The modestly priced 8.0 megapixel Olympus FE-350 Wide sports a truly wide wide angle zoom lens starting at 28mm (35mm equivalent), an absolute minimum for shooting interiors because of its wide angle of view. Zooming to 112mm, the lens’ range is sufficient for general photography, too, and produces sharp images with low noise, and little distortion even at the widest lens setting.

Feature-wise, this little gem comes with 13 Scene Modes, ISOs from 80 to 640, 7 White Balance settings, including Auto; 2 AF modes, 2 Auto Exposure modes, a 3” LCD to make composing easier (there’s no optical finder), shutter speeds from 1/2 sec to 1/2000th, 4 Flash settings and +/- 2 EV exposure compensation. The last two features are almost essential for interior photography, since almost always a little flash is needed to supplement ambient light by “filling” dark areas, and exposure compensation to correct underexposure cause by excessively bright light from windows, lights, etc. that fools the metering system, something that plagues all in-camera metering systems not just point-n-shoots.

The camera’s primary drawback is lack of true image stabilization, which is almost essential with cameras that lack a viewfinder and are not intended or can’t be used with a tripod. Here’s why: With no viewfinder, to compose, the camera must be held away from the eye to view the LCD, a very unstable position. This prevents using your head, arms and body to braced the camera to prevent movement during exposure, which would blur the image with the slower shutter speed normally required to get proper exposures when shooting interiors. All this digital image stabilization does is increase the ISO, so faster shutter speeds can be used to reduce blurring caused by fast moving subjects or camera movement. This feature is best left turned off, since higher ISOs mean noisier, less sharp images. Something you do not want.

However, even with its caveats, overall, the Olympus FE-350W is a great little performer.