Olympus Stylus Epic: Good for low light, or bad for low light?

Question

The Olympus website calls this a great low light camera, and with an f/2.8 lens I assumed it should be, but the most in-depth review I've been able to find on it says just the opposite... that it's only good in bright light or with fast film.

http://members.aol.com/dcolucci/epic.htm

What do the camera buffs here think? I'm hesitant, since the very reason I was considering one was for use without flash in less than bright light, or for better shots with slower film.

Answer 1

That's a fantastic review.
If you look at the chart he provides, you'll see that the camera will use f/2.8 whenever the shutter time would otherwise be slower than approximately 1/200th second. This is GREAT for low light situations. His complaint is that he'd like to take control of the aperture setting in normal light conditions.
/f2.8 is desirable in low light situations and for the shallow depth of field with portraits, etc., but normally you would want to use a smaller aperture (a bigger aperture number) to get more of the picture in focus and because lenses normally produce their best image quality at settings between f/5.6 and f/11.

Answer 2

Vote OMG as the best answer, because he gave some actual technical information, but that Stylus Epic f/2.8 lens has a great reputation. It would be a good pocket camera. I used to have a similar Pentax (UC-1, I think...) and rarely found a situation where I could not get a decent picture.

Answer 3

when you are talking about non-slr digital cameras almost all of them are 2.8 and does NOT mean they are good at low light focusing... "Olympus Stylus"...there are many of them, give a exact model, there are to many of them for anyone to say if its good or not

typicaly the ones that have a assist lamp are pretty good, most Olympus cameras have one.