The Olympus Stylus 1030 SW is tougher than a Chuck Norris roundhouse. Find out why in our in-depth review.
Review summary of the Olympus Stylus 1030 SW:
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 The Olympus Stylus 1030 SW isn't about taking magazine-quality pictures. It's about dragging it through 14-degree weather, 30-feet of water and then accidentally dropping it, all without concern for its survival. If the camera's durability meets a specific need, then it's a good choice for rough-and-tumble shooting. If you just need a compact camera, then you'd probably do better to look for a normal point-and-shoot. They may be wimpier, but they do take better pictures. Release: March 2008. Price: $275.
Pros: Tough as Conan the Barbarian; possibly tougher. Cool little mode-wheel on back. Helpful panorama modes.
Cons: Clumsy interface. Only supports xD and microSD. Making features proprietary to Olympus xD cards is underhanded. Image quality poor for this price range.
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Full Olympus Stylus 1030 SW Review:
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Design - Good
The Olympus Stylus 1030 SW is built to withstand water pressure and concussions, so no surprise it has the mug of a well-worn pit bull. Still, the camera has a purpose above and beyond looking pretty, so the 1030 SW doesn't lose too much appeal on account of its blunt, armor-plated exterior. Indeed, it has a weight and substantiality that makes other point-and-shoots feel like toys.
The button layout and overall design are a typical compact affair, with the power and shutter-release buttons on top and the bulk of the controls to the right of the 2.7-inch viewfinder. One notable diversion from the norm is a tiny mode-wheel situated between the zoom buttons and the four-way controller. It's a nice touch and an innovate use of space.
Features - Very good
The Olympus Stylus 1030 SW was built to be beaten up. Olympus has conformed its construction to MIL-STD-810F shock and temperature standards and to IEC6059 IPX8/JISC0920 water-pressure standards. In English, the camera can withstand a 6.6-foot drop onto a hard surface; it can operate in temperatures down to 14-degrees Farenheit; and it can be submerged up to 33 feet. Try doing any of that with a normal camera, and you'll be holding funeral services for it soon thereafter.
Otherwise its feature set is typical: 10-megapixel resolution, ~5-fps continuous shooting, macro and super-macro focusing, and red-eye reduction. The one major standout is the camera's triumvirate panorama modes, one that stitches the image later on a PC, one that uses a grid patter to help line up three shots and one that let's you take a panorama by sweeping your hand to follow markers on the LCD screen. Olympus has also included an alternative to flash that uses LED lights for softer illumination, a feature that comes in handy for underwater and super-macro photography (and can double as a flashlight in a pinch). Its usefulness is somewhat mired, though, by the sickly green hue it tends to cast over photographs.
Interface - Mediocre
The mode wheel makes the Olympus Stylus 1030 SW snappier to use than many point-and-shoots, and we can only imagine that, when you're under 30 feet of water, you probably wouldn't want to be blundering through a bunch of menus to select the right shooting-mode. This is doubly true of the 1030 SW, which, like other Olympus cameras we've seen, has a less than intuitive menu-structure. Shot parameters are easily accessed via the 'function' button, but everything else is buried in the camera's icon-based system menu.
First there's the 'camera' menu, which inexplicably repeats most of the options already available under the function button and only adds settings for digital zoom, AF and the microphone. The 'setup' menu provides typical operation settings (media format, menu color, etc.), but for some reason LED illumination has been sequestered here, even though it affects shooting and should go in the camera menu. Our favorite is the 'image quality' menu, an entire section devoted to two settings - image size and compression level - both of which are redundant to the main menu, anyway. Finally, there's a 'panorama' menu for activating the panorama mode, even though this clearly belongs on the mode wheel instead, considering that the panorama mode is, after all, a mode. This is even more baffling considering that one of the options on the mode wheel is taken up by 'image stabilization,' which is not at all a mode, but is in fact a feature. In short, the menu system on the Olympus Stylus 1030 SW is a debacle.
Worse yet, the 1030 SW not only supports xD to the exclusion of more common SD media, but Olympus has had the effrontery to enable panorama modes only when using their own brand of xD cards. This is fairly odious on the part of Olympus, and it's really only explicable as them trying to strong-arm their own users into buying more of their products. MicroSD is also supported, which does little to benefit the camera's crippled media options.
Durability - Excellent
We dropped it. We tossed it. We threw it over our shoulder. We dunked it in a filled sink. We took it in a hot shower. We locked it in a freezer. And then we dropped it again. Nothing fazed the Olympus Stylus 1030 SW; like a pocket-sized Tyler Durden, it just kept coming back, smiling and asking for more. As far as brutal punishment goes, the camera simply stands strong. All samples in the 'image quality' section were taken after this torture test.
Image quality - Mediocre
A word to the wise: the point of the Olympus Stylus 1030 SW isn't so much that it can take great pictures, but that it can take pictures at the bottom of a lake. In the interest of consistency, we had to run the 1030 SW through the same stringent image tests as we do any other camera, but the odds are stacked heavily against it. The bottom line is, if you need a camera to take underwater shots of a coral reef or action photos while rock-climbing, or if you're just fantastically clumsy, then the Olympus Stylus 1030 SW is a good choice. If you simply need a normative, compact camera that delivers quality images, then you really should look elsewhere.
Noise management is subpar across the bar. Visible at ISO-200, noise at ISO-800 and ISO-1600 was so problematic these sensitivities were unusable for serious applications. White balance is also wildly inconsistent between the various sensitivities and, in some cases, was even inconsistent between shots taken at the same sensitivity.
Water test #1
Water test #2
Water test #3
First, the fun stuff. These shots aren't meant as measures of quality; they're more meant as 'proof-of-concept,' in that they document that the 1030 SW can indeed work in water. The first sample was taken with a showerhead of hot water being directed at the camera's body, and the second was with the camera placed directly in front of the nozzle. The third, and our personal favorite, is a bottoms-up shot of a faucet taken from inside a sink filled with water.
Edge test
On a more serious note, the camera essentially fails this edge test. Taken at the lowest focal point, which tends to be the bane of cheap wide-angle lenses, the photo is marred with bad focus and fringing on both edges. The building in the center is likewise afflicted with ringing. The camera also incorrectly tailored the exposure to the cloudy sky, thus distorting a bright midday into a stormy gloom. There are no manual controls beyond ISO and white balance, so there's no way to circumvent the camera's sometimes erroneous automation.
Scene test
This scene sample is better, with a decent color-range. Noise is still high, though, and the image is overall soft and badly defined. Again, this is horrendous performance for a typical $400 camera, but keep in mind that a typical $400 camera is also deathly hydrophobic.
Macro test [context]
Macro test
Super-macro test
Those who are pregnant or have heart-conditions should avert their eyes from this macro-test. The subject is a selection from a certain fast-food chain, and the macro shot is enough to make us go vegan for a while. The super-macro is too horrific for words. As for image quality, the Olympus Stylus 1030 SW does well enough, with a good, consistent focus. Note that flash is disabled when using super-macro, which forced us to use LED illumination; this accounts for the green tint. Still, ideally the camera would correct for this by tweaking white-balance when using the LED light.
Panorama test #1
Panorama test #2
Finally, the two panorama assists did a good job of stitching together wide shots. The first mode has you position a dot within a box on the display screen, while the second displays the right third of the last image within a grid, both of which help in lining up all the shots in the panorama. The first mode was by far easier to use, but the second resulted in a more seamless alignment. On the other hand, the second mode also resulted in a smaller image with a wider aspect-ratio (3264x784 compared to 3392x880), for reasons that escape us.
Price and availability
The Olympus Stylus 1030 SW will start selling for $275 () in March 2008.
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