Olympus gets in on the Micro Four Thirds scene with its compact SLR concept

Things are ALL GO on the hot Micro Four Thirds SLR scene right now. Panasonic revealed its Lumix G1 just last week, shrinking the traditional SLR into a very fancy-looking body.

Olympus, Panasonic’s partner in the new system, has different plans. It’s using the shrunken optical internals to create a compact-styled camera that boasts the power and lens connectivity of an SLR. And a lovely little orange faux-leather band. To be honest, we’re only mentioning this because of the leather band.

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The unnamed Olympus device is, sadly, just at concept stage at the moment, so there’s a very real risk that that leather detailing will be replaced with a cheaper plastic…

Digital Summer Special: Olympus compact and DSLR cameras

Olympus was out in force at Digital Summer, showing off a line of their recent digital compact and SLR cameras. We’ve covered some of them already on Tech Digest, and most have been out for at least a couple of months, but it’s still worth taking a closer look.

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Olympus SP-570 UZ

This DSLR offers up a 20x wide optical zoom, 10 megapixel sensor, dual image stabilisation, sequential shooting at up to 13.5 fps, super macro mode, face detection, shadow adjustment, BrightCapture technology for low-light shooting, 23 preset scene modes, automated and manual settings. Unusually for a DSLR it runs on four AA batteries.

Available now priced £389.99.

Sony intros Cyber-shot S730 compact digital camera

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Sneaking in past the remains of the Christmas turkey comes Sony’s latest Cyber-shot offering. The S730 compact digital camera (not to be confused with Samsung’s offering with the same model number) offers 7.2 megapixel image capture, 3x optical zoom lens, high sensitivity ISO 1250, multi-point autofocus mode, macro settings, self-timer, flash, a 2.4-inch colour LCD screen with wide viewing angle and on-screen function guide.