Olympus Stylus 720w Digital Camera Review

Ben Freedman: Hi there! Welcome to neo-fight.tv, the Technology Review with two points review. My name is Ben Freedman. Tiffany Young: And I'm Tiffany Young and today is Tuesday, August 8. You know I have always wanted and I finally—I think wishes has been met. A camera that would go on underwater and take really good digital pictures as well as be able to use that, you know out on lay and just as well are not underwater. Ben Freedman: You know, I've got a camera like—one of those Sony cameras and you can use it underwater but you got to put in this big housing. Tiffany Young: Oh, it’s ridiculous the housing. Ben Freedman: It’s like $200.00 of housing. Tiffany Young: I know. I know it’s crazy. Ben Freedman: You have to open the thing and put it in there and put grease on the edge and all that stuff and then close it up. And then you always worried, is the water going to get in. Tiffany Young: Right and luckily I think that Olympus has found the solution for that. We’re looking today at the Olympus Stylus 720 SW and this is a really tiny little camera, 7.1 mega pixel. Ben Freedman: 7.1 mega pixel very, very small frame. Tiffany Young: Yeah, it’s in the palm of my hand really. And this goes—I think it’s five feet underwater. Ben Freedman: Is it five feet or five meters or? Tiffany Young: I think it’s five feet. Ben Freedman: So this is not whatever it is. It’s not a long way underwater. Tiffany Young: It’s not a long way and not— Ben Freedman: Not scuba diving? Tiffany Young: Right, but it does of course have the housing that you can buy with it and some other modes that work for like a wide screen, digital shot. If you do want to take it at diving you can but— Ben Freedman: So there is housing available for it? Tiffany Young: There is yes, but if you just want to jump in the pool with your family, the nice part— Ben Freedman: And who doesn’t want to jump in the pool with their family. Tiffany Young: Well of course. You can get the most amazing underwater shots that you can imagine really. And what we are doing last summer was we were buying the disposable underwater cameras, not knowing exactly what kind of pictures we are even getting until of course we get them developed. Ben Freedman: Those took on film? Tiffany Young: Yeah. Ben Freedman: That film camera not digital? Tiffany Young: Yeah, exactly, yeah exactly. Ben Freedman: So you never know what you're going to get. Tiffany Young: You never know. And you don’t know until its developed and then you know, it’s like—you’ve got you know—put back in the old days where you have to go, you know, the standard film and the developing process in such— Ben Freedman: Now, you have some photos we’re going to show that you’ve took, of your little one in underwater. Tiffany Young: Yeah, they are great. They are clear and you know we spend so much time in the pool as this has been wonderful edition to us and I'm just so happy that the resolution. And it the 7.1 mega pixel, we can blow it up to, you know, really poster size it has some good — Ben Freedman: And it is nice and small. Let me tell a couple of problems I have with the camera because you know it’s nice as while I also do like the fact that it’s metal, it’s got a good feeling to it, it doesn’t feel Plastiki. A couple little issues with it—by the way what is this? I think we found it for about $380.00? Tiffany Young: Exactly. Ben Freedman: Yeah. You know, that’s pretty reason with price for seven mega pixel under $400.00 the way it being waterproof. Tiffany Young: Oh, and you can drop it, you can drop it. It shock proof too. Ben Freedman: Shall we? Tiffany Young: No, no. Ben Freedman: Okay, no. I'm just kidding. You know, really test that out right now. Tiffany Young: We want to test it. I mean if you accidentally happen to drop it you know you'll take a— Ben Freedman: Let's play catch, hold on, ready? Tiffany Young: No, it’s five feet if you drop it. Ben Freedman: So you don’t need to buy a ball now. You can play a catch with your son, you’re pressing with these two— Tiffany Young: By catching the camera, he's doing and— Ben Freedman: So you just play toast back and forth and you just sign in, if you happened to drop the camera, no big deal. Tiffany Young: Well, exactly I mean I have actually had two cameras ruined by just dropping them from three feet, so this has a shock proof. Ben Freedman: Nice fairly a big display on here as well as you can see—oh, you probably looking at me right there. Big display on here which is good else or like that, not a touch screen—I like the new touch screen once. But anyway, that’s getting away from what my issues with the camera because I do like the camera. Couple of issues, the shutter speed is not quite as fast as some of the other ones and that your kid is jumping and you want to push the button and you want to catch in them in mid jump. Tiffany Young: I think that’s a setting. Ben Freedman: You think you can change the setting on here. I could not make it catch the jump quite as fast as I wanted. It was still a way faster than cameras in two years ago but I have a Sony camera and it’s virtually spontaneous. Tiffany Young: Right. Ben Freedman: It’s only a problem when you want to catch them that actual jump second. But if you're out here taking the picture and you want to, you know—let me take a picture. Did you see the flash go off there? You know it does take a few milliseconds—I think once you know it. It’s okay but you do want to be able to catch that. My only other complaint with the camera was that the flash it doesn’t adjust very well if you're close up to a subject. If you get a little too close, you're going to get bright white faces. Tiffany Young: Which I found and defense for this camera, I found that to be true in a lot of cameras. Ben Freedman: Well, you know what and when you got this little flash right next little ends on any camera, you know, how good is it going to be. It’s not the same as having a big SLR camera with the flash. Tiffany Young: Right, but you can always turn the flash off, you know, you can go in settings—well, I think that— Ben Freedman: Just put a black screen— Tiffany Young: I love this camera. The other thing that I really love about this is video mode. It has amazing video mode and— Ben Freedman: Yeah, these cameras are getting good at taking video and I guess you can take underwater video. Tiffany Young: And of course you can do. It’s the same standard, a memory card. You can put in one two gigs card that’s removable. Ben Freedman: Anything you need to do at camera when you get out of the water is that you clean it off or—? Tiffany Young: Yeah, the only thing that I found is that this little—when you get out of the water, you do have to clean the lens, otherwise you'll get spots or some fogginess on your pictures that you take right outside of the pool. So that’s the only thing is just to clean the lens real quick that’s only you know— Ben Freedman: And you can just use a t-shirt or something like that, don’t use something scratchy. Tiffany Young: Anything really, no nothing scratch, no drill of pads, no SOS. Ben Freedman: The lens—right, unlike some cameras that were your looking right at the lens this has a piece of glass in front of the lens obviously to make it waterproof so you can clean that off with it. But don’t forget to clean it off. Tiffany Young: Well, you will know right away because you have this big screen here where you even see if your picture didn’t turn out right, if there's a big spot. So, I mean you know relatively fast, not to forget to clean the lens so. Ben Freedman: So, I like this camera. I think it’s a great choice for people going on vacation or what have 7 mega pixel, 7.1, plenty of mega pixels you know and pretty good picture quality plus the ability to go underwater a short distance you know without having to put in housing, just makes it—bring your bathtub shots, you know, shots in the shower of you kids. Tiffany Young: Stuff like that, right? Ben Freedman: Of your kids, that’s what I meant. Shot from the shower of your kids or you bath the kids. Tiffany Young: Stuff like that. Ben Freedman: It’s the whole different way. But I think it’s a pretty great camera. I give it a—there's a couple issues of that shutter log but it’s very minor. I give it four out of five. Tiffany Young: And I’m going to give this definitely five out of five. I think it’s excellent camera, excellent camera. And I really found that it work well for the underwater as well as the above water shots and instead of having to worry about the casing and so on and so fort. This really solves a lot of problems I was having last year so five out five for me. Ben Freedman: So that’s five out of five for Tiffany and four out of five for me that’s nine out of ten for the Olympus Stylus 720 SW Digital Camera and that’s a great little product. I’m glad you enjoyed it. Tiffany Young: Yeah, I do very much. Ben Freedman: And if you got an extra 30 seconds, take a look at this. If you are looking for a custom built computer system, created to be exact specifications you're looking for, look no further that Puget Custom Computers at www.pugetcustomcomputers.com. Puget Builds Computers the way you want them build. They work hard to take the hype out of computer building, to help you make good decisions and to help save you from paying for things you don’t need. 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