Olympus Stylus 730

Viewfinder
With such an enormous LCD screen, the Olympus Stylus 730 doesn’t have room for an optical viewfinder. Users won’t miss it either. With the big-screen view with great resolution and a fast refresh rate that keeps moving subjects looking smooth, no one would want an optical viewfinder. From the recording menu, users can activate a Compare & Shoot mode. This mode shrinks the live view to about 2.5 inches and displays the last four pictures taken as thumbnails on the left side of the screen. Users can also enter the setup menu to choose what type of information is displayed on the screen: no info, some info, or detailed info. Overall, the live view on the display screen is gorgeous with the high resolution and enlarged medium.

LCD Screen
The large LCD screen has Olympus’ Bright Capture technology that allows users to frame photos and videos in extremely bright or dark settings. Indeed, this worked fairly well. The screen caught glares when held at extreme angles, but still showed the image fairly well in more normal positions. In the occasional instance where the Bright Capture technology doesn’t automatically gain up or pipe down in difficult lighting, there is a +/- 7 sliding brightness scale in the setup menu that can be adjusted. The screen size of 3 inches matches the Olympus Stylus 730 display with the largest LCDs on the digital camera market. The resolution on this model is also great. It has 230,000 pixels. The smooth resolution and big view makes for great spontaneous slide shows with friends and family standing around. The screen dims after a few seconds of inactivity; usually there is a way to turn this power-saving feature on and off, but there was no option included. That could be because of the camera’s pre-production status though, as some of the menus aren’t yet finalized.

Flash
The camera’s built-in flash is large and oval-shaped, providing an average illumination range that extends to 12.5 ft in wide and 8.5 ft in telephoto. The flash is off-axis from the lens, and that was apparent in the pictures. The edges of the frame are dark, but the flash isn’t as lopsided as it may look. The Olympus Stylus 730’s flash will have auto, on, off, and red-eye reduction modes. The pre-production model’s red-eye mode was not working, so its effectiveness could not be analyzed. From what I could tell, the flash unveiled a lot of detail without over-exposing subjects.

Zoom Lens
The Stylus 730 has a 3x optical zoom lens manufactured by Olympus. The lens is constructed from10 lenses in 8 groups with 3 aspherical lenses and 1 ED lens. The lens measures from 6.7-20.1 mm (equivalent to 38-114mm) and has maximum apertures of f/3.5 at its widest and f/5.0 at the most telephoto. The zoom is controlled by a miniscule paddle atop the camera. It may be tiny, but it is still fairly sensitive. If users flick it, they can get about 8 different focal lengths throughout the zoom range. Most compact cameras are only sensitive enough to get about 6 stops in their 3x optical zoom ranges. When the zoom switch is pushed, a vertical bar appears on the right side of the LCD screen with the "W" on top and the "T" on bottom. A green line moves up and down on the bar to show where users are in relation to the extreme angles. The camera’s menu system indicates that there are "fine zoom" and "digital zoom" options, but access was prohibited on this pre-production model. There is a macro mode that can be activated on the multi-selector; it can focus as close as 2.8 inches.

This Olympus digital camera has a digital image stabilization system that can be activated via its own button atop the camera. The button has a bump on it to distinguish it from the rest of the smooth top. It also has a shaking hand icon nearby. According to the Olympus press materials, this mode "increases the ISO to offer a faster shutter speed for stopping action in the subject as well as camera shake by the photographer." Alas, this isn’t as good as an optical image stabilization system but is still better than not having anything at all. It worked in most situations, but some pictures still turned out with blurry subjects.