Olympus India – Olympus SZ-30MR review and India price

Electronics field is bringing impossible to possible. Electronics is the only field where today’s dream is tomorrow’s reality. Many times it has been observed that, many inventions look impossible for current science and technology. However those inventions take shape and come in to reality in future.

Few years back, people felt that 10x optical zoom camera is the highest inventions in camera one can achieve. But the reality is different. People are not even thinking buying camera below 1x optical zoom. Same is the case with megapixels. 8 megapixels was the limit but today camera with 8 Mega pixels is considered outdated.

More the Pixels, Worse the Image

The digital cameras means fixed lens digital cameras were facing unique problem. If you increase the megapixels limit then picture clarity gets diminished. Same difficulty was also observed in digital zoom and optical zoom. As optical and digital zoom increased, picture clarity was affected. Obviously before 5 years, doubling the megapixels capacity or doubling zoom capability for fixed lens digital camera was impossible. 

Why?

Well Gadgets are becoming more and more compact and camera is no exception to the compact taste of customers. So the compact cameras have to be small and reasonably priced. To cater this need, small image sensors were used in the cameras. Now if I want to increase the pixel count then I have to divide the sensor in smaller and smaller parts. This decreases sensitivity of camera and increases noise in the picture taken as amount of light collected by pixel is smaller.

Also if you plan to increase pixel, resolution gets increased. So fulfil this need, better lenses with higher resolution capability required which are bigger in size and hence cannot fit in small and compact cameras.

 Problem solved

Obviously, if you wanted to make fixed lens camera small pocketsize with high pixels, was next to impossible.

However, technology always keeps changing. Olympus SZ-30MR addresses these problems of lens size, pixels size and zooming.

24x zoom and 16 Mega Pixels

The zoom is optical zoom with 24x (wide). Olympus SZ-30MR uses BSI CMOS image sensor and has two image processing chips. Two image processing chips is winning point in Olympus SZ-30MR.  The 24x zoom provides you image with 16 megapixels. This was really a great experience.

Look and Feel

The look and feel of Olympus SZ-30Mr is very attractive having an excellent grip on the right hand side to hold the camera. While taking photo your thumb will go to back side of camera where a rubber grip is also provided which eases the overall camera usage to the great extent.

Resolution – 46000 dots

The rear screen resolution is of 460000dots. This screen provides ultimate quality picture.

 Multi Recording

The awesome feature of Olympus SZ—30MR is Multi Recording. This coolest feature introduced in Olympus SZ-30MR allows you take 2 photos, or 2 videos or 1 photo and 1 video simultaneously. In many cameras you could use only one more at a time either video or photo. Olympus SZ-30Mr solved this problem. To ease the usage of different modes simultaneously a red colour button provided near screen on top. When you press this button immediately, video or photo mode starts. It is very important to notice that, you cannot change exposure and focus settings while selecting other simultaneous modes. These settings have to be used in both modes and cannot be changed during multi recording.

Useful Modes –

Ø  iAuto – Similar to conventional shooting mode.

Ø  Programme Automatic - denoted with a simple camera icon on the mode dial - gives you access to the largest number of settings, including flash, macro and drive modes, ISO sensitivity, exposure compensation and the self-timer.

Ø  Scene Modes – Similar to conventional mode.

Ø  Magic Filter – Can be applied on the fly while video recording. Types - Pop Art, Pin Hole, Fisheye, Drawing, Soft Focus, Punk, Sparkle, Water colour.

Ø  Panorama – Similar to conventional panorama mode

Ø  Movie – One-touch movie record button

Ø  Multi Recording – Video clip and photo at the same time

Ø  3D Photos - In this mode, you take a photo of you, then shift the camera by a few centimetres to one side and take another shot. The SZ-30MR then combines the two pictures into a single 3D image and saves it. This photo then can be viewed on 3D compatible devices.

Ø  Micro and SuperMicro – Many digital cameras don’t provide micro mode in video mode. However, Olympus SZ-30MR has this facility.

 Magic mode’s Magic –

Types - Pop Art, Pin Hole, Fisheye, Drawing, Soft Focus, Punk, Sparkle, and Water colour.

Pin hole magic mode gives same effect as the old pin cameras used to give. Fisheye effect is also better. Fisheye effect will be good choice for landscape photography shots and gives best pictures. Various modes effects can be viewed on Drawing mode. However drawing mode has limitations and was vividly observed during review.

Soft focus is really a heart winning mode for artistic photo shoots. Pop art has become very famous especially in youngsters. You will have to decide which mode is suitable for which type of shots from your own experiences.

 Panorama Mode –

Panorama mode has become very famous since last few years. Sony cameras are known for best quality panorama shoots. Olympus SZ-30MR also has Panorama mode. There are two ways to take panorama shots – Manual and Automatic. In auto, you have to move your camera in the direction of arrow displayed on the screen. Rest of the work required for panorama is done automatically by Olympus SZ-30MR camera. In case of manual, you will have to start taking next photo from previous photo’s end.

 Flash

Flash is provided as pop up flash. On the button press present on the left hand side of lens flash pops up. The important thing noticed during review was, while taking shots in few modes at night, considerable amount of noise was introduced in the photo.

Shot to shot –

Shot to shot performance is good in Olympus SZ-30MR. Speed is 1.8 seconds. However, SZ-30MR takes few seconds more while zoom focussing. Olympus SZ-30MR claims that the frames speed as 7 screens per second. Actually the average speed is 5.8 frames per second. Nonetheless this is also extremely good and gives good performance.

Holiday Requirements –

On holiday we have 2-3 requirements. Important is zoom quality to get distant pictures and close up quality to get nearby shots. Olympus SZ-30Mr fulfils both the requirements. One more benefit is that, you don’t have to carry another video camera as video and photo shoot is done with same capability and quality is best in both.

 India Price –

24000/-  Rupees. 

Conclusion –

Cost effective and best for holidays.

Cheers…

Happy shooting!!!