Olympus mju 830 review

An inevitable extra expense is the cost of buying xD cards. With Fujifilm wising up and adding SD card support to the FinePix range in time for the recent massive advances in SD and SDHC capacity, we would hope xD's days are numbered. Still, manufacturers love their proprietary technology and Olympus has rather cheekily required own-brand cards to work the 830's photo-stitching panorama feature.

A minor quibble is that the onscreen battery meter isn't very helpful, as it only has two bars so won't show battery level with any accuracy.

Performance
The 830 starts in less than 1.5 seconds, and takes 2 seconds between single shots, which is reasonable. In continuous mode, the 830 manages a respectable 1 frame per second at full resolution, although like many other compacts it can only keep that up for three shots before stopping. This is a frustrating trend in point-and-shoots. Higher-end type H xD cards will keep going indefinitely, however, while 3-megapixel images can be captured at 4fps.

Similarly, the SHQ movie mode -- 640x480 pixels at 30fps -- is limited to 10 seconds. Long enough for someone falling over on YouTube, but not much else. HQ -- 320x240 pixels at 30fps -- or SQ -- 160x120 pixels at 15fps -- will fill the memory.

Our biggest concern with the 830 was its autofocus function. Our model was extremely temperamental, locking focus quickly and reasonably accurately before changing its mind and hunting around. This got tedious very quickly, especially with no manual focus option. The lack of focus assist lamp meant that the 830 really struggled to focus in low light.

Image quality
Image quality -- when the autofocus made its mind up -- was better than we expected. Metering is excellent, although as with all compacts it pays to familiarise yourself with the white balance function. Colours are reproduced well, with a richness to portraits that impressed us. Noise is, as ever, a problem at higher ISO settings with unsightly speckles creeping into darker areas of images from ISO 200 and up.

There is some barrel distortion in evidence at the wide end of the zoom, with images also tending to soften towards the edges. This is only really evident upon close inspection on a computer monitor, though.

Conclusion
The Olympus mju 830 ticks all the point-and-shoot boxes. It's very pocketable, takes half-decent images and is comparatively affordable. Nonetheless we can't help damning it with faint praise. The two stand-out features are the weatherproof seals and a long zoom. But the fact you can get the 830 damp just can't compete with the ruggedness of the Olympus 790.

Meanwhile, in the longer-zoom compact market it doesn't hold a candle to the sexiness of the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX-33. While the 830 is a perfectly good snapper, the autofocus issues would see us spending more on a flashier model.

Editing by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Shannon Doubleday