much money you can justify spending. Only you can answer that question.

Yes, it will produce nice shots with the kit lens. Bear in mind that "4x" is only the ratio of the widest angle zoom setting to the longest telephoto setting. It's better to think in terms of real focal lengths, not optical zoom factors.

Thanks, that's all I needed to know. I already mentioned the 20x zoom is not as important to me as the quality of picture (just a novelty to me). I'm not massively into photography, I am a graphic designer and taking photos is necessary for some jobs but is not the most important part of my job. I am never planning on spending too much money on a camera - I own some great top of the range equipment, but a camera that will take some quality photos will be enough for me - I know I could never compete with professional photographers for the money I am willing to spend!

Thank you all for your help. You've been very helpful. :)

Hi James.
i echo what has already been posted here.
The results you are getting are typical of a compact/bridge digital camera.
Your images have all gone through the in-built cameras jpeg processing. Noise (grain) reduction and artificial sharpening are pretty much evident in most compacts now. unfortunately, most are also still suckered in by the high megapixel counts now showing on all but the cheapest digital cameras.

To be honest with you, even very early digital SLR cameras like the Fuji S1 or Nikon D1, now selling online secondhand for only about £100 (+ a few more £ for the lens of your choice) would blow your Olympus results away.....and on paper the Nikon and Fuji are both 'only' shooting about 3megapixels pictures (so no one wants them....as they can't possibly put up with only 3 mp! lol)......I use to get very frustrated at the shop when epople would still go blindly buying the cheapest camera they could that had the highest mp count......though the manufacturers do 'promote' the mp counts, and of course retailers take advantage of this ignorance to the whole story too.

James, your experience is unfortunately not uncommon.
Your graphics might even benefit from the different file options a DSLR can deliver too?

good luck
cheers
Joe

Thank you for that Joe. Great post! :)

I was originally looking at SLRs on Amazon and saw a couple of good cameras for around the £250 mark - I then got sidetracked and ended up on a camera specific site and saw that the Olympus had a high spec for a similar price and that the SLRs on this site were well into the £300 mark. For some reason I forgot about the Amazon SLR prices and thought that DSLRs were too expensive and bought the Olympus. I usually research heavily into new purchases but as I had just been buying new top-end PC components, a new monitor and printer, I must have gotten bored with the massive process of researching into prices/reviews etc and settled too early.

I think I'll have to end up selling this camera on eBay for a loss and put it towards the camera I should have bought originally - I'll buy a better lens separately when I can afford it.

I've done well really, this is the first time I've ever been upset by a wrong purchase and I'll be sure to never make the same mistake.

Thanks you all again for the great help! :)

Hi James,

I made a similar purchase like yours a few years back. It was a toss up between a DSLR and a Bridge cam with masses of zoom. I ended up buying an Olympus C770 UZ as it had great bang for buck.

It took great pics up to A4 size without any pixelation problems around ISO 400. If there was ever any problems with the pictures or the camera I used to do the old master reset option and that fixed everything. Have you given that a try?

With respect to DSLR, find a model that you like and see what features it offers and then look at the next model or 2 above it and see what they offer. Go and ask people about the different features and what they do and what advantages they will give you. I purchased a Nikon 40x a year ago and it was a great camera. I didn't know much about photography when I bought it and it suited my needs. I then did some research and learnt more and did a few courses and found that it lacked some features that I needed like, Bracketing, Depth of field Preview, a greater range of ISO selection to name a few.

Not long after discovering these new features I upgraded to the D90. I make a point of looking for a camera that has features I want now and that has features I will probably grow into and use in the future. With respect to what make to buy its all about personal preference. Try a heap out and see which one's you like :o Just remember to choose a manufacturer that you will buy your next camera off has a model that you would like to upgrade in the future. Means you can use all your previous gear with you new camera.

Its a bit of a ramble but I hope it helped.

Thanks for the advice Weeds!