I’ll be honest: I’m writing about Olympus’ new Stylus camera mostly based on its look. Because frankly, I usually hate superzoom cameras for the ugly non-compromises that they are. They want to give you everything, and usually they deliver nothing.
The Stylus packs Olympus’ retro-styling into a body with a 1/1.7-inch sensor (a good compact-camera sensor, but not crazy big) and a 28–300mm equivalent ƒ2.8 zoom. It has Wi-Fi, 1080p video, shoots RAW and has a built-in ND (neutral density) filter to cut out light and let you shoot wide open on bright days.
From the front, the Stylus looks pretty stylish, like one of the company’s cool Micro Four Thirds bodies. But from any other angle its long-lensed-ness is betrayed. Why do I hate on superzooms so? Because usually they’re full of auto gimmicks and slow lenses, and they’re huge. Worse, they offer little advantage over a regular compact with a good fast zoom (like the latest entries in the Canon G series). But the Stylus at least has a fairly fast ƒ2.8 lens, and offers a couple of multi-purpose knobs: one up where the shutter speed dial would be on a film camera, and one around the lens, where God intended. This should make manual control easier.
The Stylus will be out in December for $700/€550.
Source: DP Review
