Olympus Stylus 850 SW review

When I'm out cycling and hiking, I like to take lots of pictures.  I cycle almost every weekday.  In Oregon, that means I've got water to deal with quite often.  I had looked for waterproof camera cases for point and shoot digital cameras, but was not impressed.  I wanted a camera that was fundamentally waterproof.  Since we'd broken 2 point-and-shoot cameras in 2 years through droppage, I wanted it to be tough, too.

As I looked for cameras, I came upon the Olympus Stylus SW series.  The SW stands for shockproof/waterproof.  I was a little skeptical at first.  Then I stopped into a camera store and asked about it.  The salesman reach behind him and slapped the camera from the back, where it fell 4 feet into the concrete floor.  He says he does that every day for 3 months before one of them breaks.  They always get a replacement for free.  The unique thing about this camera is that the lens doesn't pop out of the body.  The outermost piece of glass is fixed; it's the lenses inside the camera body that move to focus.

So that was impressive.  It seemed to take decent pictures in the store, and the salesman was sold on it.  I went home, read some reviews, figured I'd want the 8MP version and not the 10MP, and looked for pricing.  

I found a great package price at BestBuy.  For $340 I got the 850 SW, a 2GB card, an extra battery, and a flotation strap.  I found out later it wasn't such a good deal - the battery priced at Best Buy is $40.  I found it online for $12.  So the package was actually not a good deal at all.   But hey - I got it at one stop in 15 minutes, and I was done.

I ended up with the orange one.  I wanted a camera that wasn't silver or black, and this one comes in cool metallic colors.  The package required that it be the orange one, which was cool for me.  The flotation strap matches.

I took the camera first on a 2-day backpacking trip in the Oregon Cascades.  That's the trip to Marion Lake from last month.  On the trip, I tested it at night, underwater, portrait, landscape, vibration reduction, video, and full-auto.  I've also used it cycling around the Portland area.  This is what I found:

Battery life: amazing.  These teeny tiny batteries last longer than the huge battery packs my Nikon 4300 required.  I got about 150 pictures per battery.  With 2 batteries, that gave me lots of picture-taking power for 2 days in the woods.  I even got some video.

Power save mode: this setting is adjustable, but the default is great for me.  The screen turns itself off after about 15 seconds of non-use.  Because the lenses are all inside the camera body, there is no need for the lens to retract.

Auto shut-off: if the camera goes into power save mode and sits for a while (I don't know how long, but it seems like 5 minutes or so) the shutter closes and the camera turns off.  This is super cool.

Lens cover: the lens cover is integrated into the camera body.  It's a simple mechanism - 1 piece of metal that slides over the lens glass.  None of this dual-action stuff or external lens cover stuff.  Integrated and reliable.

Reboot from power save: push either the power or shutter buttons, and about half a second later, you're ready to go.

Reboot from shut off: push the power button, and it's about a second until the camera is ready to shoot.  Fastest boot time I've ever seen.

Autofocus: the camera has a built-in AF algorithm that finds the "best" place to focus.  A green square shows up in the view finder to tell you where it focused.  This can be cool.  Last week, I was shooting some leaves turning colors, and the dang thing wouldn't focus where I wanted it to.  Those shots didn't turn out.  I could go in to the menu and turn off this feature, but for the most part I like it.

Shutter lag: The single most annoying thing about digital cameras is the lag between pushing the shutter button and the picture being taken.  This keeps getting better.  This camera is very good.  It's not digital SLR-type, but lag is barely noticeable.  I'm very happy with it.  As a measure of comparison, it's a little better than the $600 Panasonic camera we got in 2007.

Okay, now for what I consider the "Why do you really like this camera?" stuff.

Picture quality

Overall quality is pretty good, although it suffers from the unconventional lens design.  At least, I think that's the cause.  I have not noticed any chromatic aberration, astigmatism, or distortion.  That means that the lenses are machined and polished really well.  There's a little flare (when something really bright in the shot produces extra pale circles in a straight line), but I honestly like a little flare in some really sunny shots.  I've taken a fair amount of shots in full, bright sunshine, and usually I notice no flare in the final product.  I have seen it in a few though, and it always looked good.

Sharpness is also pretty good.  The pixels seem to be pretty clear.  In-focus shots are good enough for full-screen viewing with no discernable pixelation.  

The camera performs as advertised in extreme situations.  I took it swimming in Lake Marion.  I let my 6 year-old son take pictures with out around our campsite while I was swimming.  The underwater shots look pretty good for being in kinda murky water.  If you intend to use this camera like I do, it's a very good idea to have a lens cleaning tool with you.  Having some lake muck on the cover glass is going to mess up your pictures for the rest of the day if you don't.  When you submerse the camera and bring it up out of the water, the lens clears right up.  It has a coating on it, and the coating seems to be hydrophobic, which means that water tends to bead up and roll off it instead of spreading out into a film.  

ISO sensitivity is the camera's Achilles heel.  If you force the flash off, expect to get some fuzzy pictures.  The auto mode requires flash a lot of the time.  I didn't have good luck with the digital stabilization, either.  So this camera, more than most, works much better in portrait-type flash situations and in bright sunlight.  Overcast outdoors is a crapshoot.  My impression of night shots isn't very good, either, but I haven't used it with a tripod, so that's likely a premature judgment.  

The waterproofness is pretty cool.  There's a waterproof port for the data cable.  It's proprietary, even though it looks very close to a USB mini-B.  The waterproof cover for the battery and xD memory card is really secure.  It has a switch with a positive lock on it.  It's easy to open, easy to close, and from what I can tell completely waterproof.

The coolest single thing about this camera for me is that the instruction manual very clearly states that if the lens gets dirty, you should put it under running water and turn it on and off repeatedly. 

Overall verdict: picture quality is good, though not excellent.  For an adventurer or outdoorsman, though, you can't beat it.  It's small, inexpensive, and will allow you to get the pictures snowboarding, waterskiing, cycling, hiking, or boating that you were always afraid to get with your less-tough camera.  It was a great buy for me - no regrets.