Olympus Stylus 1050 SW
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009
The 10.1 megapixel, 3x zoom 1050 SW is designed to handle just about anything active shooters can throw at it (or throw it into), with a body that sealed against the elements and designed to absorb impacts. The camera’s 2.7 inch HyperCrystal II LCD display is also ruggedized, and provides five steps of brightness adjustment for shooting in a range of lighting conditions. Low-light illumination courtesy of a front-mounted LED expands the underwater shooting versatility of the 1050, which, as noted, can safely be submerged at depths of up to 10 feet without a separate waterproof housing.
More conventional features include face detection technology that can recognize up to 16 faces at a time, as well as a Smile Shot feature that tracks a subject’s faces, detects a smile, and fires the shutter accordingly. Aforementioned Shadow Adjustment Technology provides some leeway for shooting where lighting conditions are harsh or less than ideal, and Perfect Shot Preview and Perfect Fix in-camera editing provide tools for correcting image exposure either before or after the capture.
Processing is provided by Olympus’s current-generation TruePic III imaging engine. Unfortunately, though, image stabilization technology is a little more behind the times, with the 1050 receiving only an ISO-boosting digital image stabilization system.