I was looking for an inexpensive camera to take kayaking and skiing without risking my Nikon SLR. The Olympus was actually my second choice, but the Nikon Coolpix was out of stock, so I went with the Olympus. The features, ease of use, picture quality are all excellent for such a small camera. The only negative is that it doesn't come with a viewfinder, which I much prefer for composing pictures rather than through-the-monitor.Some of the icons on the menus are a bit obscure, but once you go through them, it's not a big deal. It just means reading the manual is worthwhile. There are a lot of "playback" options I would never use - like cropping photos on the camera - I'd rather do that on the computer. There is what looks to be a handy panorama mode used in assocation with the software that comes with the camera, but I haven't tried it - yet.Overall, well worth the price.