Fun in the Sun: Olympus Stylus 550WP

Seven waterproof digital cameras

<<Olympus Stylus Tough 6000 | Fujifilm Z33WP>>

Olympus 550WP

If all you're concerned about is having a camera that can stand up to a little water, Olympus thought of you when they designed the Stylus Water 550WP. This non-shockproof, non-freezeproof digital camera can handle depths up to 10 feet, and that's it. Before their line of everything-proof cameras, that was enough for most of the market. The Olympus 550WP's other major feature is its low price, coming in at under $200. Still, it includes a 2.5-inch LCD, face detection, and Intelligent Auto mode.


Waterproof:	10 feet
Shockproof:	N/A
Freezeproof:	N/A
Crushproof:	N/A
Resolution:	10.0 Megapixels
Lens:	3.0x zoom (38-114mm eq.)
LCD size:	2.5 inch
ISO:	64-1600
Shutter:	4-1/1000
Max Aperture:	3.5
Mem Type:	xD/Mini SD
Battery:	Custom LiIon
Dimensions:	3.7x2.4x0.8in (94x62x22mm)
Weight:	5.3 oz (150 g)
MSRP:	$180
Availability:	02/2009

What it lacks is a wide-angle lens, ranging from 38-114mm, and there's no optical image stabilization; though the Olympus 550WP will raise the ISO to compensate for low light, something Olympus calls "Digital Image Stabilization." Don't pay that much attention.

Look and feel. Available in blue and black, the Olympus 550WP is an attractive little camera, more pocket friendly than most of the others. Its lens is well protected inside the protruding circle, ringed by metal, and covered by a metal door that slides open upon powerup. A small bulge on the front serves as the only major grip, weakly assisted by 12 small bumps on the back. Still, the 5.3 ounce (150g) Olympus 550WP is easy enough to hold even when wet.

The flash, unfortunately, is easy to mistake as a finger grip, and I found myself covering it often.

Controls. The shutter and power buttons are quite small, and the shutter button is particularly mushy, making it difficult to discern half-press from full-press.

Buttons on the back are decent, but the four-way nav buttons are probably too small for those with larger thumbs. The zoom rocker is also small and slow to react.

Switching modes is cumbersome with the Olympus 550WP, because it's done with a single button rather than a dial as on the other two Olympus models. It's theoretically easy to just press the button to cycle through the five options, but the icons flash and stutter as they move, making it look like the 550WP is having a hard time with the operation. It fits with the rest of the camera's operation, unfortunately.

Click to view movie. AVI player required.

Tip: Watch for bubbles. The Olympus 550WP had a tendency to capture a bubble in its lens housing, dramatically illustrated here. Large and small bubbles can stick to all of the cameras reviewed here, though, so be sure to shake them off right after you submerge. And when you re-emerge, it's good to shake off the water droplets. See our article "Tough/Waterproof Cameras: Care, Feeding, and Exposure" for more waterproof camera tips.

Shooting. The Olympus 550WP is the most difficult camera to shoot with of this roundup. Shortly after distributing three cameras among my three children to test, my four-year-old son William swam toward me holding the 550WP up, "This one doesn't work very good." I thought that summed up my experience with the camera quite well. You can see that moment captured in the image at left. (Fortunately, the Olympus Tough 8000 more than made up for its lesser siblings' shortcomings, and all the kids liked it just fine.)

The Olympus 550WP's performance comes close to the 1050SW's. It's slow to wake up and start focusing, it's very slow to register your full shutter press, slow to capture the image -- especially if flash is involved, and slow to save your image. It reminded me of digital camera performance circa 1999. That's not good.

Our test numbers bear that out. The Olympus 550WP takes 0.89 seconds to focus at wide angle, plus a full 1.37 seconds to focus at telephoto. Prefocused shots are better, but still fairly slow at 0.36 seconds. Even powerup and shutdown times are long, taking 3.3 seconds to start up, and 2.2 seconds to shut down.

As a result, the Olympus 550WP was just not fun to use. I managed to get a shot or two, but image quality was insufficient to make much effort, it turns out. Corners don't look bad, applying the expectation for softness, but when you move your eye to the center, it doesn't get any better. Something about how the camera processes images makes all edges soft and uneven, to put it mildly.

QVGA movie. To give the Olympus 550WP a fair shake, William creates some action for the Movie mode. Not bad. (Click image to download 1.7MB AVI file.)

Movie mode works well enough, limited to 640x480 or 320x240 at 30 or 15 fps, but the audio isn't very good, and sunlight reflections create streaks that go from the top to the bottom of the frame. The Olympus 550WP also doesn't include an audio speaker for movie playback, so your videos are mute until you get back to the computer.

One surprising bright spot is the quality of the lens, which seems pretty sharp from the corners to the center; unfortunately, the image processing produces rough edges and blotches where there should be none, and noise suppression softens the images such that even the lowest ISO setting could only manage an 8x10-inch print.

Overall, the best thing about the Olympus 550WP is that it's waterproof. But because its main function -- taking snapshots -- is slower than any camera on the market, there's not much reason to recommend it.

How the Olympus 550WP fared:

Your intended use

Purpose: The Olympus 550WP's slow lens and over-aggressive noise suppression make it suitable only for bright daylight photography. Its 10-foot submersion rating makes it a good choice for swimming, snorkeling, and other activities near water.
Kids: When I first started working with the 550WP in sunlight, I wasn't sure the camera was even on. Squinting showed that the image on the LCD wasn't a reflection, and I was able to frame a shot, but it is the worst among the cameras tested for daylight performance. Take William's word for it, it's not for the kids.
Ruggedness: The Olympus 550WP is not shockproof.
Cold: It's not freezeproof either, but because it's waterproof, you can feel more secure putting it inside a jacket while in cold weather because your sweat won't damage it.

Your expected output size

Print sizes: For a 10-megapixel camera, the Olympus 550WP doesn't deliver a lot detail even at ISO 100. The largest print size we can recommend is 8x10, while most of the other cameras in this roundup are capable of decent 13x19-inch prints. (You could certainly hang a low-ISO 13x19 inch print on the wall, but it will look soft and lacking detail if anyone walks up to examine it closely.)
Landscape: The Olympus 550WP squashes noise in its images pretty well, but loses detail in the process. It does better in this regard than the other bargain model in this roundup (the Fuji Z33WP), but falls well short of the best waterproof models we've reviewed, let alone the best dry-land digicams. On the other hand, if you don't have the budget for a higher-end waterproof model, the 550WP will at least let you bring back scenery shots good for printing up to 8x10 inches that you might have missed entirely if you didn't want to risk your non-waterproof camera on a boat trip, etc.

Versatility

As digital cameras go, the Olympus 550WP is inexpensive, even among those that aren't waterproof. But all the quality was put into the waterproofing, with little attention to making the 550WP a good, reasonably fast camera. If capture speed isn't a big deal to you, and all you need is a waterproof camera, the Olympus 550WP will bring back images good enough to post online and make relatively small prints from, but as a daily carry camera, you'll do better with other sub-$200 cameras.

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