An In-Depth Look at 4 Ultra-compact Digicams

The Design: Olympus IR-300

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The front of the Olympus IR-300 features a 3x optical zoom with a 38 - 114mm (35mm equivalent) focal range. To the right of the lens is a red access lamp that illuminates whenever data is being written to the flash card. It will also blink to indicate that a self-timer is in progress. Above this lamp are the microphone and built-in flash.

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The back of the IR-300 is kept very simple. The LCD monitor is 2.0" with 207K pixels. On the right side of the LCD monitor is a Menu button and a remote control receiver. The remote control is not included with the camera, but can be purchased separately for approximately $40. Below the remote control receiver is a 4-way controller with a separate OK button in the middle. At the bottom of the camera are the Erase and Custom/Print buttons.

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On the top of the IR-300 is the main mode switch that changes the camera's mode from Record, Movie, and Play. Up and to the right of the mode switch are the main power button and the shutter button. Surrounding the shutter button is the zoom controller that operates the optical zoom in Record mode as well as the magnification of images in Play mode.

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On the bottom left of the camera is a metal tripod mount. In the middle, you can see the connection for the included charging dock. On the right side is the sliding hinged door that conceals the compartment for the flash card and battery. The IR-300 does not come with an xD-Picture card. However, the camera does have 15 MB of internal memory. We highly recommend picking up at least a 256 MB xD-Picture card to get started. The battery is a rechargeable LI-40B Lithium-ion (3.7V 660mAh).

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There's not much to see on the right side of the camera. From here, we can see the side of the card activity/self-timer lamp.

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On the left side of the camera is a built-in speaker for playing audio from voice memos and video clips. There is also a post for the included wrist strap.