Two Beers and a Pretzel

I bought a new Olympus u-Tough 8000 – which is the replacement for the 1030sw.

The only real bummer is that the Aussie version of the 8000 doesn’t have the alarm clock option that the US version of the 1030 had.  Other than that, they’re pretty much the same camera with a useless upgrade from 10 to 12 MP and a few other fancy options that sell cameras, but don’t do me any good.  Lucky for me they use the same battery and memory card, and I get a $45 VAT refund when I leave Oz in a few weeks.

The old 1030 finally met its’ match in the bus seat on the way back from surf camp.  It’s still waterproof, but the LCD cracked on the inside.

The stupid thing is that it’s not really dead yet.  It still takes pictures just fine.  However, using the zoom more than 1/2 way shuts the camera down, and the crack in the LCD covers up the indicator that tells you how the battery is doing.

So I’ve shipped it back to Olympus to see if they’ll fix it for a cheap price.  If not, it made it thru a year of absolute abuse that few cameras could tolerate, much less function thru.

I don’t like the 8000 as much.  It feels like the colors aren’t as vibrant.  It has this annoying “Beauty” mode to remove facial wrinkles, and the very nice Available Light mode is missing from the SCN menu.

The 8000 is also missing the dial option for “Favorites” where you can store a few of your best pics.  Oddly, mine were all of girls I’d met along the trip like Ingrid, Rafa, Julia and Marianna, Erin and Katie, Holly, Meghan, Jessica, Corinna, etc…  I feel like you need to listen to David Lee Roth singing “Just a Jiggilo” as you read that list…  or possibly “I’ll be Gone in the Mornin” by Dwight Yokum.

Anyway, in spite of the demise of the 1030SW, I still highly recommend the Olympus tough cams as a great travel camera.  Nothing else I can think of would have survived as long.  The Canon G9 still takes vastly superior pics and is much better for landscapes and artsy shots, but I baby it like an SLR.