Olympus mju 850 SW

I just bought the Olympus U 1030 SW camera (10MP and fully water proof etc...) in the thought that it would be useful to have a camera that could take a battering and take pictures where other cameras would fail to operate. I was prepared to take a hit in image quality in order to have this 'go anywhere' feature...BUT be warned - the image quality it absolutely atrocious, terrible metering, a lot of noise at 100 iso (forget 400!), the sound on the video's is muted at best and the XD cards take an age to write the images, then there's the 10 second limit on videos at VGA 30FPS resolution (unless using the XD 'H' cards - max 1 GB! which are hard to find). All in all this entire range of cameras are very poor at best when comparing directly to other cameras in it's price range - the Canon Ixus 860 IS wipes the floor with it as far as image quality goes (to be expected).

But I suppose that I shouldn't ignore the killer feature of this camera - shooting underwater. If you absolutely have to have a camera that can shoot and film underwater, on a budget (until it leaks and breaks - as they all seem to do eventually), then get the 1030SW. It will keep the kids happy and if your not that bothered about image quality then go for it.

I suggest you buy the Limux or the Ixus and get a good case and take care of it more and invest in a proper underwater case.