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Olympus has been making waterproof and shockproof compact cameras since 2006, and has become pretty good at it by now. The latest incarnation of the type is this, the mju-Tough 8000, an uncompromisingly rugged compact camera that's waterproof to a depth of 10m and tough enough to survive being dropped from a height of two metres, crushed by 100kg weight and frozen to -10 centigrade. Its photographic specification is just as impressive, with a 12-megapixel 1/2.33-inch CCD, 3.6x zoom lens and 2.7-inch 230k LCD monitor. The mju 8000 currently sells for around £280.

The overall design of the Olympus waterproof models hasn't changed much since the 720 SW. The mju 8000 has a strong all-metal body and a rugged industrial-looking style, with exposed Allen-key bolt heads (largely cosmetic) and brushed steel trim. It's a surprisingly slim camera, measuring 95 x 61.7 x 21.5 mm, but it is heavy for its size, weighing a little over 200g including battery and card. When switched off the lens is covered by a metal shutter, and the overall build quality is excellent, although the shiny front panel is a bit prone to scratches and fingermarks.


Apart from its off-road capabilities the mju 8000 is a fairly straightforward pocket compact, with mostly automatic operation. It features the iAuto automatic scene recognition function, which works reliably, as well as a selection of scene modes including several underwater modes. The controls are small, fiddly and poorly labelled, and would be difficult to operate underwater or while wearing gloves, but the mju 8000 does have a unique feature which seeks to alleviate this problem. It has accelerometers built in which can activate certain functions when the camera body is tapped in various directions. Tapping the back enters review mode, tapping the right brings up the flash menu, while tapping the left enters macro mode. It would be better if it was the scene mode menu, but it does work surprisingly well. Another interesting feature is the built-in depth/altitude gauge, but since it can only be calibrated to and accuracy of 200m it's of limited use.

The mju 8000 performs well, with a shot-to-shot time of 2.3 seconds, and a continuous shooting rate of approximately one frame per second. The autofocus is fast and accurate, the flash is powerful with excellent frame coverage, and the monitor is sharp, bright and non-reflective enough to use even in bright sunlight. As with most underwater compacts the flash is of limited use in most sea water due to light scattering, but it's good for close range.

Image quality is also fairly good, although not without its problems. Under normal use exposure and colour rendition are very good, and the lens produces good sharp images, but images do look over-sharpened. Image noise is also a problem, with significant noise at 400 ISO and a complete loss of saturation in yellow and green at 800 ISO, which would cause obvious problems when shooting underwater.

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