The Olympus Stylus 850 SW Waterproof Digital Camera

Some people just seem to always manage to break their digital camera. Either they drop it on the floor, have it fall into the pool, step on it or let it get too cold on a snowy vacation. When Olympus designed the Stylus 850 SW, they must have had these people in mind! This digital camera is the perfect digital camera for situations where you normally wouldn't bring a camera along.

I am very careful with my cameras. However, sometimes I want to bring a camera along and I am just too afraid that I will break it. I volunteer with marine mammals such as sea lions and elephant seals, and sometimes trying to take photos of them can get your camera dirty. One slip and your camera could be in the pool. If you've ever ruined a camera on a snowy day on vacation, you're probably now also afraid to take your camera to the snow. You might want someone to take a photo for you, but you've had a bad experience where a stranger dropped and broke your camera. All of these worries have been solved with this digital camera.

Why I Like My Olympus Stylus 850 SW

This camera can withstand a fall from a height of 5 feet. I figure that most people don't hold the camera higher than that, so if I want someone to take a picture of me doing something, I really don't have to worry too much about them dropping this one. Mine has been dropped on several occasions and it is still holding up fine. This is actually the first camera that I've even dropped myself, so I'm glad that it was able to withstand the fall.

While I haven't taken my camera to the snow yet, it is fine below freezing (down to 14 degrees Fahrenheit to be exact according to manufacturer specifications). It certainly gets colder than that in some areas, but that is pretty darn cold! So I can't imagine myself needing more cold protection than that. Being able to bring the camera to the snow makes me happy, because I once ruined a perfectly good video camera by leaving it in the car overnight on a snowy vacation. Most cameras just cannot handle the cold.

Ultimately however, my favorite feature is that this camera is waterproof! You can take this camera down to 10 feet below the surface and you'll be fine. I love this feature. When I'm volunteering with marine mammals I always want to take pictures of them, but in the past I was often too afraid to get photos of the animals near the water. If I dropped my camera in the water, I knew it would be all over. With this camera however, I can not only not worry that the camera won't get hurt because of the water, but it would also be okay if a curious seal decided to bite the camera on its way down. Although, I wouldn't advise purposely trying to get an animal to bite the camera as it really would not be a good idea for the animal to accidentally swallow a camera. Having this security with my camera now allows me to take pictures of the animals, even underwater snapshots of them! I can also snap some underwater photos of my friends at the pool. This camera is even great for photos at water sporting events. I recently took the camera to an event where dogs were competing at jumping off a dock. I stood right at the end of the pool to get some photos. At one point during the event, a dog jumped so far that it got all of us at the end of the pool soaking wet. The lady next to me looked in horror at my soaking wet digital camera, but I just grinned and wiped the water off the lens and kept on shooting.

Features

When I'm taking pictures, I don't really need a whole lot of fancy features. I like to be able to shoot in macro mode and change a few settings, but I'm not generally used to using a lot of the features on the camera. However, this one is really kind of cool with all of its little added features.

The 2.5" Hyper Crystal LCD screen is even easy to see out in the sunlight. Although, unfortunately you really can't see it very well if you are above water and holding the camera underneath the water. That is to be expected due to physics however, so I really can't fault Olympus for that.

If you've ever had a regular digital camera with underwater housing, you know how difficult it can be to press those buttons to change any settings. While the buttons and the rotating wheel on this camera are slightly more difficult to press and turn than the average digital point and shoot, it is certainly much easier to use than a regular digital camera with a waterproof housing.

The built in image stabilization feature is nice to have. I find that some people just always seem to take blurry photos. If I hand my camera to them, I just turn on the image stabilization feature and everything is fine. This is also useful when shooting pictures in low lighting without the flash.

There are several different scene modes on this camera, so if you don't like to change settings on your own or don't know what to change, these are nice to have. You can take underwater snapshots, underwater macro, portraits, landscapes, night scenes, indoor photos, photos behind glass, and auction style photos for your eBay items, just to name a few scene modes. You can even pre-capture a couple seconds of video before you press the shutter. Now that would have been a nice feature to have when I was whale watching! All of the sudden a dolphin pops up and you miss it normally, but not with this camera! You could press the shutter as soon as you see the dolphin pop up and as long as your camera was pointed at that location a moment ago, you're covered.

Most people don't like to read the camera manual. The great thing with this camera is that you don't really have to. Not only is the camera very easy to use, but if you ever are confused on something, there are built in help features. The scene modes are also all fully described.

Image Quality

For a point and shoot camera, the image quality isn't bad. Obviously this camera isn't going to compare to an SLR, but you're not paying the price of an SLR either. This camera has the capacity to shoot at 8 megapixels, but you can also change the settings to shoot at 5, 3, 2, or 1 megapixels. In addition to those options, you can also shoot at a 16:9 image size ratio. If you have an LCD TV, you might realize that is the ratio you need to display images on your flat screen television! This is a somewhat rare feature in a point and shoot camera. I was rejoicing when I found out about this feature. When I went on a vacation to see some elephant seals in the wild, I made sure to take plenty of photos at the 16:9 ratio so that I could show off my vacation pictures to my family on the LCD TV when I got home.

You can get some nice photos of people with this camera. Sometimes the photos will be a bit grainy indoors, especially without the flash. That is to be expected with most digital cameras however. The macro is a bit disappointing compared to a Nikon point and shoot, but I would still say the camera performs above average. There are blurry edges to landscape photos, but ultimately this camera is really more for adventure and action. You can get some crystal clear action shots with this camera. The underwater photos also turn out very nice, although you must be within a few feet of your subject to get a very clear photo. Obviously clean water helps too, don't expect to get crystal clear photos in a dirty lake or the ocean.

The video quality is pretty nice for a point and shoot camera as well. You get some noise and the videos definitely look better at a small size, but for this not being a video camera it really does pretty well at taking video. Being able to afford underwater housing for a video camera is out of most people's price range, so it is really nice to be able to take some underwater video clips with this.

Odd Quirks I Don't Like

This camera has such a rectangular box shape. For most people, this will seem perfectly normal. I'll be honest, I've been spoiled by having Nikon digital cameras before this camera. All the Nikon cameras I've owned have had this wonderful bump on the right side of the camera so that a right handed person could easily have a good grip on the camera. While the Olympus has a slight bump on it, that just really isn't enough for me. This probably explains why this is the first and only digital camera I have ever dropped. Luckily, this is also the first digital camera I've had that can withstand the drop. So this doesn't prove to be a problem. If you aren't annoyed by having a strap around your wrist, that would easily stop you from dropping the camera if you were still worried about that.

Most cameras nowadays take secure digital memory cards (SD). Some digital cameras I have had needed a compact flash memory card (CF). This digital camera takes the Micro SD card (high capacity is supported, I use a 4GB card in mine). The memory card is nestled in an adapter inside your camera, but you might need to buy a new memory card reader to read it (not too expensive at least). The main problem I have with these tiny cards is that the second you set it down on the desk it is nearly impossible to find it again. Maybe your desk is cleaner than mine and your eyesight better, but I wish the camera used a regular SD card.

Flash placement on a camera can be important for picture quality. In my case (and in the case of most people I have handed this camera to), the flash placement is also a problem because the flash is right where you want to put your middle finger while holding onto this camera. So you take a photo at night and wonder why you can barely see anything. The good news is, since this camera is digital you instantly know you made this error and you can move your finger and take another photo. This may prove inconvenient however if you're taking a photo of something that cannot be repeated for you to retake.

I also have one small piece of advice for anyone buying this camera primarily to use underwater: buy it in one of the brightest colors available! Personally, I bought the sparkly orange camera because orange is easily visible even at the bottom of a pool filled with seals. A brightly colored camera certainly makes for easier retrieval should you drop the camera underwater.

Overall, I would definitely recommend this camera for anyone interested in taking underwater pictures and for people who have broken their digital camera in the past due to freezing or dropping the camera. This is a great camera to bring anywhere with you, without having to worry about hurting it. You'll get a lot of interesting photos that you otherwise would never have taken. And you'll certainly turn some heads when you stick your digital camera underwater.