I originally wrote this review to submit to the Digital Camera Resource Page, a great 'headquarters' for people in the market for a digital camera... But it may be of interest to you as well!

I got the D-400z from Tri-State Camera and Video, a very obscure catalog retailer (800-221-1926), for $699, just a day before leaving on vacation (I got the camera around December 18th, '98), taking the camera with on my trip, of course. It's an overall great camera, and worth the money big time. The 3x optical + 2x digital zoom came in very handy, the small, extremely portable design was great, and the 8MB memory card worked perfectly, holding about 40-50 pictures. I brought with a cheap old IBM ThinkPad laptop and downloaded the pictures, using the included super-cool flashpath floppy disk adapter, to the computer's hard drive each evening, making for practically unlimited photo storage. The flashpath adapter is a really handy device... About the only thing that could improve it would be improved Mac drivers, so that it would work just like a regular floppy disk in the Mac OS, as it does with windows.

A cool feature of the camera that I didn't even think about when buying, but which turned out to be really helpful on my vacation was the camera's video out port. I used the supplied cable, along with an RF converter I bought ($30, Radio Shack) to put on slide shows each evening on the motels' TVs of all the pictures I took that day. That was such a great way to look over all the day's pictures, particularly since the laptop I brought with could display only 16 colors and therefore practically no detail. That is just one of the camera's many very cool features.

Almost everything about the camera is just how it should be, and better than most other digital cameras. But I'll talk about some of the things about it that could be improved upon.

- The shutter speed seems much longer than it should be. What this means is that, unless you're in very bright lighting conditions, you need to hold the camera absolutely still to avoid getting a blurry picture. (Using the flash helps, but that is not without it's own minor quibbles; read on.) After using the camera for a day or so, you'll get used to holding the camera very still, but it's definitely something that should be improved by Olympus, by changing to a larger lens light aperture or something. A workaround to this problem is to manually adjust the brightness down. I've gotten into the habit of adjusting the exposure to minus 1 or 1.5 'stops' every time I turn on the camera. To do this, just slide open the lens cover, then press the menu button, and set the resulting menu down a few notches. Your pictures will be sharper and darker.

- The on screen controls are slightly cryptic. Clearly, Olympus wanted to make just one version of the camera to sell all around the world, instead of making slightly different versions for each language. As a result, rather cryptic icons are used in the camera's "OS" instead of English descriptions of what each command does. It's just a matter of glancing at the manual to see what each symbol means, but it still is something that could be better.

- It would be nice if the camera included a LOW-compression 640*480 resolution picture saving format. Many people don't need a huge 1280*960 picture, but would like to have a SHARP small image.

- This camera's LCD screen, while bright and sharp, eats up AA batteries like crazy. It would be helpful if Olympus supplied some NiMH batteries or a discount coupon for some or something.

- The camera doesn't seem to work really closely with it's flash. Even in pretty dark conditions, I found that the colors were truer and pictures more beautiful when taken without the flash than with. Using the flash tends to yield pictures which are either 'whited out' with brightness, or too dark. The camera almost acts as if the flash was an afterthought for the designers of the unit or something. It should be more coordinated.

- Although the camera is overall very well made, the tiny hatch which covers the power in, video out, and computer hookup ports is flimsy as hell. It feels especially cheap and easy to break off. Other than that, the camera is sturdy, and compact!

- Finally, the back of the camera is covered with 9 little silver buttons, some of which do very little. I would be more intuitive, attractive, and organized if the camera had just two or three buttons, and an advanced multidirectional type control like on Sony Mavicas. Right now, it works fine, but all these little buttons just clutter things up.

Believe me, if you buy this camera, you'll be exceptionally happy. It's a great digital camera, perfect for people like me who want a camera small enough to carry with them almost everywhere, and pull out for quick, hi-res shots of interesting stuff. It's an excellent replacement for similar 35mm film cameras, because it works very much like them, only can do so much more. This camera, though somewhat pricey, is a great investment, and will save you on photo developing, scanning, etc. in the long run.