Olympus 720sw Waterproof Pocket Camera
Pocket digital cameras are the way to go for the portable traveller. The problem is most of the cameras available are not waterproof. You know the problem, you’ve got a week at a tropical area, you want to see everything, your agenda calls for buzzing around the shopping zones and the beach afterwards.
Well, taking snapshots while shopping is fine but what happens when you head to the beach, slip into your trunks and dash into the water trying to grab a shot of your friends messing about? Are you going to forget about the shot or mince about like the pink panther with your hands held up to avoid any drops of water from touching your precious new toy?
Both Pentax and Olympus have recognized the need for ultra compact cameras that can be used in all vacation situations. What good is having a small pocketable digital camera that’s perfect for vacation when you can’t take it with you half the time?
Olympus’ latest entry into the small and waterproof category is the 720sw, a little unit that is both shockproof and waterproof up to 10 feet with the now pretty much standard 2.5” screen and digital image stabilization features. Really, the only thing that makes one notice are the drop proof and waterproof features.
Frankly, I hope all pocket camera makers make waterproofing a standard feature on all pocket cameras.
Some key specs:
- 7.1 Megapixel (effective), 7.4 megapixel gross, 1/2.33” CCD
- Lens 6.7 - 20.1mm (38 - 114mm equivalent in 35mm photography)
- Zoom 3x Optical + 5x Digital; 15 Total Seamless Zoom
- Aperture Range f3.5 - f5.0
- LCD 2.5” (6.4cm) Color LCD, approx. 115,000 pixels
- Focus System CCD Contrast Detection
- Focus Range Normal mode: 19.7” - infinity (0.5m - infinity)
- Macro mode: Wide: 7.9” - infinity (0.2m - infinity),
- Super Macro Mode: 2.8” - 19.7” (7cm - 50cm)
- Focus Mode iESP Auto, Spot AF
- Shutter Speed 1/1000 sec. - 1/2 sec. (up to 4 sec. in Night Scene Mode)
- ISO Auto, 64, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600 (equivalent)
- Metering Mode Digital ESP Multi-Pattern, Spot Metering
- White Balance Auto, Pre-set (Daylight, Overcast, Tungsten, and Fluorescent1, Fluorescent2, Fluorescent3)
- Exposure Compensation ±2 EV steps in 1/3 EV steps
- Recording Modes Still Image: JPEG
- Movie: QuickTime motion JPEG
- Adjustment Resolutions 3,072 x 2,304, SHQ/HQ max.
- 28 Shooting Modes:
- Up to 10 frames automatically stitchable with OLYMPUS Master software when using Olympus brand xD-Picture Card
- Sequential Shooting:High speed: 3.7 frames per second up to 11 frames in HQ mode
- Normal speed: 1.1 frames per second up to 6 frames in SQ mode
- Self timer upt to 12 seconds
- Flash
- Internal memory:19.1mb
- xD Picture Card support
- Size: 3.6” W x 2.3” H x 0.78” D (91mm x 58.7mm x 19.8mm)
- Weight:5.3 oz. (149g) without battery and media card
- Li-Ion Battery
Suggest retail is $499.99
SD Memory Cards with USB Connector
Say you're travelling in Marrakech taking in the sites, sounds and smells of the medina and taking plenty of pictures with your new digital camera.
Your memory card quickly fills up and you would like to download your pics to a computer or Flickr. What do you do?
Well, you can lug your laptop and a usb cable with you, transfer the photos to the computer to free up space and keep shooting. Maybe the next best step is to just bring a usb cable along and use the cheap internet cafes to transfer your photos to your Flickr account.
Pretty clever but here's a way to forget the cable altogether. This is about travelling light with a minimum of gear right?
Use one of the new SD memory cards which have a built in usb connector like the ones made by Sandisk. Their Ultra II SD Plus cards with USB are fast enough for most digital cameras and come in sizes from 512mb to 2gb.
Use one of these cards in your camera and when it gets full just pop into any internet cafe at your travel destination. Check your email and dump your photos into your Flickr account. No cable, no laptop needed.
If downloading your photos will take too long just have the internet shop burn them on CD for a nominal fee.
The only caveat of course is your destination must have a relatively high speed internet connection.