The Olympus FE-4000 is a starter level digital camera. It scores highly for ease of use and unlike a lot of digital cameras in this price bracket the FE-4000 is small enough and slim enough to slip easily into a pocket.

This is a 12 megapixel camera. It has a 4x zoom lens with wide angle capabilities. Yopu can select from models in orange, pink, white, blue and grey.

This is one of the cheapest pocket sized cameras.

Outdoor 1 (Medium Zoom)
My first test shot is bright and colourful. If you look closer issues start to appear. A lot of detail is lost in lighter and darker areas of the photo. There is also a loss of sharpness as you move out towards the edges of the photo.

Outdoor 2 (No Zoom)
The quality of this photo is poor. Olympus has added an extra wide angle lens to the FE-4000. In my view trying to cram such technology into such a small lens for such a low price has lead to too much of a compromise when it comes to picture quality. There is a serious loss of sharpness in the more distant parts of the photo. There is virtually no detail showing on the boats and they show as small white blobs.

Outdoor 3 (Maximum Zoom)
This is a better effort, but focusing slips towards the edges of the photo. There is also further evidence of loss of detail on the boats.

Outdoor 4 (Building)
If you only plan to make snapshot sized prints you may find the sharpness of your shots satisfactory, but here there is a real lack of definition in this photo. This tends to flatten the perspective of the building in larger prints.

Outdoor Portrait
I am not sure what has happened here. This shot lacks the crispness almost every other digital camera manages with this test shot. This is a very disappointing result.

Indoor Portrait with Flash
This is an o.k. effort. The flash lighting is a little harsh in places, but you cannot expect perfection at this end of the price scale. There are one or two areas the light struggles to reach.

Indoor Portrait without Flash
The FE-4000 does quite well here. It was taken on a fairly dark day with the lights on. I am happy with the outcome.

Colours
I like the colours in my test shots. They do not overpower and like other Olympus digital cameras they have a subtle look to them.

Macro
It is difficult to take macro shots with this camera if you are photographing anything with a reflective surface. The camera itself is highly reflective and can bounce a lot of light back onto the subject.

Noise
Noise creeps in quite quickly in darker areas of photos. This is true of a lot of digital cameras and I would have been surprised if the FE-4000 was able to cope with noise.

Overall
It is not often I come across a digital camera that disappoints me as much as the FE-4000 has. You might get away with it if you only ever make snapshot sized prints, but quality is simply not very good.

This camera is very slow indeed. A single shot timed 1.61 seconds and five took 40.43 seconds. With flash on a single photo took 1.92 seconds and five shots took 46.96 seconds.

To turn on the FE-4000 and take a picture took 3.29 seconds.

You can compare this camera to other models by taking a look at the Shutter Lag Comparison Table.

The front of the camera has a highly reflective finish. The design is plain and unfussy. You can select from orange, pink, white, blue and grey.

95 x 57 x 22.4mm

106g

Lithium ion.

The FE-4000 is compatible with micro SD and xD picture cards. Olympus has built in 19mb of storage. This is enough room for roughly 5 photos.

Click here to save money on SD cards..

Excellent. Digital cameras do not come much more straightforward than the FE-4000.

Ease of use - low price pocket camera

Picture quality - slow turn on time - very slow shutter lag times

The Canon Powershot A480 may not look quite as good and you will struggle to fit it into a pocket, but I found picture quality much better.

The Olympus FE-4000 is not a camera I can recommend. Picture quality is wide of the mark even for a cheaper pocket camera and shutter delay times could be a big issue.

Front View

Back View

Top View

Sample Menu

Description:	12 megapixels and 4x optical zoom
Ease of Use:	9
Features:	7
Colour:	8
Macro:	7
Indoors:	8
Value for Money:	7
Style:	8
Movie Mode:	7
Image Quality:	6
Build Quality:	8
Total:	75
Verdict:	The Olympus FE-4000 struggles to take a decent snap. I found the pictures to lack focus and to lose definition in the lighter areas of any shot. There is also a serious issue with the delay time between clicking the shutter button and the picture being taken.
Review Date:	November 2009
Related Pages:	Olympus FE-4000 Specification Olympus FE-4000 Sample Images Olympus FE-4000 Features
Comparisons:	Panasonic Lumix DMC FS62 vs Olympus FE-4000

	GBP 89.99
	GBP 113.41
Click a flag for prices from other countries:

Camera	Rating
Canon Powershot A1100 IS	83
Fuji Finepix J250	82
Fuji Finepix Z35	82
Panasonic DMC LS85	82
Canon Powershot A480	82
Nikon Coolpix L20	81
Nikon Coolpix L19	81
Olympus FE-5020	80

Although every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of the information on this site, please make sure you double check the feature set and specification at the point of purchase.

Olympus FE-4000