E500, worth the money?

[PHeller]

Alright folks, here's the deal. I've checked out just about every other camrea on the market, and the Oly E500 has a deffenant advantage in the pricing department.

How far behind is the E-500 and what can be done to make it compete? I will be taking pictures both indoors and outdoor for money, but prints shouldn't be any larger then 8x10inches. Pictures will be either portrait or sports photography.

Can the E-500 hold up to what I need it for?

[kgosden]

Behind? Behind what? Seeing that it is one of the newest cameras in Olympus' DSLR line it is not behind there. If you mean relative to other brands, well then it depends on how you define behind. Until recent updates to the low end Canon and Nikon products it had as good or better resolution and certainly the best and largest main LCD screen. It has always had better dust handling. Compared to the Canon Rebel it at least offers spot metering. Really the only area that it seems to get faulted is in high ISO image quality and perhaps lens selection.

If there was one thing that I could add to the current Olympus lineup it would be a low cost IS lens like some of Canon's offerings. Most of the other lens needs are there and more are coming from 3rd parties like Sigma. I have not found the ISO performance to be limiting in normal usage.