Olympus Stylus 1030 SW

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Stylus 1030 SW Prices

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LCD Screen (4.50)
The 2.7-inch display, with a 230,000-dot resolution, looked dim at its default settings. Five brightness settings are available through the setup menu and, by cranking it up all the way, we achieved an acceptable on-screen display for indoor use. Out in bright sunlight, though, the screen was hard to see even at its brightest setting, a particular problem in a camera with no optical viewfinder. On the plus side, color reproduction is quite accurate, and the off-axis viewing angle is better than most point-and-shoots, making it easier to grab a shot with your arm extended.

 

The on-screen menu display is consistently crisp and easy to read, with large clean san serif type and bright yellow highlighting to indicate the cursor position when moving through menu choices. As a fun little personalization option, users can choose between four preset menu backgrounds or use a personal photo as a menu backdrop instead.

Zoom Lens (2.75)
The zoom runs from 5.0 – 18.2 mm (28 – 102mm equivalent on a 35mm camera), which is slightly more than 3.6x. The zoom occurs within the camera body itself – there's no lens snout sticking out of the 1030 SW, which helps keep it pocket-friendly. The aperture ranges from f/3.5 at the widest setting to f/5.1 at the maximum telephoto length. That's not a spec to delight available light photographers. The lower the aperture number, the more light the camera lets in, and f/3.5 is pretty high. And a higher aperture means you'll need a slower shutter speed to achieve proper exposure, increasing camera shake and image noise. By comparison, the 12x zoom Canon PowerShot S5 IS offers a maximum aperture of f/2.7.
Zoom level is controlled using two small buttons at the top right of the camera back. This isn't a smooth, precision zoom mechanism, though. Each time you press the button the lens jumps to another preset zoom position – the optical zoom range offers nine steps in all. The response to each button press is snappy enough, and there's none of the annoying back-and-forth lens movement after zooming we've found on some inexpensive point-and-shoots. You're not getting a lot of fine control when re trying to carefully frame a photo using this system, though.

Unlike other cameras in this price range, the 1030 SW doesn't offer true image stabilization technology, either via a shifting lens component or a sensor that adjusts to camera movement. The "digital image stabilization" system works by boosting ISO settings and shutter speed, which we hesitate to label as image stabilization at all.