Olympus Stylus TOUGH-8000

Shooting Modes (13.25)

The Tough 8000 focuses on the automatic modes, with the most automated being the iAuto mode. Selected from the mode dial on the back of the camera, this mode puts every setting except image size and quality into an automatic mode, turning the camera into a literal point & shoot. For those who want a bit more control, the program mode allows the user to set white balance, ISO, shooting mode, metering and image size and quality, although all of them can be set to auto if required.

Auto Mode Features

Focus – There are two standard focus modes on the Tough 8000; iESP, a spot focus mode and a face detect mode. The ESP mode automatically picks the subject by scanning the frame for high-contrast objects, while the face detect mode scans for faces and uses them. There is no manual focus available; it has to be done automatically.

Three macro modes are available: Macro, Super Macro and Super Macro LED. The normal macro mode can focus down to a distance of 3.9 inches, while the Super Macro mode can focus right down to a distance of 0.8 inches. The Super Macro LED mode focuses down to the 3.9 inch distance, but turns on an LED light next to the flash to help illuminate small objects.

Exposure – The Tough 800 allows you to apply up to 2 stops of exposure correction either up or down, measured in one third of a stop steps. Unusually, the camera shows you a preview of the image with the exposure correction applied, making it easier to choose the appropriate correction. Another feature that can help is shadow adjustment, which looks for faces that are lost int eh shadows and tries to brighten them. There is no option for automatically bracketing exposures, though.

Metering – There are two metering modes on the Tough 8000: ESP and spot metering. ESP is an evaluative mode that tries to balance the metering for the entire frame, while the spot metering mode measures just the center of the frame.

White Balance – Preset white balance options are available for sunny, cloudy, tungsten, daylight and three fluorescent presets. An auto option is also available, but there is no custom or evaluative option.

Aperture – The 3.6x zoom lens of the Tough 8000 has a rather limited aperture range of f/3.5 to f/5.1 at the wide end and f/5.0 to f/7.1 at the telephoto end of the zoom range.

Shutter Speed – The shutter speed range of the Tough 8000 is from 4 seconds down to 1/2000 of a second. That’s a decent range for a point & shoot that should allow it to capture everything from snoozing whales under moonlight to sharks leaping into a bright blue sky. However, there is no option to manually control the shutter speed: the camera is always the one to pick the setting, depending on the selected scene mode.

Self-Timer – Only one option is available for the self-timer; a 10 second delay. There is not option for a shorter or longer delay, or for shooting a series of shots at pre-set intervals.

Scene Modes

In addition, the Tough 8000 offers 19 scene modes, including the usual options of portrait, landscape, and night scene. The more unusual options include three underwater modes (two for wide angle shots and one for macro) and a pre-capture mode that captures 2 seconds of video before you press the shutter button.

Picture Effects (4.00)

The Tough 8000 includes a number of picture effects designed to improve the quality of captured images. These fall into two groups, called Perfect Fix and the rather oddly named Beauty Fix. The Perfect fix processing has two components: shadow fix and redeye fix. The first of these attempts to bring out shadow detail in images, while the second removes red eye in images. The Beauty Fix processing tries to do three things: clear the skin, add a sparkle to the eyes and to make eyes more dramatic.

The Perfect Fix processing can be applied to any photo, but the Beauty Fix effect only works with faces: if it cannot detect a face in the image, it fails. In our test shot above, the Perfect Fix made the image look much worse, as it artificially boosted the brightness of the black background. However, it might be a good thing to try if you shoot photos in low light, as it could pull out some shadow detail. The Beauty Fix did make skin look smoother, but we didn’t see any noticeable effect from the sparkle and dramatic eyes effect: perhaps my eyes are already sparkling and dramatic enough.

Picture Samples
Original Photo Perfect Fix Beauty Fix More...

Drive/Burst Mode (2.00)

There are two drive modes on this camera: the standard drive mode and a high-speed mode that lowers the resolution to 3 megapixels. The standard mode can shoot continuously to the capacity of the card, but the high speed mode is limited to a burst of12 images before it has to slow down and write the images out to the memory card.

Shot to Shot (0.99)

We measured the speed of the standard drive mode at just under 1 frame a second, and the high speed mode at just under 5 frames a second.