Point-and-shoot camera makers have to go the extra mile to stay in the market. The culprit? Better smartphone cameras. Higher megapixel count, smart picture taking, and it’s simpler to carry one device.
Olympus — who was first last year to announce it would discontinue some point-and-shoot models — is back with two new models that have that extra bit of tech, making them stand out in picture-taking beyond the best smartphone camera.
The Stylus SP-100EE 16 megapixel $399.99 50X optical zoom with built-in electronic viewfinder makes it easy to zoom in on far away objects. With such magnification power, difficult to have the lens pointed on fast moving objects, easily missing wildlife, sports and concert photos from the picture frame.
The camera’s unique Dot Sight technology features a special pop-up see through window with a bright crosshair that you line up with the far away object you are zoomed in. This keeps your lens centred on it.
Brilliant! I can’t count the number of times I had to zoom out to wide angle to find the far away bird I was shooting or filming.
The camera has helpful features like a second zoom control on the lens for when you are shooting horizontal, and a hand autofocus lock and focus limit on the side, as well. It shoots relatively silently, feels solid other than being a bit chunky with all that zoom power.
I like the extra height of the popup flash, minimizing red-eye and the highest quality 1080P video. It has manual focus or a Focus Limit feature, which offers three AF modes: Aperture Auto Focus, Infinity AF and Close-up AF. For a camera like this I would have also liked to change what part of the screen focuses for off-centre composition, something more serious photogs would like to get into.
Still, my early version of this camera, out mid-April, did well and is a worthy companion to any cellphone. Continuous shooting rate is on the slow side at full MP quality but at Full-HD 1920×1440 its sequential rate screams stop action photography.
There’s a good selection of scene modes to get those trick shots and the very excellent Olympus Art Filters that are the closest to Photoshop effects than competitors.
The new Olympus Tough TG-850 is the latest in the Olympus legacy of weatherproof, waterproof, freeze, dustproof and shockproof cameras. Its uniqueness is the super-wide 21mm equivalent 5X zoom lens with the perfect selfie feature: a hinged bright screen lets you see yourself in pictures. Perfect!
It has all the usual shooting selections of the Olympus cameras but the 1080P video, four dedicated scene modes to underwater shooting and lens shift image stabilizing will guarantee great pictures…anywhere.
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