Olympus mju II / Olympus Infinity Stylus Epic

Although I am used to work with more or less 'professional' equipment (or at least something as close to that as my wallet can stand), I always lacked something small and handy that I could carry with me all the time. Too many times had I tell myself: "That would be a GREAT picture..., if I only had my camera with me!". Of course you cannot carry your professional camera backpack with you all the time; even if you are a professional photographer. That slowly made me thinking about unthinkable: buying an 'idiot-camera'! What a shame! And can you make ANY good picture with SOMETHING like that? In the meantime these tiny cameras were getting better and better, and finally I spotted a few articles written by professional photographers, who obviously had the same problem as I, but had enough courage (or money to experiment) to buy one of those technological gems. Finally, after spending long hours over catalogues, photographic journals and Internet, I was ready to define my requirements: I need a tiny camera, with excellent lens with reasonable aperture, with possibilities to manipulate exposure at least to some extent (e.g., spot metering, flash-off, flash-on, etc.). The first criterion - the lens - limited my search at the first instance to single-focus cameras. I know there are really good (or, let us say, not bad) cameras with zoom lenses, but for a few reasons that did not appeal to me. Firstly, it makes the camera immediately more bulky then necessary. Secondly, although the best zoom lenses are REASONABLY good, they are always WORSE than single-focus lenses. Thirdly, only single-focus lenses have good apertures; most zooms have apertures ranging from ca. 4.5 at the widest angle to... 11 at ca. 80 to 105 mm! Finally, I wanted a camera for fast shots, without necessity to fiddle with controls and zoom back and forth. Thus, the final choice was pretty close...  Well, I forgot to mention one more criterion - I was definitely not ready to spend thousands of dollars on an idiot camera. So, even if Contax might be the best, I did not even consider buying it. Finally, two cameras remained on the battle ground: the poor-man's Contax, that is Yashica T4, and Olympus mju II. The choice between the two was really difficult! Both seemed to suit my requirements perfectly, both were in the same price range. I was ready to toss the coin, when I spotted an ad with exceptionally good price for the Olympus in my local camera store in Oregon. Next day I had my tiny camera in my pocket.

The longer I used it, the more was I convinced that this was a GOOD choice. I started with some simple pictures on Fuji Superia 400. All came out just perfect! I tried some more complicated lighting situations, such as strong backlight or scenes almost completely filled with white subjects and backgrounds - if I only was careful enough to, e.g., switch the camera to spot metering (yes, it HAS SPOT METERING!), the results were astonishingly good. That gave me enough courage to experiment with slides. The camera passed the test flawlessly! I was so glad with the results that recently I took my Olympus as a 'third body' for a trip to Africa. Of course, it was useless for taking pictures of animals, whether lions or bugs, but I would not even try to use it for those. But it was a perfect companion when climbing mountains, rambling over crowded markets and streets in towns or riding 'matatus'. Every single picture I took with this camera during the trip was at least good; certainly not all were perfect but this was usually my fault, not camera's.

Learning that you can make VERY good pictures with such a tiny and inexpensive camera was certainly fun. I liked it so much that I even wrote an article on how to make good pictures with point-and-shot cameras (Foto 11/99: 25-27). If you can read Polish, you may find some useful advices there. The first and the most important is: learn carefully the possibilities and limitations of your camera and experiment. This will be your fist step to success and enjoinment.