Olympus Tough cameras are awful – don't get one

It is difficult to make a superb camera, like the Panasonic Lumixs everyone uses; but easy to make an average one.

Olympus however have succeeded in making a camera which is awful, really awful, verging on offensive. Quite an achievement. Using it gives me a rash.

It takes pish pictures, it needs to lie on its back to charge (WTF?!), it takes about 15 seconds to fire up, it has no battery life, it is heavy as hell, it is expensive, and it ISN’T EVEN TOUGH!

/rant

Mine has been brilliant.
Ta.

Can you be more specific? All tough cameras have pretty poor image quality and fiddly controls, IME, but they are still useful.

CFH +1 mines great, can throw it in the rucksack and not worry about it, allays there when I want to take a picture.

But you can do the same with a Lumix, is the point. And the Lumix will take pictures as opposed to crayon images/etch-a-sketch. And not have to be balanced delicately with books in order to charge properly.

Mine charges normally, no balancing required
Takes some great photos, some rubbish ones. Sometimes I’m a good snapper, sometimes I’m not
It’s bombproof
YOU CAN TAKE A PICTURE FROM INSIDE A PINT OF BEER WITH IT, FFS! 😉

Everyone I know who has one of these ruggedised cameras has ended up scratching the clear lens cover… My Ixus on the other hand is tough (without being indestructible to be fair) and has a little cover to protect that part, and therefore can be scratched to hell and still work perfectly.

I bought my Fiance one, could be a TG810 I can’t remember, it seems great. Underwater pictures, battery lasts fine and the quality is as good as I’d expect from a compact.

I’m with jhw – on my third (so they do at least honour warranty well 😀 ) but the quality of the pictures compared to the comparible Lumix is noticably poorer (friend has the Lumix)

I’ve got an olympus tough camera from about 3 or 4 years ago, it takes reasonable (but not brilliant) pictures, charges fine, battery last for ages, starts up fast enough. Its been down to 10m under salt water and has taken pictures from inside a pint of beer, been bashed about etc. Still working fine, no scratches on the lens.

Mrs has a Lumix and the picture quality on indoors / low light shots is absolutely terrible. So grainy you can barely see what is going on.

And not have to be balanced delicately with books in order to charge properly.

Sounds like you have a lemon. Shouldn’t do that so send it back for warranty. Also mine fired up quickly and battery life was good so long as I wasn’t using the flash a lot.

Not sure about the comment on the clear lens cover… mine had a plastic shield, never got scratched as it was set back into the camera body.

I’d buy another one but some one gave me a pentax compact – remains to be seen how many excursions this lasts.

Owner of a mju tough and a couple of Lumix cameras here (plus an Olympus bridge camera).

The Lumix take better pictures, and the auto mode and flash seems to work better. However, tough camera is indeed pretty tough and has a slide across metal cover for the lens. My take is that there’s compromise to hide the lens away, but the kids can take the camera swimming, beaches, in canoes (with the float strap!) etc.

No issues with battery life and charging. Extra batteries are cheap (if you don’t buy Olympus).

EDIT: Mine’s an 8010, and I must try the beer photos 🙂

I have a stylus 850 and it’s been faultless, despite being dropped down mountains and being lost on the bottom of the sea for 20 mins.

Have you ridden down the stairwell at work yet, or are you less tough than an Olympus camera?

I have sold the FS bike I’d have done it on! So it’ll have to be on a hardtail.

That and I have found the job market to dictate that I behave. Who knows, could still snap yet. Climbing has been my deathwish outlet over the winter, before long no doubt it’ll be a motorbike.

My Olympus sylus 850 Tough-ish didn’t survive a 1m drop onto concrete :sigh: pictures were ok, start up was reasonable. All in all it was a meh camera. Absolutely blown away in almost everything except battery life and probably toughness by a mid range Lumix, which seems proper flimsy.

my 1030 sw has been brilliant!

survived years of abuse

picture quality isnt the best, it struggles in low light but its far from terrible ( i steal the missus SLR if i want super nice pics) but most importantly i can throw it in my camelback and know itll work every time i pull it out!

couldnt do this on the slr

and this ones for the ladies…..

I have the slidy covered one from a few years ago, I’m not too impressed either, the pentax w60 it replaced was definitely better. The slidy cover opens in your pocket and the lens gets scratched, eventually somehow I’ve bent the slidy cover too. Takes too long to fire up to take decent pictures of anything other than landscapes.

my one’s been great too.

Mrs has a Lumix and the picture quality on indoors / low light shots is absolutely terrible. So grainy you can barely see what is going on.

And just what is going on?

It takes pish pictures, it needs to lie on its back to charge (WTF?!), it takes about 15 seconds to fire up, it has no battery life, it is heavy as hell, it is expensive, and it ISN’T EVEN TOUGH!

I’ve got a TG6200 (or something). It isn’t perfect, but it’s not as bad as you make out with yours.

It starts up in about two seconds; charges any way up (of course), battery life is fine, and the pictures are nice enough and seem to get nice colours even from overcast scenes.

Only real problem I have with it is when zoomed in a bit it can’t lock focus on distant things if there isn’t much light or contrast. Annoying. Other slightly annoying thing is you can’t choose where in the frame it focuses, but then it’s not a high end camera.

I am happy with it as a complement to my SLR BUT (and this is a big but) I only paid about 100 € for it. No way is it worth £300 or whatever they are full price.

TG610 here and as mentioned by others, whilst not taking the BEST photos, they are still pretty good when you have decent light and the fact you can take pictures anywhere means they will be a damn slight better than no photo at all! I dropped mine down about 20m of the north face of Tryfan and it came out unscathed (annoying scramble down to get it though…). I kind of wish id got a Panasonic as the IQ looks better, but still pleased with they Oly.

I’m very happy with the lumix for general mtb use.
Agree that it struggles in low light a bit.
I have a few scratches on the lens but they don’t affect the pics.
It has been dropped a number of times, and I doubt a regular camera or phone would have survived the hits it has taken.

sony tx5 takes fairly decent low light pictures and is waterproof, toughish etc small and looks like a normal camera, takes a good picture, not cheap though occasionaly they pop up at bargin prices.

my mju is awesome. We’ve used it sea kayaking, river kayaking, swimming in fresh and salt water. It’s been to several deserts, stood on by a horse, dropped from a horse. Strapped to my bike in Vietnam for several days as well as couple of weddings!

It can’t compete with a top end camera in terms of the pictures but that is not what it is about. It’s the only camera I’ve had that has lasted more than 18 months.

Mine mju is fine too. The bombproofness makes up for the low light level issues. A very useful camera.

Just to highlight how $hitty the Olympus Tough is, I’ve just got back these photos taken with my 1965 Spotmatic which cost about £40. Look at the side-by-side comparison with the Olympus Tough photos:

Spotmatic:

Tough:

Spotmatic:

Tough:

Spotmatic:

Tough:

The Tough ones look as if they could have been taken with my mobile phone camera. Actually my Blackberry camera has considerably better resolution.