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CNET editors' review
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CNET editors' rating:
stars
Very good
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 05/26/2006
- Released on: 03/15/2006
You can easily manipulate most of the camera's controls with your right thumb, so the Stylus 810 is well suited for one-handed shooting. Besides a power switch and a shutter release on the top panel, all camera controls are clustered on the back panel, next to the 2.5-inch, 230,000-pixel LCD. These controls include a zoom rocker and a simple mode dial with only five settings: movie mode, scene selection, playback, recording mode, and Guide.
The four-way-plus-OK control pad is surrounded by four additional keys: menu, digital image stabilization/printing, trash, and display. The last button cycles the camera's LCD through various modes, including a rule-of-thirds grid for composition and a live histogram. The OK/function key opens a menu of the most frequently used shooting options: white balance, ISO, drive mode, and metering.
The Olympus Stylus 810 can hit some incredibly high sensitivity settings for its class: ISO 1,600 and ISO 3,200 for extreme low-light or high-speed shots. It does so via Bright Capture, which uses clusters of sensor pixels to capture a each single image pixel, rather than individual ones (a process known as supersampling), effectively creating bigger pixels, each of which is more sensitive to light. Unfortunately, this results in fewer pixels in the final image; the Stylus 810 can take ISO 3,200 shots at only 3-megapixel resolution. Olympus uses Bright Capture in a similar way--clustering pixels to increase the amount of light emitted--to boost the brightness of the LCD.Unlike the high-ISO settings, the electronic image stabilization works in most shooting modes, including movie, though not burst mode. You can also apply it during playback.
The 3X optical zoom lens can focus on objects between 3.9 and 23.6 inches in supermacro mode. If you don't need to get quite so close to your subject, standard macro can focus from 8.4 inches to infinity. The lens's aperture is fixed at f/2.8 at the wide-angle setting and f/4.7 when fully zoomed in. The Olympus Stylus 810 has no manual focus or exposure controls other than exposure compensation, but its 24 scene modes include various preset options such as Behind Glass, Documents, and Auction. The Shoot and Select scene modes are a variation on burst mode; you shoot a continuous sequence of pictures, which appear on the LCD. You can then keep or delete whatever shots you want from the batch.
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- Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 9 reviews
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6 out of 6 people found this helpful
"a great camera for the money. Lots of features and takes a great picture"
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2 out of 2 people found this helpful
"All the features you've always dreamed about in a small device"
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Where to buy
Olympus Stylus 810:
$199.95 - $399.95
| store | price | in stock? | rating |
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Amazon.com Marketplace
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$399.95 | Yes |
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$199.95 | Yes |
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