Olympus have designed the Mju Tough 6000 digital camera to be perfect for extreme weather conditions and rough activity. It looks rugged with a chunky, solid body made of metal and is quite a bit heavier than your usual compact camera.However, there are not many cameras that you can drop into water or on the hard floor and expect it to work still. The Mju 6000 is available in yellow, blue, orange and white with black and silver strips along the top and bottom.Fortunately, Olympus took our stylistic reservations on-board and revamped the entire look and feel of the 6000.
Available in three striking colours, this camera now looks like something you could attach to your surfboard without being laughed out of the waves. As for specifications, it's waterproof to 3 metres,shockproof from 1.5 meters and freeze proof to -10 degrees Celsius. During our brief hands-on session, we really loved the textured exterior and comfortable operation which the design afforded. The screen at the back, while only 2.7 inches, seemed nicer than the 1050SW as well.
It's taken most of its cues from the tougher camera — indeed, the 6000 borrows most of the 8000's features, except for one or two things. It's not crushproof, for starters, and only hits 10 megapixels rather than 12.Here's the fun bit. We took great pleasure in throwing this camera around and dropping it and submersing it under water making us feel like naughty kids for a few hours, but it was great fun. The Mju Tough 6000 really didn't care that it was being treated this way at all. The body remained in tact and original shape with no scratches, the water seems to just roll off every surface and not cloud the lens or screen at all and even shoving it in the freezer didn't phase it.
The TAP Control features worked quite well and while this feature was on it was easy to just tap the side top change flash settings but gloves still had to come off anyway to press further buttons, although with wet hands we were still able to grip the body well and tap away. The LCD screen worked really well and was very visible in all lighting conditions. The images we took were really good too with soft edges, so probably not the best to be enlarging. Colours were vibrant with good levels of detail.
FeaturesThe resilient Mju 6000 offers some great features such as being Shockproof upto 1.5m of being dropped, waterproof upto 3m and freezeproof to -10 degrees. There is also a high-precision 3.6x wide zoom lens allowing you to get close to subjects regardless of the extreme conditions. A new feature that Olympus have introduced is the TAP control feature which allows you to gently tap the camera body in certain areas to operate different function such as flash and zoom. This feature seems to have been added in case you are wearing gloves or have wet hands for example making it easier to operate. A Dual Image Stabilization features ensures that image blur is avoided and with Advanced Face Detection your friends and family will be in focus without a worry. 10 mega pixels, a 2.7" HyperCrystal LCD screen, Intelligent Auto Mode, LED Illuminator to light up underwater scenes etc and movie recording are a few more of the exciting features of the Olympus Mju Tough 6000.
