The Olympus Stylus 400 is a 4 Megapixel Point and Shoot Digital Camera!
Written: Jun 21 '03 (Updated Aug 30 '03)
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Pros: Durable, weatherproof, easy to use with great photo quality!
Cons: No sound for the movies!
The Bottom Line: A nice camera for the person on the go, made to point and shoot and place in your shirt pocket or a purse.
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| surferdude7's Full Review: Olympus Stylus 400 Digital Camera |
The Olympus Stylus 400 is the big brother of the Olympus Stylus 300 Digital Camera. Not many differences between the two except for the resolution.
Stylus 400 verses Stylus 300
The only differences I can find in the Stylus 400 verses the Stylus 300 is the main one of megapixels. The Stylus 300 has a CCD Imager of 3.24 megapixel effective and 3.34 megapixel gross. The Stylus 400 has a CCD Imager of 4 megapixel effective and 4.23 megapixel gross.
The Stylus 400 gives you the same resolutions as the Stylus 300 plus a bigger and nicer size of 2272 x 1704.
The Stylus 300 has a sliding lens cover in silver and the Stylus 400 Digital is in gold.
Now if theses features are worth an extra $100 over the price of the Stylus 300 then this is what you are looking for.
Weatherproofing
The Stylus 400 and 300 are both weatherproof, not waterproof. This means they are weather resistant in the rain or the sunshine, you can not take the Stylus camera under water.
Olympus uses a metal body with a plastic body on the inside for double protection from the weather. They use special rubber materials to prevent moister from entering the camera.
Power Source
The camera can be powered by the optional D-7AU 4.8 Volt AC adapter or the included battery. You get a rechargeable B-10L (3.7v 1090mAh) Lithium Battery with an included charger.
Power usage can be determined in many ways depending on the use of the camera. When using the LCD all the time after a full charge the battery gave up at 64 photos taken all in the 2272 x 1704 resolution. Now in the same resolution using the optical viewfinder and turning off the LCD produced 114 photos from a fully charged battery. All photo shots were without the use of the flash which would eat up the battery much faster.
The first charge took about three hours the second charge took a little over two hours. I highly recommend buying a second rechargeable battery so you have a charged one at all times.
Storage
The Olympus Stylus 400 uses an xD-Picture Card for the storage of photos and movies. Included with the camera is a 16 megabyte xD Picture card giving you photo storage from 5 to 99 photos depending on your resolution settings.
Movies and Photos
Yes the Stylus 400 lets you snap of photos and take movies also. The downfall for the movies is, there is no sound! There are two sizes of movies that can be taken, 320 x 240 and 160 x 120 in the QuickTime Motion JPEG. Movie quality is fair!
There are six photo sizes available plus several different quality settings for each size. Photos are saved in the JPEG format and come in the following resolutions, 2272 x 1704, 2048 x 1536, 1600 x 1200, 1280 x 960, 1024 x 768 and 640 x 480.
The Lens
The Stylus 400 has an aspherical glass 3x optical zoom lens with 5 elements in 3 groups. It is a 5.8mm - 17.4mm lens that is equivalent to a 35mm camera of 35mm - 105mm. it has a 3x optical zoom built-in it and provides a 4x digital zoom to give you a total zoom of 12x.
Aperture Range F3.1 Wide-angle to F5.2 Telephoto. Shutter speed is from 1/1000 of a second to ½ a second and up to 4 seconds in the Night Mode.
The LCD and Viewfinder
The LCD is a 1.5inch color TFT LCD with134,000 pixels. The LCD is one of the ways to take photos with, other uses include 4 Times Enlargement of Photos, Slide Show, Scene Rotation, editing and camera settings.
A nice optical viewfinder is also included for photo taking, though the digital zoom doesn’t work through the optical viewfinder, only the LCD.
The Flash
the Stylus 400 has a built-in flash with a range of 8 inches to 8.5 feet in the wide-angle and 8 inches to 6 feet in the telephoto. Not a far flash at all, though an external flash can be added.
The flash modes are On/Off, Red-eye reduction to help take the red out of the flash shots from the eyes, Auto Flash for low and backlight and Fill-in.
Charging time is less then 6 seconds.
Other Specifications
ISO sensitivity, Automatic (80 - 320 equivalent)
Focusing System is TTL system (contrast detection)
Focusing Standard AF 20 inches – Infinity
Focusing Macro Mode 8 inches – 20 inches
Auto-Connect USB for quick and easy image transfer to computer
Epson Print Image Matching II compatible
DPOF (Digital Print Order Format)
USB Connector (Auto-Connect), Video Out, DC input
Image Effects - Black and white, Sepia, Resize
Panorama using Olympus brand xD-Picture Card
Setting Memorization
Sequence - 1 frames per second with more than 4 frames in HQ mode.
White Balance System - iESP Multi-pattern Auto TTL Pre-set manual settings of Daylight, Overcast, Tungsten and Fluorescent.
Self-timer/Remote 12-sec. delay
Date/Time Calendar - Simultaneous recording into image data with the calendar automatic up to the year 2099.
Video Out - Video out signal for NTSC or PAL format.
Exposure Compensation of +/- 2.0 EV in 1/3 EV steps
Calendar up to the year 2099
Compatible with Windows 98 rev2/ME/2000 Pro/XP Mac OS 8.6-9.22/OSX
Overall
The Olympus Stylus 400 is almost identical to the Stylus 300 except a few features and the 4 megapixels over the 3.24 megapixels of the Olympus Stylus 300 Digital Camera.
The photo quality is incredible with good clear vivid colors. After taking nearly 300 photos all turned out beautifully except two, one was my fault on not auto focusing first and the other was when the flash did not reach far enough causing a very dark photo.
From the time you turn it on to when you are ready to take a shot only a few seconds pass. Recycle time varies depending on usage, for most bright outdoor shots at 2272 x 1704 the recycle time is less than two second, for indoor shots using the flash it takes from 4 to 6 seconds. Setting the camera to 1280 x 960 reduces the recycle time to about a second for outdoors and 4 to 5 seconds with a flash.
No sound for the movies is a bummer, why even include movies that don’t seem to produce digital quality. One other gripe is the small 16MB xD card included, come on a 4 megapixel camera needs at least a 64MD card.
Overall it is a great built to last little camera that you can take anywhere and not have to worry about the weather. The Stylus 400 lists for $499 and the Stylus 300 lists for $399. For $100 less I find the Olympus Stylus 300 Digital Camera to be the better bargain. If you need a 4 megapixel camera then the Stylus 400 is a great little point and shoot digital camera. If all your printer can print is the 8 inch by 10 inch size then I have found all Olympus cameras that I have used prints an excellent color photo by the 1280 x 960 resolution.
Please check out my review on the Olympus Stylus 300 Digital Camera for more details of both cameras.
~~~ Print your digital photos for 18 cents each; Click on Me to find out how! ~~~
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Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 499
This Camera is a Good Choice if You Want Something... Easy Enough for Anyone to Use
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