Hi ernreed2, on 22 Jul 03 you wrote in pentax.list:
>Looking for any useful comments about this camera. I like the idea of *small* >because I'm looking for it to be my carry-everywhere camera; and not so >intrigued by the Altoids-tin one because I like having manual controls >available (even when I don't use them much). I have the 550 and it is great. It is small but has a 5x zoom. And it gives you much manual control: besides its automatic program modes it has aperture and time priority. Another great feature is the battery: it lasts very, very long. A friend of mine to more than 400 pictures with one charge. Actually I would prefer the cheaper Optio 450 (which was not available when I ordered my 550). It has 4MP instead of 5MP. IMHO this is no real disadvantage. The advantage is that the noise level is lower at the 450, OTOH. There are two more differences: the 550 works with 12Bit per color, the 450 with 10Bit (but I don't believe that we could see a difference because of that). The second difference is that the 450 doesn't support TIF. But honestly - I have compared a 550 TIF and a 550 JPG and I cannot see any difference. The only effect of using TIF is, that it takes 18-24 seconds to save the picture... =:-O Cheers, Heiko
