Olympus Mju Digital 600
(Olympus Stylus 600 in the USA)
Review Date: October 27th 2005
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Features
The Olympus Mju Digital 600 has a 6.4 megapixel, 1/2.5 inch CCD that delivers 6.0 effective megapixels. There are 9 image quality/size settings available ranging from SHQ (2816 x 2112 pixels) to SQ2 (640x480), which are recorded as JPEGs. There are no RAW or TIFF formats. The camera's 3x optical zoom lens is equivalent to a 35-105mm lens on a 35mm format camera. There is also a 5x digital zoom should you feel the need to use it. The camera has 8MB internal memory and supports xD-Picture Card memory cards up to 1GB in size. The Olympus Mju Digital 600 is available in three colours, silver, dark blue and red, and it has a weatherproof body so that it is not damaged by water spray from any direction.
The Olympus Mju Digital 600 offers an Auto exposure mode and 23 different scene modes (Portrait, Landscape with Portrait, Landscape, Sports, Night Scene, Night Scene with Portrait, Available Light Portrait, Cuisine, Beach & Snow, Self Portrait, Self Portrait with Self Timer, Indoor*, Behind Glass, Museum, Document, Auction, Candle*, Sunset, Fireworks, Shoot & Select 1*, Shoot & Select 2, Underwater Wide, Underwater Macro) plus an Image Blur mode. The maximum aperture is f3.1 (wide) – f5.2 (tele), and the shutter speed range is 4 secs. – 1/1000 sec. There are 6 ISO speeds ranging from 64 to 2500 and an Auto option. There are 6 different White Balance presets to choose from (Tungsten, overcast, sunlight, fluorescent light 1,2,3), plus an Auto setting. The camera offers exposure compensation in ± 2 in 1/3 EV stops. The Olympus Mju Digital 600 offers 2 different auto-exposure metering options - Digital ESP and spot.
The Olympus Mju Digital 600 has a normal shooting mode (still), self-timer (10 seconds), and a burst mode, which allows you take up to take up to 1.3 frames/sec up to card capacity in SHQ mode or 4.3 frames/sec (but only using the 1600 x 1200 pixel image size). There is also a Panorama mode but only when using an Olympus xD-picture Card. There are 3 different colour modes on offer - colour, black and white and sepia. The Super Macro setting allows you to focus on subjects that are as close as 7cms, and there is also a Macro option (20cms). As well as normal auto-focus, the camera offers spot autofocus. The built-in flash has a guide number of 6.5 and offers 4 different modes; Auto (automatic activation in low and backlight), red-eye reduction, fill-in (forced activation) and off (no flash). The in-camera red-eye removal automatically recognises red-eye and lets you remove it immediately via the LCD screen.
To compose your images, you can use the LCD monitor - there is no optical viewfinder. The Olympus Mju Digital 600 has a 2.5 inch colour TFT LCD monitor which has 115,000 pixels and BrightCapture Technology which gives an improved view especially in dark surroundings. The Olympus Mju Digital 600 can record movies with sound at 3 different settings (SHQ ( 640 x 480 pixels), HQ (320 x 240 pixels ), SQ (160 x 120 pixels)) all at 15 frames per second. Video is recorded in the QuickTime Motion JPEG format. The length of the video is only limited by the size of the memory card that you are using. A histogram is available in both shooting and playback mode. The Olympus Mju Digital 600 supports both DPOF and PictBridge standards.
The camera's dimensions are 97 (W) x 55 (D) x 26.5 (H) mm, and it weighs 128.5g without the battery and storage card fitted. The camera is powered by either the supplied rechargeable lithium-ion battery or the 4.8V AC adapter. There is a plastic tripod mount in the right corner of the bottom of the camera.
Finally, the standard box kit contains a USB cable, wrist strap, rechargeable lithium-ion battery, A/V cable, battery charger, manuals and a CD-ROM(s) with OLYMPUS Master software for Windows and Macintosh. Note that Olympus have chosen not to supply a memory card. The Olympus Mju Digital 600 does have 8Mb internal memory, but you can only store 2 images at the highest quality setting. You will therefore need to invest in some xD-Picture cards to store your images on.
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PhotographyBLOG is a member of the DIWA organisation. Our test results for the Olympus Mju Digital 600 have been submitted to DIWA for comparison with test results for different samples of the same camera model supplied by other DIWA member sites.