Olympus Mju 760

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By Will Greenwald, CNET.com
Mar 16, 2007

We suspect Olympus must have put Hermes in charge of the Mju digital camera releases since they came to market so quickly. The Mju 740 and 750 are barely six months old, and the Mju 710 was only about that old when they arrived. With an accelerated release schedule like that, there's not a lot of time to make significant changes from model to model. So, it's unsurprising this little camera doesn't differ much from its predecessors. But its small form and mechanical image stabilization still make it a very appealing camera.

Design
As with all of its siblings, the Mju 760's most distinctive feature is its sleek, weather-resistant metal body. The stylish camera, measuring less than 25mm thick and weighing only 120g, is small and light enough to fit into almost any pocket and comes in light blue, pink, black, and silver versions. The camera's body is sealed against moisture and gunk, so it can handle splashes, showers, and snowstorms.

	Flashy red shooter

It's not completely waterproof, though, and probably won't survive being submerged in water. If you really need a submersible camera, you should consider the Mju 760's significantly sturdier and more expensive bigger brother, the Mju 770SW. The 770SW can function in up to 33 feet underwater and can handle far more drops, stomps, and chills than the 760.

Features
The Mju 760 features Olympus' Dual Image Stabilization (DIS), a hybrid electronic and mechanical system that combines ISO boosting with shifting the camera's sensor to compensate for shake. The latter does the bulk of the work. You can enable DIS by pressing a tiny button on top of the camera, next to the shutter release.

	Features on the back

While DIS helped reduce some shake and blur in our photos, it just didn't seem quite as effective as the optimal image stabilization we've seen on other compact cameras, such as the Canon PowerShot SD800 IS. Still, the feature works better than most cameras that just boost the sensor's sensitivity.

Besides the shiny shell and image stabilization, the Mju 760 has a mostly standard feature set. The camera includes a fairly narrow-angle 37mm-to-111mm-equivalent 3x zoom lens, a 7-megapixel sensor that can reach up to ISO 1,600 sensitivity, 26 shot presets, and a built-in help guide to walk users through setting up shots.

These features are useful, but there is very little you wouldn't find on almost any other Olympus Mju camera and most of their higher-end FE-series cameras.

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