Olympus Mju-7010

The Olympus Mju-7010 is a 12-megapixel compact camera. It is available in pink, grey and silver, has four easily accessible shooting modes and can be used to shoot video as well as still images.

With a 7x optical zoom lens, the Mju-7010 is designed with point-and-shoot in mind. The start-up time was about two seconds, ideal for capturing those fast-moving moments on holiday or a night out.

The 2.7in screen on the rear is clear, providing a good setting for the picture-heavy menus typical of Olympus cameras. The screen must be used for composing photos, as there is no optical viewfinder.

Overall, the Mju-7010 was easy to use. It has four modes accessible from the slightly stiff rear-mounted scroll wheel: Video, Scene (a selection of 15 optimised presets), Beauty (which smoothes skin imperfections) and iAuto which chooses one of five settings automatically to suit the given environment.

All of these options performed well and the beauty mode in particular did a decent job of reducing small spots, under-eye bags and crow’s feet.

The scene presets were well thought-out, offering a wide range of presets from sports to portraits to pet photography that we were able to access quickly.

There are also some on-board effects that can be used to stylise photos, including a pin-hole camera effect that darkens the edges of your images and a loud pop-art cartoon-style effect.

Our favourite option was the impressive and easy-to-use panorama setting, which directs the user to take three shots that the camera then stitches into one.

Conversely, the video was disappointing: the resolution of 640x480 pixels is not good given what the similarly priced competition can offer. Also, in low light our pictures produced too much noise.

The Mju-7010’s image stabilisation was effective at combating camera shake while the face detection was effective for recognising up to 16 people in a shot.

The lack of options for manual fine-tuning will put off more experienced snappers but the Mju-7010 is a better camera for beginners – it’s a shame about the high retail price.