Olympus MJU 1010 Review

The Olympus MJU 1010 is a 10 megapixel digital camera. It has a 7x optical zoom lens. This is a long zoom for a camera of this compact size.

The main reason for buying the MJU 1010 is to pick up a small camera with a good sized optical zoom lens. The camera is also quite straightforward and easy to use.

Outdoor 1 (Medium Zoom)
The first test shot looks pleasant in terms of brightness and colours. If you blow the picture up you will notice that focusing could be sharper and the MJU 1010 struggles to bring out detail in the lightest and darkest areas of the shot.

Outdoor 2 (No Zoom)
This test photo also falls below the best cameras when it comes to overall sharpness. There are one or two areas towards the sides of the photo that are darker than I would like to see.

Outdoor 3 (Maximum Zoom)
At full zoom the camera seems to work better than when the zoom lens is not being used at all. Although sharpness is not perfect it is an improvement on the second test shot. There is some purple fringing showing in the shot.

Outdoor 4 (Building)
All the brick work in the building confirms that the MJU 1010 could produce sharper photos. A lot will depend on the size of photos you are looking to produce. Smaller prints will not be too much of an issue, but if you wish to make full use of the 10 megapixels the camera has with large prints, you will notice the softness in some of the shots.

Outdoor Portrait
The outdoor portrait lacks a little punch in the colours. I also ran a test for this photo with the flash turned on and I preferred the shot with flash. Being so much closer in there are no real issues when it comes to focusing.

Indoor Portrait with Flash
I found the lighting a bit uneven. There are areas of the hair that are very dark. This causes some of the detail in the shot to be lost. Away from the hair, skin tones are very good and the redness apparent with some cameras is avoided by the MJU 1010.

Indoor Portrait without Flash
Out of the three portrait test shots this one is my favourite. The lighting is more even, certainly than when the flash is used indoors. Levels of definition are very good too.

Colours
In the outdoor shots the colour in the skies is strong. Aside from this there is a natural feel to most of the colours. I like the greens showing in the trees.

Macro
As with most other photos I have taken with the MJU 1010 I am struggling to say a lot about the macro shot. In terms of lightness the camera has done a good job. There is a slight purple tinge to the shot, but I would have liked to have seen a touch more definition in the photo.

ISO 400 and ISO 1600
At ISO 400 there is some softness creeping into the photo as you move out towards the edges. Noise does appear in the photo, but the camera does a fairly good job even in the darker areas. At ISO 1600 noise tends to take over.

Overall
On the whole the photos produced by the MJU 1010 are good without being anything out of the ordinary. Some extra sharpness would help.

Shutter lag times are all quite respectable. A single photo took 0.3 seconds and five photos took 8.23 seconds. When flash is turned on times increase to 0.39 seconds for a single photo and 12.51 seconds for five photos. The times with flash are very good.

It took 2.3 seconds to turn the camera on and capture a picture.

You can compare this camera to other models by taking a look at the Shutter Lag Comparison Table.

The MJU 1010 has a sloping front. This helps to make it look a little different to a typical compact digital camera. It is available in blue, silver and black.

99 x 56.3 x 25.2mm

135g

Lithium ion. A battery and charger are supplied as standard.

The camera is compatible with xD cards. Olympus has built enough memory into the MJU 1010 to store around 6 photos.

Click here to save money on xD cards..

Very Good. Looking through the features the MJU 1010 has, although it is a step up from the most basic models, it is not stuffed with every feature you can think of. This helps to make it easy to use. The menu system is a bit fragmented, but you should soon pick up where the main features and settings live.

Looks good

Photos could be sharper

There are not a great number of similar cameras around. This is because of the longer zoom lens and compact body. One camera that is a bit larger, but is along similar lines is the Panasonic DMC TZ5.

Aside form the longer zoom lens the Olympus MJU 1010 is a fairly standard digital camera. This is true in terms of both features and picture quality. Picture quality is roughly average.

Front View

Back View

Top View

Sample Menu

Although every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of the information on this site, please make sure you double check the feature set and specification at the point of purchase.

Olympus MJU 1010