Digital Cameras for Paddlers
Stylus 400 Digital, Olympus
People who are familiar with the weatherproof Stylus series of film cameras will recognize the compact shape and "clamshell" lens cover of this Olympus digital. The lens cover is a great feature for keeping off water drops while the camera is in stowage or until you're ready to shoot. The camera has an all-weather metal chassis and an f/3.1-5.2, 3x (35-105mm) zoom lens. Shutter speeds are 1/1000 to 1/2 second in auto, and 1/1000 to 4 seconds in night-scene mode. The weatherproofing is JIS Grade 4, which states that it is protected against splash from any direction. As with the A80, the 4-MP CCD gives a 2272x1704-pixel image, for quality prints to 8.5x11.
The Stylus 400 is easy to use. Sliding the protective cover off the lens turns it on, and by the time you lift to shoot (about three seconds), it's ready to go. The slender (3.8 x 2.2 x 1.3 inch) shape-no bigger than a bar of soap-stows readily in a PFD pocket. Outdoors, the LCD is easy to see in overcast light. In direct sunlight I had some difficulty. You can adjust LCD brightness in the menu, but at certain light angles I still resorted to the optical viewfinder.
The camera is packed with features, including seven shooting modes and options for exposure compensation, metering, white balance, flash, and many others. Since you're likely to be using the same settings over and over again while paddling, there is a save-settings feature, so when you turn the camera back on, they'll all be there, ready to go. You can turn off the 1.5-inch LCD and use the optical viewfinder to conserve the battery with a push of a single button. On day trips this may not be necessary, though, because the proprietary rechargeable lithium battery stores a good bit of energy. Charging from the supplied battery charger takes about two hours.
At the highest quality level, you can't get more than one image in continuous mode, and it takes four to five seconds before you can shoot again. When the camera is set at second-highest quality-but still at 4 MP-the time between shots drops to about a second for four continuous images, and the quality is still very good. If you set it to the lowest quality (640x480), you get a little less than two frames a second for dozens of images.
Color rendition is excellent, and I particularly liked the skin tones in outdoor light. Most of the backside buttons are small. I couldn't always feel whether I'd depressed them, but they can be operated with gloved hands. One gripe I have about the Olympus 400 is with the image-erase functions. It took four button presses to erase an image and eight button presses to clear the whole card.
The camera comes with a remote control, the RM-2, a nice touch, which appears to have the same weatherproof rating as the camera. It's rated to trigger the shutter from 15 feet, but I found that it worked at a distance of 30. I mounted the Olympus 400 on the bow of my kayak to get some paddling self-portraits. Using the RM-2, I found that the time delay of about three seconds gave me enough time to click the remote and resume paddling for an action shot. Solo paddlers in particular should love this feature.
The camera weighs seven ounces with battery. It comes with a Li-Ion battery and charger, 16MBxD Memory, A/V and USB port and cable, wrist strap, and Camedia Master 4.1 software and reference guide.
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