Olympus u [mju:] 760

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http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/digitalcameras/0,39030233,49288277,00.htm

Reviewed 7 March 2007

Reviewed by Will Greenwald

We suspect Olympus must have put Hermes in charge of the mju digital camera releases since they came to market so quickly. The mju 740 and 750 are barely six months old, and the mju 710 was only about that old when they arrived.

With an accelerated release schedule like that, there's not a lot of time to make significant changes from model to model. So, it's unsurprising this little camera doesn't differ much from its predecessors. But its small form and mechanical image stabilisation still make it a very appealing camera.

Design
As with all of its siblings, the mju 760's most distinctive feature is its sleek, weather-resistant metal body. The stylish camera, measuring just 23mm thick and weighing only 119g, is small and light enough to fit into almost any pocket and comes in light blue, pink, black and silver versions.

The camera's body is sealed against moisture and gunk, so it can handle splashes, showers and snowstorms. It's not completely waterproof, though, and probably won't survive being submerged in water. If you really need a submersible camera, you should consider the mju 760's significantly sturdier and more expensive bigger brother, the mju 770 SW. The 770 SW can function in up to 10m underwater and can handle far more drops, stomps and chills than the 760.

Features
The Stylus 760 features Olympus' Dual Image Stabilization (DIS), a hybrid electronic and mechanical system that combines ISO boosting with shifting the camera's sensor to compensate for shake. The latter does the bulk of the work. You can enable DIS by pressing a tiny button on top of the camera, next to the shutter release.

While DIS helped reduce some shake and blur in our photos, it just didn't seem quite as effective as the optimal image stabilisation we've seen on other compact cameras, such as the Canon Digital IXUS 850 IS. Still, the feature works better than most cameras that just boost the sensor's sensitivity.

Besides the shiny shell and image stabilisation, the mju 760 has a mostly standard feature set. The camera includes a fairly narrow-angle 37mm-to-111mm-equivalent 3x zoom lens, a 7-megapixel sensor that can reach up to ISO 1,600 sensitivity, 26 shot presets and a built-in help guide to walk users through setting up shots. These features are useful, but there is very little you wouldn't find on almost any other Olympus mju camera and most of their higher-end FE-series cameras.

Performance
The mju 760's performance was decent, but not remarkable. After a startup time of 2.1 seconds, the camera could take a shot every two seconds thereafter. With the onboard flash enabled, that time increased to three seconds per shot. Shutter lag was a brisk 0.5 seconds in bright light, though shooting targets in dim light more than tripled the lag to 1.7 seconds.

Our testing yielded reasonably sharp photos with well-resolved details in the centre, although there were a few spots where post-processing smeared some edges -- a common problem in compacts.

Colours tended to be a touch too cool but appropriately saturated, and measured noise was surprisingly low, appearing as only a moderate grain even at ISO 800. At ISO 1,600, however, the photos exploded with noise-driven speckles and fuzz.

As you'd expect from the narrow, short-range zoom lens, distortion was almost nonexistent, barrelling only slightly at the edges at its widest.

Conclusion
Though its images aren't perfect and it's a bit sluggish, the Olympus mju 760 is still a good compact camera. Its light, pocketable design and logical, simple features make it a fine choice for anyone who wants a small camera he or she can take nearly anywhere.

Shooting speed
(Seconds -- smaller is better)

Typical shot-to-shot time

Time to first shot

Shutter lag (typical)

Olympus mju 740

2.1 

2.4 

0.6 

Casio Exilim EX-Z850

2.7 

2.1 

0.5 

Olympus mju 760

2.0 

2.1 

0.5 

Canon Digital IXUS 850 IS

1.3 

1.1 

0.4 

Edited by Lori Grunin
Additional editing by Kate Macefield