Tuesday October 21, 2008
One for beginners
By CHONG JINN XIUNG
If you are just planning to get your feet wet with digital cameras, the Olympus mju 1060 is designed just for you.
WOULDN’T it be great if there was a camera that you could easily set to take photos the way you want them?
Fortunately, Olympus’ mju 1060 is just the camera for newbie camera users looking to grab good shots of their family and friends.
Looking slick
So what do you get with the mju 1060? For starters, its got a 10-megapixel sensor that gives you images that are 3,648 x 2,736pixels in size.
It also features a 7x optical zoom that gives you a plenty of room to work with. It is disappointing that it isn’t quite wide enough for close quarter indoor shots, but the wide range it offers more than compensates for this.
On the outside, the mju 1060 looks like any standard compact camera with a rectangular shaped body. It isn’t one of the ultra slim variations but it is still small enough to slip into your pocket comfortably.
It also helps that the camera has a rather fetching metallic casing with solid silver borders accentuating the shape of the camera. Despite its rather odd curved shape, the camera still feels comfortable to hold.
The mju 1060 has a massive 3in LCD display that works great when acting as a viewfinder and for reviewing pictures.
The camera reads both xD and microSD cards, though the latter needs to be inserted into a xD converter in order to be read.
While it does offer support for the two formats, I was quite annoyed that the camera shows more preference for xD cards as some of the camera’s notable features for capturing panorama shots and viewing pictures in a 3D plane are only supported in xD cards.
Personally, I would have liked to see the mju 1060 come with dual native SD and xD card support.
In use
Out in the field, the mju 1060 doesn’t - disappoint. It only takes a second to start up, so you can get down to shooting pictures fairly quickly.
Autofocus speed was relatively quick - locking focus within a second and a little under two seconds in low light conditions.
With the LCD display dominating much of the back, you’d think it would be awfully uncomfortable using the camera’s controls.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that even with limited space available, I could still use the various controls without any problems. A small dial controls the camera’s various modes and playback function while a four-way directional pad serves navigational purposes as well as shortcuts to other - functions such as exposure compensation, flash and macro mode.
The camera’s user interface is easy to use regardless of which mode you choose to use it in. The menus are very animated with pictures flipping in 3D space like pages in a book when viewed in playback mode and even being crumpled up before being deleted in the trash bin.
BIG SCREEN, SMALL BUTTONS: Despite the large screen size, the controls on the mju 1060 remains very easy to use. If you don’t like the fancy 3D stuff, there’s always the option to turn it off and view it from a much simpler 2D perspective.
There’s a helpful panaroma mode that assists you in taking wide-angle images by combining three images shot in succession. It is a fairly automated process that you can set to do either within camera or on your PC with the included software.
However, I didn’t find the pictures to be joined all that smoothly considering that there is a slight shift in perspective when you move the camera around. Nevertheless, it does get the job done as long as you keep the camera steady and within the same plane.
My only complaint with the camera’s otherwise terrific user interface is there was no easy way to delete multiple pictures at once. I found myself manually deleting unwanted pictures one at a time.
In terms of battery life, I managed to get roughly 200 shots before having to recharge the battery.
Easy to use
The camera comes with a user-friendly guide mode for newbies that it is quite simply a beginners’ dream come true. It has so many different automatic modes for you to choose from. There’s iAuto, which is an intelligent mode that will automatically engage various functions and modes such as macro when taking close ups; shake reduction when shooting far away subjects and face detection when taking pictures of people.
On top of standard scene modes, the camera features a useful Guide mode to assist you. If you don’t know the difference between shutter speeds, aperture and autofocus, this is the mode for you.
This mode essentially feels like one of those function wizards that you get in a PC program. You can tell it that you want to shoot a close-up picture and it will engage the camera’s macro mode for you. Want to take sharper pictures with less blurry subjects? Then choose between the camera’s exposure compensation or increasing the ISO level.
Overall I found the mode to be simple and easy to use. It is not only a good starting point if you intend to learn more about taking pictures, but a great tool if you are clueless on what settings to use.
Picture and video quality
As far as picture quality goes, the mju 1060 performs fine when used outdoors as I managed to get some terrific shots outside on a bright sunny day. Even the camera’s dynamic range proved to be quite capable at handling challenging lighting situations.
Overall, the camera produced some well-exposed pictures that had just the right balance of dark and light areas while white balance was fairly accurate.
However, if there is an area where the mju 1060 falls short, it is its ISO performance. Even under the best conditions such as shooting an outdoor shot at ISO 64, there was notable grain in dark areas and a loss in detail. I also observed some severe cases of chromatic aberration and softening around the edges.
Things didn’t look much better as I pushed up the ISO level as I took several indoor test shots.
For the most part, pictures looked acceptable up to ISO 200, but things really went south above ISO 400 with lots of noise reduction and sharpening in the picture.
In any case, pictures still look fine on a 4R print but don’t expect to get great printouts with pictures taken above ISO 400.
Videos captured on the mju 1060 aren’t anything to shout about. Annoyingly, I wasn’t able to zoom in and out while I was recording videos.
Most of the test videos were just acceptable but I have to say that subjects appeared to move smoothly when recording at 30fps. The sound is a little muddy but you can still make out voices and ambient noise around you.
Conclusion
All in all, the Olympus mju 1060 stands out as the perfect camera for users who are not into serious photography or are just unsure how to use a camera. I can definitely see how the Guide mode will be helpful in getting the camera into the right shooting mode for the situation at hand.
Additional features such as face detection and shake reduction further enhance the usefulness of the camera.
On the flip side, I wasn’t too impressed with the quality of pictures taken by the camera. It takes great shots while you are outdoors but unfortunately the poor ISO performance meant I couldn’t get great looking indoor shots without using the flash.
To sum it up, this is the camera for you if you are not completely familiar with cameras in general.
Pros: Lots of useful modes such as Guide and iAuto mode for beginners; Slim design; long zoom range.
Cons: Poor ISO performance; video capture could be better.
mju 1060
(Olympus)
Compact digital camera
Sensor: 10-megapixels
Viewfinder: 3in TFT LCD
Lens: 37-260mm f/3.5- 5.3 (35mm equivalent)
Shutter speed: 1/4sec - 1/2,000sec
ISO Range: 64 to 1600
Exposure modes: Guide, iAuto, Program, Movie, 15 Scene modes
Battery: Lithium-ion
Storage: xD and Micro Secure Digital (SD) (using provided adapter)
Interface: USB 2.0, AV output, DC input
Other features: Shake reduction, face detection
Dimensions(w x h x d): 9.37 x 5.64 x 2.51cm
Weight: 128g
Price: RM1,399
Review unit courtesy of Olympus (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, (03) 6203-3882
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