Olympus Mju 700 7.1 megapixel digicam

There are a confusing number of menus and more than one way to get at them, depending on the mode you're in. However, a neat Guide mode sets the camera for you depending on the chosen setting selected from the list presented in that menu, so that's very handy indeed. Other menus are straightforward once you've spent a little time sussing them out.

All the camera's controls are very small but are also simple to use, as is the large 2.5in colour screen. It's bright, usable in even very bright conditions but suffered from heavy reflections so it could be improved with an anti-reflection coating.

Colour rendition is natural while focusing seemed a tad awkward in macro or super-macro settings or when shooting in low lighting. The lens is on the soft side and all my shots benefited from a small amount of sharpening on PC.

As for overall image quality, apart from those issues with softness and slight barrel distortion, they're fantastic. Zooming in on screen reveals the excess noise in shadows and the flattening of some detail due to the camera's image processing algorithms. If you want to crop into an image or make those larger prints the sensor makes possible, you'll need to invest in a bigger memory card and shoot in Super High Quality mode to get the most out of the camera.

Verdict

Being very critical, image softness and slight lens/optical performance problems reduce captured detail. However, prints up to around 10 x 8in won't show most of these image problems, and the camera's many great shooting features easily outweigh those drawbacks, making the Mju 700 a great value slice - nay, wedge - of camera technology.

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