High spec, low performance. (Olympus µ[MJU:] 1010)

Name: thebigc1690

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Product:	Olympus µ[MJU:] 1010
Date:	08/07/08 (386 review reads)
Rating:

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As most members on here will by now know, I am a professional photographer and some may well also be aware of the fact that I do a lot of camera testing. I have been testing some point and shoot digital cameras for the last week to find out just how good they really are and will now spend the next few days reviewing them for you guys starting with the Olympus MJU 1010.

This Olympus camera comes in either silver or blue with a pink one to be added soon I believe, It looks good and feels good (if a bit light) in the hand but the actual using of the camera is very fiddly due to the small buttons and the dial being very small. The actual pictures produced by the camera varied dramatically depending on the settings used.

With a large 10.1 megapixels at your fingertips you would expect to be getting very clear and colourful pictures and you do as long as you do not try to use the zoom to its full capacity or shoot in poor light without the flash. Olympus prides themselves on this cameras 7x optical zoom but the truth is the zoom is not that good. The high megapixels allow you to zoom and crop creatively on your pc or laptop and if this is the camera you choose then I would suggest you stick to that option because once zoomed over half way this camera looses much of its picture quality and any movement is very apparent so the use of a tripod would be a necessity.

I also found the ISO settings to be fairly pointless on this camera because anything shot over an ISO of 200 was very grainy and when blown up, zoomed in or cropped failed to be of any use. This camera has a video mode like most point and shoots these days but the video mode on this is the poorest thing of all with it, if you attempt to shoot video clips in anything other than perfect lighting the outcome will be a dark, grainy, almost unwatchable video clip that when used in full screen on your media player will become very blocky.

This Olympus camera has had many features added to it from the ones that have gone before it but most of them are very poor when put to use and therefore leave the cost of this unit at around £150 very poor value for money in my opinion. Even the most basic of photography has to be done on auto mode to get good results and the zoom Olympus is so proud of is little more than useless. If all you require is a point and shoot digital camera to be used in auto mode then this camera will do you proud but then so will many others at half the cost.

If you are looking for a camera that will let you make some decisions on the shots for yourself and allow you to choose apertures, ISO`s and shutter speeds for yourself then this will fail to impress and could even set a learner back with its poor results.

WHAT YOU GET FOR YOUR MONEY

Hand strap
Instruction Manual
Warranty Card
CB-AVC3 (Audio/Video cable)
CB-USB6 (USB Cable)
LI-50C (Lithium-Ion Battery Charger)
LI-50B (Lithium-Ion battery)
OLYMPUS Master 2.0 (Software CD-ROM)
MASD-1 (Micro SD attachment)

KEY FEATURES

10.1 Megapixels to make poster-size prints

7x optical zoom (37 - 260mm*) for exciting close-ups

Large 6.9cm/2.7" HyperCrystal LCD with a bright display even in brilliant sunlight

Avoids blur thanks to Dual Image Stabilisation

Face Detection for perfectly focused and exposed faces plus correct exposure of other image areas 6.9cm/2.7

Shadow Adjustment Technology

Better low-light shooting thanks to BrightCapture Technology

Create panoramic images inside the camera with the on-screen step by step guide.

The camera does have good points and they really should be mentioned, the first is the facial recognition system which allows for perfectly focused faces in your portraits. Not too many point and shoots have this function yet and the ones that do tend not to be that good. This Olympus had a great face detection setting that worked very well.

The dual image stabilisation seemed to work very well except when you really need it at full zoom so whilst it failed at full zoom it should still be given credit for helping to produce blur free photos even when photographing moving objects.
The camera wasn't all bad but in my opinion the bad did somewhat outweigh the good and I would recommend looking elsewhere for a point and shoot.

Thanks for reading

©2008 thebigc1690

Summary: It may be called the 1010 but it gets no more than a 5/10 from me!

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