Here’s my review of the Olympus Mju 1060, a pocketable camera with a big 7X zoom lens. Along with the review, I’ve got the Olympus Mju 1060 photo gallery online as well.

DPInterface Olympus Mju 1060 Review

Brad Soo – February 7th, 2009

Ever wanted a lot of zoom in a camera that you could slip into your pocket without it bulging out? Here’s your chance with the Olympus Mju 1060 which packs 10 megapixels of resolution and a 7X optical zoom lens in a body which LOOKS like a regular 3X zoom camera. You also get sensor-shift image stabilization, a 3 inch LCD and various Olympus bells-and-whistles thrown into the mix as well. Is the Mju 1060 as sweet as it sounds?

Size and Weight

(225.7) 110.6 x 70.4 x 44.7 mm (245 g) – Canon PowerShot SX110 IS
(175.2) 93.7 x 56.4 x 25.1 mm (128 g) – Olympus mju 1060
(177.6) 96.4 x 55.9 x 25.3 mm (132 g) – Olympus Stylus 7000
(195.7) 103.3 x 59.6 x 32.8 mm (206 g) – Panasonic Lumix ZS3/TZ7
(200.7) 104.1 x 61.0 x 35.6 mm (219 g) – Samsung HZ10W
(223.4) 106.0 x 68.5 x 48.9 mm (264 g) – Sony Cyber-shot H10
All the weight figures above show when the camera is empty without a battery or memory card

The Olympus Mju 1060, along with its newer sibling, is the smallest and lightest of the bunch with literally compact camera dimensions and weight. Remember, however, that the two also pack the smallest zoom lenses in the “compact ultra-zoom” category, with just 7X optical zoom. The other cameras in the list above have at least 10X to 12X optical zoom.

Box contents

The Olympus Mju 1060 is bundled with several pretty standard camera box contents:

• LI-42B rechargeable lithium-ion battery
• Battery charger
• microSD to xD-Picture card adapter
• Wrist strap
• USB and A/V cables
• Camera software CD (Olympus Master)
• User’s manual

There’s 41.1 MB of internal memory in the Mju 1060. The Mju 1060 is able to support xD-Picture cards natively and microSD cards via the included adapter. I would recommend getting a minimum of 2 GB with the camera so you won’t have to worry about running out of space. You can opt for microSD cards or Type H xD-Picture cards with the camera. A high-speed card doesn’t really make much of a performance difference but Olympus states that the Mju 1060’s VGA movie mode at the highest settings will be limited if you use an “ordinary” (non-type H) xD-Picture or microSD card.

450 shots – Canon PowerShot SX110 IS
180 shots – Olympus mju 1060
150 shots – Olympus Stylus 7000
300 shots – Panasonic Lumix ZS3/TZ7
310 shots – Sony Cyber-shot H10
All the cameras above are rated with rechargeable batteries with LCD on according to CIPA Standard

The Olympus Mju 1060 uses a rechargeable lithium-ion battery and comes with a charger. I don’t know what’s up but Olympus seems to be lagging behind the competition in terms of battery life lately. With the mju 1060, the camera can take up to 180 shots per battery charge which is well below the competition. And its newer sibling with a USA name, the Mju 7000 fares even worse. If you’re gonna roll with the mju 1060, do yourself a favor and get an extra battery (or two).

Accessories

There aren’t many accessories you can choose from on this camera; an AC adapter and various camera cases are all you can get.

Camera Tour

The Olympus Mju 1060 looks really similar to other Olympus Stylus cameras; it’s compact, is decently built with several metallic accents and has that “curve to one side” design (well, almost) that we’ve been seeing.

The Mju 1060 is obviously very small for a camera with a 7X zoom lens that you probably wouldn’t even expect such a powerful lens in the first place. The camera is easy to hold with both hands and thankfully, the buttons here are decently sized (unlike previous Olympus cameras I’ve reviewed) and they’re backlit too.

The 10 megapixel Olympus Mju 1060 features a 7X optical zoom lens equivalent to 37 – 260 mm and with an aperture range of f3.5-5.3 – quite average for a large range zoom lens. The lens will suffice for everyday photo snapping and outdoor action/sports but don’t expect the Mju 1060 to perform like a digital SLR in low-light. There’s sensor-shift image stabilization here which will help reduce blur but not freeze action.

Near the lens on the right side is the microphone unit and to the upper left is the built-in flash unit. The flash power ranges from fairly powerful at wide-angle to average at the telephoto end. The flash (at ISO 800) has a range of 10 cm to 4.8 m at wide-angle and it decreases to 60 cm to 3.2 m at telephoto. Directly beside the flash is the self-timer countdown lamp.

At the back of the Mju 1060 is a large 3 inch LCD display which packs 230,000 pixels. The display image is viewable in low-light (though like most other cameras, it gets a bit grainy) and is equally good in bright light and outdoors.

All the controls of the Mju 1060 are located to the right of the LCD display. The first item is the camera’s zoom controller and the mode dial below that. Right, let’s tour the mode dial clockwise:

• Shooting mode (Program mode)
• Scene mode
• Guide – Like the name says, a guide to taking pictures is built right into the camera
• Movie mode
• Favorites
• Playback mode
• Intelligent Auto mode

The Intelligent Auto mode is something new to Olympus cameras. This mode expands on regular automatic shooting by detecting the scene and appropriately picking one of five scene modes for you. Naturally, everything else – focus, exposure and other settings – are all automatic as well.

Next up are the camera’s controls. Olympus has added a fairly touch here by making all the buttons backlit so you can see them in the dark. The first two buttons are pretty straightforward; they are the menu and playback/transfer buttons.

There’s the usual five-way navigation pad (thankfully I didn’t have to peck at the buttons like I needed to on some of Olympus’ other cameras with tiny controls):

• Up – Exposure compensation (+/-2 exposure in 1/3 step increments)
• Down – Self-timer (Off, on – 12 seconds)
• Left – Macro (Off, normal macro, super macro)
• Right – Flash setting (Auto, auto with redeye reduction, on, off)
• Center – Function menu/Set

The function menu

The center button on the Mju 1060 brings up the function menu where you can adjust several settings:

• White balance (Auto, daylight, cloudy, tungsten, fluorescent 1,2 & 3)
• ISO sensitivity (Auto, high auto ISO, 64, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 6400)
• Drive mode (Single-shot, normal burst, high-speed burst)
• Metering method (ESP, spot)
• Image size and compression

While I’ll be highlighting the Mju 1060’s burst modes later, I wanna talk about the many ISO settings available. From ISO 64 till ISO 1600, you can shoot at the camera’s full resolution of 10 megapixels. If for any reason you select ISO 3200 or ISO 6400 (I wouldn’t if I were you; they’re VERY noisy and muddy), then resolution will be reduced to 3 megapixels.

On to the last two buttons… One is the DISPLAY/help button which toggles the amount information shown on the LCD display and also brings up a help screen when in menus. The other is the Shadow Adjustment button which toggles that feature on and off. It happens to double as a button to delete photos in playback too. Shadow adjustment helps brighten up darker areas in your pictures at the cost of some extra noise and processing time.

At the top of the Mju 1060, there’s a power button and shutter button. The camera’s design is such that is slopes slightly toward the left side.

This side of the camera has no features to talk about… on the other side, there’s a wrist strap mount and a single connector port used for USB and A/V out connections (The Mju 1060 supports the USB 2.0 High-speed interface).

At the bottom of the Mju 1060 is its speaker, plastic tripod mount and battery/memory card compartment. The compartment door is of average quality, though you obviously can’t open it when the camera is mounted on a tripod.

Taking pictures (Shooting mode)

The Olympus Mju 1060 tells you a lot of things on its display; you’ll be able to see shooting information, settings, exposure details and a nice live histogram. There isn’t a battery indicator available, however.

The image resolution options available on the Mju 1060 are 10 MP, 5 MP, 3 MP, 2 MP, 1 MP and VGA. There’s also two image compression options available; Fine and Normal. A widescreen image takes pictures that will fit 16:9 screens nicely but it shoots only at 2 megapixels.

Pressing the MENU button on the Mju 1060 calls up a grid of icons where you can enter the submenu indicated by each of the icons. The panorama feature allows you to take several photos to be joined up later into a single panorama (this requires an Olympus-branded xD-Picture card though). Here’s the camera menu:

• White balance, ISO, drive and metering mode – I’ve talked about these when discussing the Function menu
• Fine zoom and digital zoom – Digital zoom lowers image quality as usual by using digital magnification while fine zoom crops your pictures instead
• AF mode – iESP (multiple point), spot, face detection
• Sensor-shift image stabilization (On/off)
• Voice memo (On/off)

As far as I know, the Olympus Mju 1060 has one of the fanciest menu systems that I’ve seen on a digital camera (however, fanciest doesn’t mean most usable). There are various animations, effects and not to mention a different background to the menu pages.

The Olympus Mju 1060 has TWO kinds of image stabilization and I feel that you should be aware that the camera’s “sensor shift image stabilization” is the real deal in helping reduce blurry photos. The other one that Olympus keeps touting is digital image stabilization, which merely boosts ISO (it also results in more image noise).

The Olympus Mju 1060 has the usual Perfect Shot Preview which happens when you change a setting such as exposure compensation and the camera enables you to “preview” the effects of different setting changes all at once. There’s also face detection on the camera which detects up to 16 faces in a scene.

The Mju 1060 has two macro modes. The first, “normal macro” mode is quite unimpressive – you can get as close as 10 cm at wide-angle and 60 cm at telephoto. And lucky for real close-up lovers, super macro mode is much better with a minimum focusing distance of just 2 cm.

There are also plenty of scene modes on the camera: portrait, landscape, landscape + portrait, night scene, night + portrait, sports, indoor, candle, self portrait, available light portrait, sunset, fireworks, cuisine, behind glass, documents, auction, shoot and select 1 & 2, smile shot, beach and snow and pre-capture movie. The Smile Shot mode operates by waiting after you’ve pressed the shutter button, and once the camera detects a smile, it will take three pictures in a row automatically. If you’re lost in the numerous scene modes, you can always go for the Intelligent Auto mode on the Mju 1060 I mentioned earlier.

Video Recording

The Olympus Mju 1060 features the regular ol’ VGA movie mode (when are we gonna see a HD movie mode on an Olympus camera?) which records video with sound at 30 FPS. Olympus says that you can only record unlimited movies at VGA 30 FPS if you use a Type M or H xD-card. Otherwise, there’s a limitation of 40 seconds per movie clip if you select the VGA 30 FPS option and use a “standard type” xD-Picture card or microSD adapter.

Of course, there’s always two other options for everyone else: VGA (640 x 480) at a choppy 15 FPS or a smaller QVGA (320 x 240) resolution at 30 FPS, both until any memory card fills up.

While you can preset zoom before recording, you cannot use the camera’s zoom (neither optical nor digital) while recording a movie. You can’t use the camera’s sensor-shift image stabilization either – you only have the option of using digital image stabilization. Movie quality was average with acceptable video and sound quality.

Performance

All performance testing of the Olympus Mju 1060 was performed using a 1 GB Olympus xD-Picture Type-M card.

The Olympus Mju 1060 has a start up time of 2 seconds. The Mju 1060 has decent autofocus times of 1/5 to 1/2 second in bright light, a little longer if the lens is at full zoom. However, in low light, the camera struggles to focus because it lacks an AF-assist lamp.

• Shot-to-shot speed – 1 shot every 2.3 seconds, just average
• Flash recharge time using a fully charged battery – 5 seconds on average

There’s nothing to shout about when it comes to the Mju 1060’s burst mode. The camera snaps continuously at full resolution at 1.1 frames per second until the camera’s buffer fills up (depending on the scene/file size, it’s roughly 6 to 9 photos. Most competitors can shoot till their memory cards fill up. A high-speed burst mode snaps at your choice of 6.5 or 9 frames per second up to 25 photos. The catch here is that resolution is lowered to 3 megapixels.

The camera’s power down time was within 2 seconds. Overall the Mju 1060 was a decent performer with fairly average numbers – to be straightforward nothing about the camera was “blazing fast” (the high-speed mode doesn’t shoot at full-resolution) but it should be sufficiently quick for casual point-and-shoot purposes.

Image Quality

Let’s find out how the Olympus Mju 1060 performs in the image quality department:

ISO 200 (f3.5, 1/6 sec)

ISO 400 (f3.5, 1/10 sec)

ISO 800 (f3.5, 1/20 sec)

ISO 1600 (f3.5, 1/50 sec)

ISO 3200 (f3.5, 1/100 sec)

ISO 6400 (f3.5, 1/160 sec)

Up to ISO 400, the Olympus Mju 1060 produces photos with tolerable noise levels. You might be able to savage ISO 800 shots if you can accept the extra noise that accompanies them. From ISO 1600 onwards up till ISO 6400, image quality is completely unusable.

For a lens with such a large zoom range, there isn’t much distortion exhibited by it and chromatic aberration (color fringing) levels were fairly low. Redeye does appear in photos most of the time, but you can remove it manually via the tool in playback mode.

Photo gallery

Check out some full-sized photos in the Olympus Mju 1060 photo gallery.

Playback

The Olympus Mju 1060 has a fairly comprehensive and somewhat fancy playback. There’s the usual print marking, slideshow, image protection, cropping, resizing and rotation. Photos can be magnified by 10X so you can inspect the little details in them. Pictures can be played back as individual photos, by date in calendar view or in sets of thumbnails. You can also choose to tag photos as “My Favorites” and view only those tagged photos.

There are several image editing features here as well; such as red-eye removal, shadow adjustment, saturation correction and conversion of pictures into sepia or black & white photos. There are two other things which I would consider “special effects” – Face Focus which crops out a face for emphasis (it works best with only one or two faces) and Funny Face which give photos “an amusing distorted effect”. The camera lacks movie editing features however, there’s an “index” mode which shows the frames of a video, but that’s about it.

By default, the Olympus Mju 1060 already shows you plenty of information about your photos: shooting and exposure details (with shutter speed and aperture value). You can change that to a view with a histogram, which also shows the photo at an angled view.

Conclusion

The Olympus Mju 1060 is a compact 10 megapixel camera with a huge 7X optical zoom lens which is something you wouldn’t expect in a camera this size. There’s a sizable 3 inch LCD on the back along with backlit buttons and an ISO range which reaches 6400 which makes it SOUND like a good low-light camera. Unfortunately, the reality is that the Mju 1060 produces good quality photos up till ISO 400 (ISO 800 if you’re willing to push it) and struggles to even focus in low-light.

The Mju 1060 has an Intelligent Auto mode which automatically detects scenes and chooses an appropriate scene mode, a macro mode that can get you really close and plenty of scene modes. There are no manual controls however, and the camera’s movie mode has many restrictions. You can’t use the camera’s sensor-shift image stabilization or zoom, and you need a Type M/H xD-memory card to take advantage of the VGA mode at 30 FPS.

The battery life and performance of the Mju 1060 didn’t impress me much either. I would say that unless you REALLY need the pocketability of this camera (in which case you’ll have to bear with multiple compromises), it’s really best that you take a look at the Olympus Mju 1060’s competitors. For those in places where the Mju 1060 isn’t available, don’t feel disappointed; you aren’t missing out anything exciting.

What’s hot:

• Lots of zoom in a pocketable form factor
• Huge viewable LCD and backlit buttons
• Intelligent Auto mode, very good macro and plenty of scene modes
• Perfect Shot Preview, Shadow Adjustment and playback edit tools
• Decent image quality up to ISO 400

What’s not:

• No manual controls
• Below average battery life
• Poor low-light performance; no AF assist lamp
• Sensor-shift stabilization and zoom cannot be used in movies; xD-card requirement
• Disappointing burst mode; so-so performance

Recommended Accessories:

• 2 GB xD-Picture card
• Additional battery

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