Guest User

Find Products

Buying Advice

Editors' Top 5s

CNET Features

Olympus Mju 770 SW

Print

Email

Bookmark

Share

Product Summary

Good

6.8

out of 10

The good: Camera is waterproof to 9.8m; shock resistant to short drops and mild impact.

The bad: No manual exposure controls; slightly soft images.

The bottom line: Olympus' Stylus 770SW might not produce perfect images, but you'd be hard pressed to find a compact camera as tough as this one.

Read full review of the Olympus Mju 770 SW »

Average User Rating

How would you rate this product?

Write your own review

CNET Asia Review

By Philip Ryan, CNET.com
Apr 19, 2007

There aren't many waterproof compact cameras out there, let alone one made to survive drops of up to 1.52m. Olympus designed its 7.1-megapixel Mju 770SW to do just that, providing real competition for Pentax's waterproof Optio W30.

Design
By its tough nature alone, this Olympus makes an ideal choice if you routinely shoot in adverse conditions. I took it skiing with me as part of this review, and it fared better than I did on a couple of falls. In fact, despite three days of chilly temperatures and a lot of bumps, the Mju 770SW still came out shooting.

For pictorial details on the Olympus Mju 770SW, click on the image.

Obviously, a lot of credit should be given to this camera's solid construction. The 770SW weighs about 155g with its battery and xD-Picture Card installed and measures 92 x 59 x 21mm. It packs a 2.5-inch LCD, 3x optical zoom, 38mm- to 114mm-equivalent f/3.5 to f/5.0 zoom lens, and a small 7.1-megapixel (effective) CCD sensor into its metal body.

The camera's small buttons were a bit difficult to press with heavy snow gloves on, but I did manage to snap off a few pictures in auto mode before removing my gloves. Like so many compact cameras, Olympus doesn't include manual exposure controls in the Mju 770SW.

To make up for that, the company includes auto and program modes, as well as 24 preset scene modes, so you can let the camera decide what to do based on the shooting conditions.

Features
Unfortunately, activating a scene mode requires two presses of a button on the camera back before you even get a chance to select the mode you want. This became somewhat frustrating over the course of three days skiing. Plus, since the movie mode is buried among the scene modes, you'll have to go through the same process if you want to capture a video clip.

We'd prefer the option of letting the camera default to the scene mode you last used at start-up, or better yet, a dedicated scene mode button to jump into the last scene mode you used. Olympus' graphically driven menu system is plenty intuitive.

Plus, commonly used functions, such as white balance and sensitivity, can be quickly changed by using the function/OK button found in the middle of the four-way rocker on the camera back.

Next page »