Digital Camera Review

Digital Camera Review

Sep 26, 2008 - By Richard Baguley
The Olympus Stylus 1050SW lives for moderate danger; it is water, shock and freezeproof, so it can stand up to the rigors of a trip to the beach or an adventure in the snowy wastelands. And we found the camera to be easy to use, with the new tap control (where you tap the sides, top and back of the camera to control it) to be an interesting and useful addition.
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Auto Mode
The auto mode on the dial does what you'd expect; sets the camera to fully automatic mode, where all decisions are made by the camera. We weren't able to test how well these decisions work out, though, without lab-testing image quality. The user still gets some limited control here; they can set  the image size and quality, but everything else is locked out. 

Movie Mode
Setting the dial to the film camera icon puts the 150SW in movie mode, and the camera can capture videos at up to 640 x 480 resolution, at 30 or 15 frames per second. This puts it a bit behind the curve for cameras that can capture high definition video; cameras like the just announced Samsung TL34HD can capture much higher-resolution video. 

Drive / Burst Mode
At the top 10.1 megapixel resolution, Olympus claims that the 1050SW can capture 0.38 frames per second, which is very slow. If you don't mind sacrificing some resolution, you can increase this to 5.4 frames per second at a reduced 3-megapixel resolution. With numbers like these, nobody is going to accuse the 1050SW of being a fast camera, and it would not be a good pick if you are looking for a camera to regularly capture football games or high-speed sports.

Playback Mode
The 1050SW offers a good selection of options for viewing images, including the ability to create slideshows, do basic editing and to otherwise tweak and display images. The editing features on offer include the Perfect Fix (which tries to correct for common exposure problems automatically) and the ability to resize, crop and perform basic color editing of captured photos. Slideshows can also be set up, and don't forget that the tap control allows you to move between images during playback with a tap on the left or right side. 

Custom Image Presets
The scene mode option on the mode dial offers a wide selection of scene modes; 23 in all, including a few unusual ones, such as cuisine, behind glass and underwater snapshot. It remains to be seen how useful these prove to be, but we do like the inclusion of an underwater mode in a camera that can handle a few feet of submersion. 

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