Olympus Stylus 1050 SW: waterproof but not for deep diving
The Olympus Stylus 1050 is a must-have camera if you spend a lot of time outdoors. On the beach. Swimming. Trekking. All those good things. This is NOT the camera for serious divers, but for everything else it is the business. It is built rugged.
It used to be when you shot underwater you used a Nikonos film camera. It was a most excellent machine. (It was also used on film sets for still shots because the waterproofing muffled the noise of the shutter.) When I published a magazine in Australia for skin divers called Fathom my guess is 60 percent of all shots published were taken on a Nikonos. The rest on cameras with special dive housings.
The Olympus Stylus 1050 SW is not like that. It is, of course, digital. It is elegant and stylish and rugged.
It can take a drop of five foot (although you should take this on faith rather that go out and test it.)
It is waterproof down to, it is claimed, 10 feet but it would be a mug punter who tested that claim. Fine in the rain. Superb if you are splashing around in the shallows. Take it underwater and you do it at your own risk. As it is priced around $250 it is not a risk I would take.
This is not the first time that Olympus has gone down this road. Indeed, it is the first name you think of when it comes to all-weather cameras. In the Stylus 1050 it has produced an affordable and stylish ultra-compacts that you can take most anywhere. But not for serious diving.
This is a market which will probably turn out to be a lot bigger than niche. A camera you can take out in the rain seems to be a wonderful thing. I could even take it when I go jogging.
Not only is it weatherproof it has all the right attributes to make it a camera you take with you everywhere.
It has a three time zoom and 10.1 megapixels which means it will shoot most things you can think of. The camera’s 2.7 inch HyperCrystal II LCD display has five steps of brightness adjustment for shooting in a range of lighting conditions. In the super-bright sunshine conditions in Australia it still is not quite going to hack it but it is several steps in the right direction.
In that the iPhone changed the way the world worked with a screen so this camera tries to set a new style of control.
With the iPod you stroke the screen to get the result you want. With the Olympus Stylus 1050 you tap it.
Inside the camera, an accelerometer senses the taps and changes the settings. Very possibly this would become pretty intuitive but there are so many settings built in to this camera it probably would take you a while to get through them all. Some of them may or may not be for you. So you can safely ignore them. A camera that automatically takes a picture or two when the subject smiles is not to everyone’s taste.
That’s OK. You can use it as a superb point and shoot camera which is small enough to keep permanently in your pocket. And rugged enough to take life in the great outdoors. Yet it has some seriously neat items built in like a true super macro which means you can get shots as inch or so from your subject. And you can select from different contrast levels on an image which is a worthwhile trick if you are doing ultra-close-ups.
You can add one of two different sorts of memory cards so you will not run out of space easily.
Has it any drawbacks?
First of all this is a camera that screams out for a viewfinder — and does not have one. You can use the screen a lot of the time but in very bright sunlight you are working by guess and by God and no one has ever brought up a solution to this. Except a viewfinder which it does not have.
It would have been nice to have serious image stabilization — what there is works, sort of — and perhaps a little less automation and a little more manual control.
The auto-focusing is on the slow side under poor light conditions so you need patience to get the shot right. There is flash which is not a priority with this writer. In fact, it is not a great flash and covers something just over 10 feet. It is easy to get your fingers in front of the flash which, as you would guess, cuts the light down more than somewhat.
Olympus has never got the user interface quite right and you can have a small nervous breakdown going through all of the options. There are options which lead to options which lead to options. But this is being picky picky.
This is an amazing camera at the price. And you can do pretty much all the adjusting you want using the tap control which, after some use, would probably become intuitive.
The battery is not as massively endowed as some others but you should be able to get 200 shots with one charge and if you need more than that carry a spare battery.
Some reviewers have voiced doubts about some of the image quality using it as the equivalent of fast film speeds. It is difficult to tell the difference. For its size, its unique features and in its price range, it is a remarkable performer.
If you tend to take pictures on rainy days or when you are trekking or at the beach or on a long jog . . . this is the camera for you. If you are clumsy and tend to drop things . . . likewise. If you want a camera which can do most things (it can even produce video) which you will want to carry around with you all of the time . . . the Olympus Stylus 1050 SW fits the bill. These are good things.
It is an awful truth that if you do not have your camera with you, then it is difficult to take photographs. The Olympus Stylus is the camera you can take anywhere and use most places. Except deep down in the water. For that you need special gear.
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June 9th, 2009
It is most definitely waterproof to over 10 feet. Ive tested it several times, just make sure the doors are shut until they click. I took mine down a little over 15 feet and im still using it just fine. no problems at all