Olympus µ1010 compact camera
Silly name aside, this is a quality camera
Review The curiously named Olympus µ1010 is also known as the mju 1010, which doesn’t make it any easier to pronounce. It comes in three groovy - or garish - colours, silver, black and metallic blue.
This is a pretty well-specified camera considering the price and target audience. There’s a beefy 7x 6.6-46.2mm optical zoom lens for starters, which is equivalent to a 37-260mm zoom on a 35mm camera.
Olympus' µ1010: it even works underwater
The 1/2.33in CCD is a 10.1-megapixel chip, and you also get a twin image stabilisation system, face detection, special technology designed for low-light shooting and 23 scene modes. You can even use the µ1010 underwater, up to a depth of 40m, provided you’ve got an optional underwater case. And a good pair of lungs.
The µ1010 is a slim camera, measuring 99 x 56 x 25mm and weighing 135g without battery. It’s certainly very pocketable. At the front is the usual flash and lens arrangement, while on top is the shutter control and power button - which glows a nice blue colour when switched on. At the side is a flap for a mini USB port, while around the back is 2.7in LCD screen composed of 230,000 pixels. Nearby sits a zoom rocker bar, control dial for various modes, the menu button, a playback button and a four-way arrow pad for controlling macro, flash, timer and exposure compensation.
Below this is a display button and shadow adjust/delete button. Underneath is a spring-loaded cover for the battery and memory card. Incidentally, rather than use an SD card or Memory Stick, the µ1010 uses the xD-Picture card format.
COMMENTS
Oly CPUs
My first digital SLR (not interchangeable lens) was the Oly 1400L. It had a Sparc processor and was running an embedded version of SunOS. As an oldtime kernel hacker I really liked that and really liked that the embedded timestamp was in UNIX epoch (secs since 8AM 01/01/1970) format. Wonder what they are using now.
Olympus digital cameras are one of the easiest cameras to use I've come across
I like olympus camera's for their simplicity, good value and good quality pics, oh and pretty robust too. I've had a few now and my next one will be olympus too, glad to see they've stuck with keeping the UI simple :)
Should have reviewed the u1030SW...much more interesting camera..
and the problem with your memory cards is that there are FOUR types of xD cards:
- standard grade, which are slow and have no extra functions enabled
- Type M : which are faster and enable panorama features (even Fuji's cards work if Type M I believe)
- Type H : High-speed, for faster shot to shot, and panorama (rare to find, and expensive)
- Type M+ : coming out in the next month, will enable high-res video recording without the current 10second max record time, until card memory runs out.
I suspect you had a cheap standard grade card, which has been outdated for at least two years. Anyone with a recent Oly wants a Type M or M+ to get access to the features.
The Oly 1030SW is the camera you should have reviewed though - a 28mm wide-angle lens with internal 3.8x optical zoom, shockproof, waterproof, and same sensor. A much more interesting and unique camera...
Whats so hard?
Just say
mu ten ten......Not hard really....
Schipol
Hence the sea of blue KLM self check-in things.
Camera a little too consumer for my tastes, currently using a Canon G9 & 10D (flooded with salt water and still going strong!)
