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

Picture Quality / Size Options (5.30)
Image size ranges from 10 megapixels to 0.3 megapixels as follows: 

10M 3648 x 2736
5M 2560 x 1920
3M 2048 x 1536
2M 1600 x 1200
1M 1280 x 960
VGA 640 x 480
16:9  1920 x 1080
 
There are also two JPEG compression settings, Fine and Normal. The camera doesn't shoot in RAW file format.

Picture Effects Mode (3.75)
The 1050 SW doesn't offer control over color, saturation, contrast or other image qualities while shooting. There is an extensive feature set for creating panoramic images, though, which seems appropriate for an outdoorsy camera.

There are three approaches to building the perfect panoramic picture:

Combine in Camera 1: This method brings a degree of automation to the process. After you take your first photo, a target marker appears on screen to the left or right. When you line up an on-screen pointer with this target marker, the camera automatically takes a second shot. Follow the same procedure one more time and the camera takes over, combining the three images and saving the result. If you prefer a two-shot panorama, just press the Menu button after the second photo.

Combine in Camera 2: Here you set the autopilot aside and take three photos manually. After each shot a reference section of the image remains visible at the edge of the frame to help line up the next image in sequence. After the third photo is taken, the camera stitches them together and saves the result.

Combine in PC: Relying on the included OLYMPUS Master 2 software on the computer offers additional levels of control. You can stitch together photos shot by panning vertically as well as horizontally, and up to ten images can be combined. What you sacrifice, though, is the on-screen reference to help line up the next shot properly. You have to eyeball the alignment, and let the computer software cover up any inadequacies with clever digital processing.

There is also a "shadow adjustment" feature available while shooting, which works in conjunction with the face detect system. If shadow adjustment is on, the camera will identify people in your photo and, if they are backlit and in danger of being underexposed, compensate by damping down the background and brightening the faces. Olympus apparently thinks this is a fairly important function, since it's available via a dedicated button and through the tap-control interface. We can see the utility when shooting out in the snow, but in less extreme environments (i.e., backlit shots not set against blindig white snow), it didn't make much of a difference.

There are a few image alteration options available while in Playback mode, including resizing (to 640x480 or 320x240), limited cropping (only two size choices each for portrait and landscape) and color edit, which creates a copy of an existing image with black and white, sepia or one of two saturation effects applied.

The Perfect Fix option in Playback mode includes automatic redeye correction and lighting fix, an automated correction that attempts to bring up light levels in especially dark areas.

This is a very barebones selection of in-camera editing options. And while we're perfectly comfortable carrying out our image-tweaking on our computers, many point-and-shoot owners like to print (or have their images printed) right from the camera, in which case the extensive image editing options you'll find on a compact Nikon, for example, have real value.

In movie mode, you can create an index image with a nine-image grid of frames taken from your video. You have no control over which frames are selected, and there's no way to grab a single frame from a video, which would seem to be a lot more valuable. Still, the index page is better than nothing.

There is one more stray fun feature to mention: the Calendar utility, which lets you create a composite image combining a photo you like with a monthly calendar page to print out. As a cubicle enhancement tool, we like this capability, and it's simple enough for anyone to get good results.

Control Options Page 10 of 15 Connectivity / Extras
Olympus Stylus 1050 SW Digital Camera Review Navigation
 

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