First Look: Olympus Stylus Tough-8000 Digital Camera

Hi Everyone,

Got a glimpse of some of the new Olympus digital cameras and I must say that it finally looks like Olympus has decided to step up to the plate with their lineup. For years, Olympus has had lots of models that they suggested were "unique" and so not like everything that their competition was offering in the market. Well, one man's 'unique' is another man's 'strange', and it is this reviewer's opinion that Olympus was simply off the mark with many of their previous cameras.

Olympus' new lineup, however, looks quite strong and offers a nice mix of cameras that can go toe to toe with their competition and those that boast a very clever set of features that should allow Olympus to appear separate from the rest of the crowd. My early favorite is the Olympus Stylus Tough-8000.


The Olympus Stylus Tough-8000 - excluding its somewhat awkward model number ("...yes I'd like to take a look at that tough 8000 please." ... ?) - looks like a winner to me. It boasts a 12MP maximum resolution, a 3.6x optical wide zoom lens and a 2.7-inch widescreen LCD screen on back. However, those aren't the features that give it the 'wow' factor; those are just the features that cover the basics that most digital cameras know to ask for.

What separates the Olympus Tough-8000 from even it's little brother (The Olympus Stylus Tough-6000) are things like being shockproof from up to a 6.6-foot drop, waterproof up to 33 feet and crushproof up to 220 pounds of force. This is a camera that you can take great pictures with AND not fear what might happen to those pictures before you get back home.

Another nice feature that shows Olympus has learned as they've gone further with consumer digital cameras; finally sneaking Secure Digital memory (MicroSD to be specific) product into the mix. For as long as Olympus has been making cameras it has seemed they have been on the wrong side of the wall when it came to the memory that their products used to store photos on. Before it was SmartMedia - which was mainstream but just not durable or able to be produced in higher capacities. Then, Olympus and Fuji teamed up with Toshiba to create XD picture cards... oy. They're still marketing and using XD picture cards, but the Olympus Tough-8000 now comes packaged with a MicroSD-to-XD card adapter, which will allow a consumer to purchase a much less expensive memory card and use it with this and likely other Olympus cameras. MicroSD cards can also be manufactured in higher capacities than XD cards can, so you'll be able to store more photos and transfer more conveniently.

The camera body looks great. I'm not a fan of colors when it comes to digital camera bodies and the Olympus Tough-8000 looks good while sparing us all the pinks, purples, greens and browns of the world. It's available in 3 colors: silver, black and an almost navy blue. It might not be the sleekest, fits in your teeny tiny purse, piano-gloss finish looking camera, but it is still attractive and does a good job blending the look of STRONG with the look of sophisticated.

They're showing a $399.99 retail price on the camera right now and Olympus likes to try to keep those prices consistent for a little while in the market. So expect to that or just slightly under that for several months.

Overall, I'm excited to see how this does in a trying time for retailers and digital cameras in general. I think they may have finally figured out how to be on the right side of "unique" and have a player here.

Cheers!