Digital Camera on the Ski Slope? Yep! Sand, Sea or Shore As Well!
Written: Sep 01 '03 (Updated Sep 30 '03)
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Pros: Operates in in temps down to 32°F--perfect for the snow.
Cons: Another type of memory...
The Bottom Line: If you take photos regularly in areas with high humidity, sand, rain, cold, etc., this is a great camera.
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| briandalsmom's Full Review: Olympus Stylus 400 Digital Camera |
Finally, a digital camera that can be used on the slopes without fear. Made to take the pressures of low temperatures and rain or snow, this little camera is a godsend. We first purchased it’s smaller brother, the 300, but before we could even get it out of the box the 400 came out for just a bit more. The 400 increases the resolution from 3.34 to 4.23 and the image resolution from 2048x1536 to 2272x1704. I am a firm believer in taking photos at the highest resolution and throwing away pixels later by editing—you can remove pixels, but you cannot add them. Take a photo at too low a resolution and there is nothing you can do to fix it. Imagine taking a trip and not having great pictures to remember it by—it’s not as if you can redo the vacation to get the picture right the second time.
Both models have a 12X (3X Optical 4X Digital) which is fine (I prefer a minimum of 20x but then the size is not pocket-friendly). These cameras are certainly portable—tiny compared by my gigantic Sony Digital. They each measure 3.8 x 2.2 x 1.3 and weigh just over 6 ounces with the battery and media card. Amazingly small, it fits in the pocket of his ski jacket just fine. The controls are small and require the removal of ski gloves for sure, but then what doesn’t. Both have a tiny (1.5”) LCD screen so you can see what you’ve shot and approve or delete it
This camera was a splurge for my ski-fanatic son. He attended Camp of Champions at Whistler BC this summer—yes, ski camp in July, it was heavenly! Regular cameras cannot take the extreme cold of the slopes and quite often the photos that result from them are blued-out—the cold penetrates the camera and film. It makes for some interesting photos, but not what he was looking for. Sports cameras were quite expensive and since most of his photos were of him and his friends doing stupid stuff, most of the film was wasted. This digital seemed a perfect solution. He can take as many obnoxious teen photos as he likes and then still snap a few spectacular ones and print just the great ones—a great compromise.
Said to operate in temperatures from 32°F to 104°F, and stored from -4°F to 140°F it’s not supposed to wilt in humidity’s of 30% to 90% for operation and 10% to 90% for storage--we found this be true. On the chilly slopes of Whistler, this camera took beautiful photos with no shades of blue present. It withstood the bumps and grinds of my son and his full days on the slopes, and with a little instruction beforehand, he took some fabulous photos.
This point-and-shoot camera looks like a 35mm I already own—I always have to look twice to see which I’m holding. It has a rounded, brushed-silver metal body with a sliding lens cover (gold for the 400, silver for the 300). I love the lens cover but have warned the accident-prone child to open it carefully and close it with care. It works well in keeping the lens safe but could break from misuse.
What makes this an all-weather camera is the addition of rubber gaskets which seal the camera’s controls, lens, and battery compartment. You can’t use it underwater without an accessory, but it’s good to go just in just about any weather.
WHAT’S IN THE BOX
Manual, video cable, remote control (use during playback to navigate through photos or movies), warranty card, registration card, safety precautions booklet, wrist strap, LI-10B lithium ion battery, LI-10C battery charger, CAMEDIA Master CD-ROM (software for uploading and editing photos to your PC), USB cable, and 16MB xD-Picture Card.
SET UP
Insert the batteries, add the card, set the date and time (if you desire) by following the onscreen instructions and using the navigation buttons on the back, choose any special modes you’d like, point and shoot. Five minutes from the box to your first photo. Next, install the software to your computer, connect the camera, and in minutes your first photos are transferred to your computer. The only thing faster is a digital camera that records to CD, DVD, or floppy disk.
READY TO GO
Slide open the lens cover and you’re ready to shoot pictures. It takes about 2 seconds to boot up—no looking around for the start-up button—I love this feature. Close it, it powers down. Super simple.
POWER
It comes with an Olympus lithium ion battery (LI-10B)—warning, the battery is dedicated to this camera and other batteries won’t work--another way for Olympus to make a few bucks. You’ll need to charge the battery before you can use the camera—it’s no fun having a new toy you can’t use! I wish they came fully charged but that would be impossible. When the indicator lights on the battery charger change from red to green, your battery is ready. You’re cautioned to only use the provided charger—I’m sure there are probably generic chargers that would work, but since the original one is fine, we haven’t looked. Since it takes so long to charge, you may want to buy an additional battery so you always have a battery on hand.
Inserting the battery in the camera is straightforward—open the battery compartment, slip it in (it will only fit one way), and close the compartment.
You can purchase an optional AC adapter ($19.99). This is important because if the battery dies while the camera is connected to a PC during the upload process you run the risk of loosing the data—just to be safe, always use the AC adapter while transferring. Also, don’t remove or load the batteries, or connect or disconnected the AC adapter while the camera is turned on—we did and it wasn’t pretty. Not only did it go a bit whacko—flashing the display, changing the date, etc., we lost all the data on the card. To resolve the problem we let it sit, without battery or AC adapter, for about 30 minutes and then plugged it back in. It started up fine, but we won’t do that again—it was too nerve wracking!
Oh, and having the AC adapter connected does not charge the battery (silly son thought it did so he took a dead battery to the slopes and missed a full day of ski photos).
The camera has some battery saving features. After 3 minutes of non-operation the camera will go into a sleep mode, the monitor turns itself off, and after 5 minutes, the camera lens retracts itself automatically and shuts down fully. If you press the shutter or zoom button lightly, it’ll come back to life. The lens cover is dependant on you—to completely shut down you’ll need to close it. Battery use is dependent on what we’re doing with it—replaying movies or looking through photos on the card using the LCD runs the battery down much faster. Using the viewfinder and just taking photos the battery will last all day—recharging takes up to 2 hours so we try to conserve power whenever possible.
One annoying thing about the camera was that when every button was pushed it ‘beeped’. It didn’t take us long to figure out how to turn that feature off. Nothing is more annoying in a quiet room than someone’s camera beeping.
MEDIA
This camera takes xD-Picture Card (16 to 256 MB). Inserting them is as easy as putting in the battery. The card compartment is on the side of the camera. Again, you can’t put it in wrong; it’ll only go one way. If you have to force the door closed you have managed to do something wrong. With all doors on this camera a smooth gentle push closes the compartment—nothing more, so be careful!
We did have a little trouble with the card—the camera didn’t recognize it. No problem we went to the manual and found that if it doesn’t recognize the card you need to format it—a simple process that took just a minute. The card was then recognized and all was well.
xD was a new card for us—seems there are so many different ones out there. Of course, in order to use the panoramic feature on this camera you have to use an xD card. Like most cards, it’s tiny. Unlike most, it’s supposed to work on non-xD devices as well with adapters. With an adapter it should work in things requiring CompactFlash, SmartMedia, and PCMCIA/PC—we’ll see. For now, I use whichever memory is needed for the unit so I have a lot of little cards laying around that cost a lot of money.
What you can store on a card depends on many things. The resolution of the photo or movie, the picture itself (a busy photo takes more memory than a simple one), etc. There are guidelines offered by Olympus (see in the Tech Specs below), and we’ve found them to be quite accurate. We have one 16MB card (included) and find that most of the pictures we take are in the 1600 x 1200 range. If we take the whole card at that resolution, we get about 24 shots. If we are going to e-mail the final pictures, we go for 640 x 480 resolution and can get nearly 100 on the card. Most often, we mix the resolution on the card and average 30-40 shots.
VIEWFINDER & MONITOR
I love the fact that this camera has both a viewfinder and a monitor. There are many times when only a viewfinder will do—in bright light, when your battery is low, or you want to preserve battery power, and for a bit more support when taking a photo. Kind of like a human tri-pod—two hands and the forehead mean a less jittery photo (for me at least). I like the LCD for previewing the photos and editing or deleting them.
AUTO FOCUS, MY FRIEND
Like most cameras, this one focuses by pressing slightly on the shutter button (about halfway). When it’s completely focused the light turns green—it won’t let you take a photo until it’s focused. Since it’s digital it takes about 1 seconds to store the photo—you’ll have to be patient and wait for the camera to store and then ready itself again. The camera comes with Focus Lock for times when the subject you want in focus isn’t in the center of the field (that’s where the normal auto focus points to). This is a great feature for those who want to show a landscape in the background and people to the side—place the AF target mark (a sign) on the subject by using the navigation keys on the back of the camera, point, and shoot. It’s much easier than it sounds and you’ll get professional looking results.
MODES
To make it faster and easier there are modes preprogrammed into the camera. They are:
PROGRAM AUTO –This is the every day setting for point and shoot. You’ll need to manually add flash and metering if you desire it.
PORTRAIT – This portrait mode is preprogrammed to give great skin textures to individuals. This highlights the person and not the background.
LANDSCAPE PORTRAIT – Great for taking photos of a person and the landscape behind them—both are kept in focus and given equal importance in the photo.
LANDSCAPE – Used for outdoor scenes.
NIGHT SCENE – Meters the light for great results in low-light conditions.
SELF PORTRAIT – The zoom is fixed in the Wide position so when you hold the camera at arms length and point it at yourself you’ll get a great result.
MOVIE – Make a short Quicktime movie (16 seconds at the highest resolution, 40 at the lowest)—sorry, no sound. Not a fabulous feature, the picture is jumpy and tiny, but good enough for a quick laugh.
SEQUENTIAL SHOOTING – Take a rapid succession of still pictures.
STILL PICTURE EDITING – Edit still pictures and store them as new pictures.
MACRO MODE – For close-ups as tight as 0.7 ft. (0.2m)- It shines here, the photos of flowers and bugs we've taken have been spectacular! Fully focused on the object and pleasantly blurred in the background--fabulous!
PANORAMA SHOOTING – Take the photos with the panorama mode and then connect them into a single shot with the Camedia software (provided).
TV PLAYBACK
The feature that got the most use at Whistler—every night they’d hook the camera to the TV with the included video cable and laugh and giggle at the photos. Navigating the photos by using the controls on the back of the camera was easy. Simple editing is available as well. Most of the photos were deleted after the TV viewing, only the “great” ones were kept on the card to be brought home for upload. Had they had a laptop they could have uploaded them immediately and mailed them (with an internet connection) home.
SOFTWARE & UPLOADING
A wizard walks you through the process step-by-step. The software is as to be expected—it moves the photos and movies from the camera to the PC and has some editing features. Nothing spectacular but certainly user-friendly. My 15-year old can do it by himself and has, with a little help from mom, learned about resolution and storage so he’s mailing files the correct size and storing them in higher resolutions for later use. Learning about file sizes is one the best things a future Digital buff can do for themselves.
You don’t need the software if you have Plug & Play capabilities—your computer will recognize the camera as another drive and you can drop and drag your photos. You will need the Camedia if you want to use the Panorama feature (or you’ll have to do it manually with a photo editor).
CARE
To keep your camera weather-proof, make sure that all covers are closed; wipe any moisture off the camera before changing the battery or card; keep the lens out of water; if the camera gets splashed wipe it off as soon as possible, if the rubber backing of the covers becomes worn or damaged take it to a Olympus Service Center for repair.
FINAL THOUGHTS
If you take photos regularly in areas with high humidity, sand, rain, cold, etc., this is a great camera. It can take the bumps, works exactly as advertised, is super-simple to use, and gives fantastic results. Take a few moments to learn about white balance and why it’s so important (always set the white balance and you’ll get the best color you can—people will have great skin tones), and files sizes, and you’ll be putting out professional-looking photos. Seriously!
TECHNICAL SUPPORT USA
24/7 online-automated help: http://support.olympusamerica.com/
Phone customer support: Tel. 1-888-553-4448 (Toll-free)
Our phone customer support is available from 8 am to 10 pm
(Monday to Friday) ET
E-Mail: distec@olympus.com
Olympus software updates can be obtained at: http://olympus.com/digital/
TECH SPECS
CCD Imager - 4.07 megapixel effective, 4.23 megapixel gross, 1/2.5" (.40") CCD
Lens - Lens Olympus aspherical glass 3x zoom lens 5.8 – 17.4mm (35 – 105mm equivalent in 35mm photography), 5 lenses in 3 groups
Seamless Digital Zoom - 12x (3x optical and 4x digital combined [5x at VGA])
Aperture Range F3.1W/F5.2 T
Shutter Speeds 1/1000 sec. – 1/2 sec.
ISO Auto, 80 – 320 (equivalent)
Recording Mode(s) Still Image: EXIF 2.2 JPEG, DCF (Design rule for Camera File system), PRINT Image Matching II
Adjustable Resolutions - 2272 x 1704 JPEG SHQ, HQ, 2048 x 1536 JPEG SQ1, 1600 x 1200 JPEG SQ2, 1280 x 960 JPEG SQ2, 1024 x 768 JPEG SQ2, 640 x 480 JPEG SQ2, QuickTime Movie 16 sec. at 15 fps in 320 x 240 HQ mode, QuickTime Movie 40 sec. at 15 fps in 160 x 120 SQ mode
DPOF (Digital Print Order Format) Print Reserve, All print reservation, Display Date information
Optical Image Enlargement n/a
Image Adjustment Modes n/a
Image Effects Black and white, Sepia, Resize
Panorama Up to 10 frames stitchable with CAMEDIA Master software when using Olympus brand xDTM
Sequence 1 frames per second, more than 4 frames in HQ mode.
Viewfinder - Optical real-image viewfinder with autofocus/backlight mark
LCD 1.5" (3.8cm) color TFT LCD (134,000 pixels) used for viewing, reviewing or editing images
Focusing System TTL system (contrast detection)
Focusing Ranges Standard AF 20" – Infinity (0.5m – Infinity)
Macro Mode 8" – 20" (0.2m-0.5m)
Exposure Control Program Auto F3.1-5.2
Metering System Digital ESP Multi-Pattern Meter
White Balance System IESP Multi-pattern Auto TTL
Pre-set manual settings: Daylight, Overcast, Tungsten & Fluorescent
Flash Built-in Flash
Flash Modes Auto Flash for low and backlight
"Red-eye" Reduction Flash
Fill-in Flash
Flash Off (built-in or external flash)
Flash Working Range Wide: 8" – 8.5' (.2 m – 2.5 m), Tele: 8" – 6.0' (.2 m – 1.8 m)
Flash Charging Time Less than 6 seconds (at normal temperature with new batteries)
Removable Media Card xD-Picture Card (16, 32, 64, 128 & 256 MB) 16MB included
Selftimer/Remote 12-sec. delay with built in self-timer
Setting Memorization Reset or Hold certain camera settings after power on/power off
Outer Connectors USB Connector (Auto-Connect), Video Out, DC input
Auto-connect USB Compatible with Windows 98 rev2/ME/2000 Pro/XP
MacOS 8.6-9.22/OSX
Image Playback Index display, up to 4x enlargement, Slide show, Scene rotation
Operating Environment Operation: 32°F - 104°F (0°C- 40°C) 30-90% Humidity
Storage: -4°F - 104°F (-20°C - 60°C) 10-90% Humidity
Power Supply Main Power Source:
(1) B-10L Lithium Battery (included with charger)
AC Power Source:
D-7AC 4.8 Volt AC adapter (optional)
Date/Time Calendar Simultaneous recording into image data
Calendar Automatic up to the year 2099
Size Size 3.8" W x 2.2" H x 1.3" D (99 x 56 x 33.5 mm) excluding protrusions
Weight 5.8 oz. (165 g) without battery and media card
Number of Storable Photos With 16MB xD-Picture Card:
SHQ, HQ: 2272 x 1704: 5, 16 shots
SQ1: 2048 x 1536: 20 shots
SQ2: 1600 x 1200: 24 shots
SQ2: 1280 x 960: 38 shots
SQ2: 1024 x 768: 58 shots
SQ2: 640 x 480: 99 shots
HQ Movie: 320 x 240 15 fps: 16 sec. max per movie
SQ Movie: 160 x 120 15 fps: 40 sec. max per movie
****SPECIAL THANKS****
Special thanks to member drm_tbc for pointing out some errors in my review. I love when people help me out—I hope he/she stays around Epinions!
UPDATE 9/30/03
There's a low-end competitor for this camera--for $250 it's a bit more rugged and can be submerged in up to 5 feet of water--here's the reveiw: http://www.epinions.com/content_114245602948
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 350.00
This Camera is a Good Choice if You Want Something... Flexible Enough for Enthusiasts
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Epinions.com ID:
briandalsmom
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Member: Mom
Location: USA
Reviews written: 249
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