Not me – but the new camera I bought. I have never really used a digital camera except for a couple of cheapies. I am not soft on equipment so went looking for a more robust digital camera that I could use for work purposes and play and found the Olympus 1030 SW Tough camera.

Not only is it the crushproof, waterproof, shockproof and shakeproof, handily for the desert it is also snowproof.

I hope all the above will mean it is sandproof.

So far it has proved its worth bouncing on the dash of the troopie for a thousand or so kilometres of dirt road and only been dropped twice. Some of the local kids have used it more than me. I assume it has been dropped some more and it has handled dirty, sticky hands, kids snot and even taking one or two pictures of myself without breaking.

Now to the specs. with a 3.6 optical zoom so in real camera terms I effectively have a 28mm wide angled lens to about 100mm.. The software in the camera allows me to produce panoramic shots if I wish. It can be dropped from a height of 2 metres and go 10 metres underwater. it can take a weight of 100kg which means I can’t quite drive over it, but pretty good if packages fall or are placed on top of it. And apparently it work in temperatures as low as -10 Celsius. And it has 10 megapixels. One thing that did annoy me was the Micro SD card. Why not a normal SD card? Look here if you are a tech-nerd and need the full specs to live.

There is no viewfinder. I can’t say I like looking at a screen to take my shots but I am getting used to it. I am looking forward to testing the movie function. Perhaps a few more videos like the camels I posted about a while ago.

While not as good a picture is taken when compared to my film cameras I think I will be giving the Olympus a flogging as it can handle the rough bush trips trips and be carried easily in a pocket or in a small camera bag on my belt.

Now off to read the instruction book.

Tagged as: camera, Olympus 1030 SW, photography, Tough