Olympus MJU 9000 Digital Compact Camera Review

Olympus MJU 9000 Digital Compact Camera Review

I hate going on holidays without the right camera equipment, that usually means packing my Nikon DSLR and a few lenses, this year though I also took a new camera, the Olympus Mju 9000. When I got home I realized that I had not taken one photo with my DSLR, the reason for that, the Olympus was so versatile and easy to use and had such great features that I just wanted to keep shooting my holiday shots with it.

First Impression

Let me go through the things I like about the Mju 9000, you might find that it’s the compact camera you’ve been looking for as well. Firstly I want to recommend the 10x Optical zoom lens. Most cameras this size have 3x or 5x zooms so having 10x zoom means it’s a heap more versatile so you can get in for nice tight portrait photos without being right on top of your subject but the long end of the zoom is not the bit I loved using the most it was the wide angle end that I really appreciate. The Mju 9000s zoom starts at 28mm (in 35mm film equivalent terms). 28mm wide angle is a nice size for doing scenery shots and just gives lots more versatility than most of the zoom lenses on compact cameras in the market today.

I’ve included some shots of Trial Bay Gaol near South West Rocks taken at either end of the zoom lenses range from the same position so you can get an idea of how versatile this lens is. There is also a portrait shot taken with the zoom almost fully extended with the Gaol in the background. I used fill in flash on this shot to ad some light under the brim of the hat. Fill in flash is a great feature that’s built into almost all compact cameras but is rarely used but that is another story.

Features

The Olympus Mju 9000 has a 12 megapixel sensor so heaps more than I really needed to take the shots I wanted, the 2.7″ LCD is one of the nicest I’ve seen and made reviewing my images a pleasure.

The thing that concerned me and many people about cameras with big zoom lenses is “will I get camera shake?”
Large zooms like the 10x zoom in this Olympus can mean your images could be a little blurred caused by a combination of the magnification of the lens and a shutter speed that is not high enough to freeze the action. The Olympus Mju 9000 offers dual image stabilising to give you every chance of taking sharp images, not only does it have a variable ISO that offers sensitivity up to 1600 ISO (to increase the shutter speed) but also CCD shift technology that moves the CCD to compensate for your camera movement. The combination of these two technologies gives you the best chance at getting a good shot even in tough conditions.

New Olympus cameras now come with an XD to Micro SD card adaptor so that you can buy memory cards larger than the 2GB (the current maximum size for XD picture cards). I used the adaptor and a 4gb Micro SD card, it was quite easy and a 4GB Micro SD card was cheaper than a 2GB XD and stored over 1,200 high res images taken at 12 megapixels. The only down side is that you can only use the cameras built in panorama mode when you use an Olympus XD card.

Conclusion

To wrap up, I really enjoyed using the Olympus Mju 9000, it was small and easy to carry around and had all the features that I needed to capture the scenes and portraits I wanted.
You may end up like I did leaving your SLR in it’s bag next time you travel.

About the Author

This article was contributed by Geoff Porter. Geoff is the Regional Manager of the Eastmon group of stores and shoots weddings professionally when time permits. He is a keen photographer and tests many of the cameras in the field and is an associate of the Tamworth store.

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