Olympus Stylus 1050 SW Digital Camera Review

Olympus Stylus 1050 SW

Digital Camera Review

Nov 28, 2008 - By Steve Morgenstern
1.8 The 10-megapixel Olympus Stylus 1050 SW is the latest addtion to the company's line of ruggedized point-and-shoot cameras. It doesn't match the level of indestructibility achieved by the brawny 1030 SW we reviewed earlier this year, but it's fine for the pool or ski slope, with waterproof performance to 10-foot depths and freeze resistance down to 14 degrees F (-10 degress C). We like the style and strong metal construction, but our lab testing was not kind to the 1050 SW. And while Olympus is proud of its admittedly innovative Tap Control system, we found it more gimmicky than practical. For the full story, click through to the complete review.
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Olympus Stylus 1050 SW

The 1050 SW may be right at home underwater or high on a ski slope, but it was less than comfortable in our testing labs. Results for color accuracy and low light performance were OK, but just about everything else was decidedly sub-par, and the white balance test was a train wreck.

Color (6.23)
When it comes to color, we haven't figured out a way to test for pretty yet, though admittedly that's what many people want in their digital cameras: bluer than blue skies, pinker than pink cheeks, and so on. We're limited here to measuring color accuracy, which in the age of inexpensive and easy photo editing strikes us as more important anyway. It's far easier to tweak a photo to meet your particular personal preferences if it starts out reproducing precisely what you saw when you took the shot. With that in mind, we shoot an industry-standard GretagMacbeth color chart under bright, controlled studio lighting, then analyze the resulting images using Imatest software to determine how closely the photo produced by the camera reproduces the known colors on the chart. The chart below is one revealing part of the Imatest analytical output. The squares correspond to the twenty-four color blocks of the GretagMacbeth chart. In each square, the outer rectangle is the color as captured by the camera, the inner square is the chart color corrected to match the luminance of the camera image, and the small inset rectangle reproduces the original chart color.
 



 

The same information is displayed in a more stastical way in the following chart. In this case, the captured color is displayed in the circles, the ideal color is shown in the squares, and the length of the line connecting them reflects the difference between the two: longer lines, less accurate color. And overall, color accuracy here is adequate but not particularly impressive. Flesh tones (roughly represented by the number 1 and 2 patches on the GretagMacbeth chart) are pretty close, as are the blue sky colors. Orange, yellow, green and cyan, though, are notably shifted, not just in saturation, but in hue as well. The entire image is slightly oversaturated, but not enough to cause loss of detail in the photo.
 


Longer lines for green and orange shades indicate
less accurate color reproduction.

Color performance for the 1050 SW is adequate, but certainly not a selling point for the camera. Fortunately, the most accurate results come in precisely the colors where errors are most noticeable.

For comparison purposes, we're displaying the 1050 SW performance results against four other cameras we've reviewed. The Fujifilm FinePix F60fd and Samsung TL34HD are similarly sized point-and-shoot cameras at the same $299 price as the Olympus. The 1030 SW and Optio W60 are waterproof cameras, like the 1050 SW, though certified for different depths. While the Stylus 1050 SW did surpass its brand-mate's color accuracy, it significantly trailed the rest of the field.

Olympus 1050 SW Color Scores


Resolution (5.81)
The sharpness of an image isn't measured in megapixels: in fact, too many megapixels squeezed into a small sensor can actually cause a significant loss of image quality compared to a lower-megapixel camera. To test the bottom-line resolution of a camera, we photograph a chart under bright light, at several distances, and analyze the resulting images using Imatest. Resolution is measured in line widths per pixel height (lw/ph). The higher the figure, the more increasingly fine detail can be distinguished by the camera before an area turns into an amorphous gray blob.


In the detail shown here, resolution performance isn't great,
and there's noticeable color fringing.

The top resolution results were 1526 lw/ph horizontally and 1225 vertically, which is unimpressive. And while the Fujifilm and Samsung results are dramatically superior (the Samsung delivered 2162 lw/ph horizontally and 2127 lw/ph vertically), even the two other waterproof cameras in our comparison group handily outperformed the 1050 SW.
 

Olympus 1050 SW Resolution Scores


 
Dynamic Range (5.38)
A camera's ability to reproduce both the bright areas and the darker sections of an image, without losing detail at either extreme, is measured as dynamic range. This is measured in our labs by photographing a backlit chart that displays blocks of grayscale values from pure white on one end to solid black on the other, then analyzing the photos to determine the camera's breadth of coverage throughout its ISO range.

The curve plotted above does not represent a pretty picture. At the lowest available ISO settings (ISO 80 and 100), the 1050 SW performs very nicely, but loss of dynamic range from that point on is distressingly swift. Even without pushing the camera to its ISO 1600 extreme (which is really not that extreme, in a market where ISO 3200 for a compact camera is not uncommon), dynamic range limitations will be reflected in a lack of crispnesss and realism in high-contrast images.
 

Olympus 1050 SW Dynamic Range Scores

Here again, comparison is not flattering, with a significant drop in dynamic range performance even when compared against the brand-mate Stylus 1030 SW.

White Balance (3.84)
Except in fairly extreme lighting conditions – reading by candlelight, for example – we're not very sensitive to the color of the light around us. Looking at a sheet of paper under fluorescent light or a standard household bulb, for example, our minds adjust for the substantial difference between the two source of illumination and basically see the paper as white. This adjustment is far more difficult for a camera than it is for the human brain, but it's necessary to produce a good-looking photo. Most cameras offer at least two ways of coping with this challenge: an automatic system which lets the camera analyze the incoming light and adjust accordingly, and a set of presets tuned to specific light sources, which the user can choose manually. We test both of these strategies under a range of lighting conditions.

Auto White Balance (4.01)
Most often we find that a camera will cope well with certain light sources and go down to defeat with others. This is certainly the case with the 1050 SW. Interestingly, one of the light sources that proves most challenging for compact cameras, fluorescent bulbs, was a strong point for the 1050 SW, and it also handled flash with good results. However, colors were wildly off in shots taken in the shade, and photos taken under tungsten lighting (similar to ordinary household bulbs) showed an uncomfortable shift towards overly warm and orange tones.
 

In the test images below, produced by Imatest image analysis software, the differences between ideal and actual colors have been exaggerated to show the nature of the color shift more clearly. You wouldn't see this level of difference in actual photos shot with the camera.
 

   Exaggerated White Balance Errors


Auto WB - Flash Illumination 

  
Auto WB - Fluorescent Illumination 


Auto WB - Daylight illumination

 
Auto WB - Tungsten illumination 

Preset (3.66)
Using the manual presets produced marginal improvements in the fluorescent and daylight shade categories, but only increased the off hues of tungsten-illuminated photos. There is no flash preset, hence the lack of a result in the samples below.
 

  Exaggerated White Balance Errors (Presets)


Fluorescent Preset WB - Fluorescent Illumination 


  Cloudy Daylight preset WB - Daylight illumination


Tungsten preset WB - Tungsten illumination

The good white balance performance achieved using flash and under fluorescent light was heavily outweighed by surprisingly poor scores in daylight shade and incandescent lighting. Using flash indoors will help some, but it's no solution to an overall disappointing result. While the Samsung is the obnovious kid who spoils the curve for the rest of the class in the comparison below, the 1050 SW lags significantly behind even average performers.

 

Olympus 1050 SW White Balance Scores
 

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