By Alex Villafania
INQUIRER.net

ONLY a few things would make a splash buff blush, and among them is getting a camera that can be taken underwater, be frozen down to below five degrees Celsius, and be dropped from a height of 1.5 meters (shoulder length).

This sounds familiar because Olympus already did this with the mju 725 about three years ago. Then it followed up with the mju 750 in 2006 and now, the company has recently introduced the mju 790 SW. So far, the mju 790 is the most high-tech all-terrain consumer camera from Olympus and it certainly lives up to the hype of the best underwater camera in the market.

Two months ago, I was able to test the mju 770 by sinking it in a bucket of water and chucking it inside my freezer. This time the mju 790 SW took a more sustained test when I brought it to Miniloc island in El Nido, Palawan. Of course, that’s the juicy part — and here’s an underwater video I took to show the mju 790 SW in action.

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By Alex Villafania
INQUIRER.net

FEW digital camera companies make products that are resistant to shock. Fewer still make camera models that are waterproof. The rare breeds make digital cameras that are shock- and waterproof. Japanese firm Olympus already had a product that could be truly called a bring-anytime-anywhere digital camera, the Mju Stylus 720SW, launched a year ago.

However, Olympus took it a notch higher when it released the Mju Stylus 770SW a year later. This particular model retains much of the same form factor as its older brethren, the 720SW, but now it comes in three types of industrial type colors (titanium gray, bronze and royal blue). Likewise, the 770SW also has much of the same features as the 720SW with a lot of new add-ons, particularly its antifreeze feature that allows the 770SW to work in weather as cold as 10 degrees below zero without its internal electronic components ever freezing up or its lens and LCD cracking.

The first thing one would notice with the 770SW is its solid but surprisingly lightweight body. For such a small device (91.8 millimeters by 59.2 mm by 20.6 mm) it can withstand external forces most digital cameras its size and even bigger could not. Olympus makes several claims regarding the unit, particularly being shock-proof at a height of five feet, waterproof at 33 feet, freeze-proof at negative 10 degrees Celsius and crush-proof at 100 kilograms (that’s the weight of almost two men). Normally, no one would want to do extreme stress testing on any electronic device unless allowed by the manufacturer (in my case, distributor Axis Global) but I was tempted to do so — of course with a little control.

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