Olympus Imaging introduced Monday the Stylus 500 (see photo below), its new five megapixel, three times optical zoom digital camera.
It features a 2.5-inch 215,000 pixel LCD monitor. Because the liquid crystal molecules are laid out in a radial pattern, it allows viewing from angles as wide as 160 degrees under virtually any lighting condition. This technology also assures minimal color variation right across all its 215,000 pixels.
It offers 23 shooting modes with automatic exposure adjustments for shooting Portraits, Landscapes, and Fireworks as well as two new underwater shooting modes and two Shoot & Select modes for shooting rapid sequences of frames. A USB 2.0 interface connects the camera to Macs or PCs and allows the images to be downloaded without using special software. It is also PictBridge-compatible, to connect directly to supported printers.
The new device will be available in January for US$399.99 and comes with a 32 megabyte xD-Picture Card. It measures 3.9 x 2.2 x 1.2 inches.
