Olympus mju III 150, it’s never too late.
As the Canon Classic and the Pentax 24EW (pronounced 2-4-EEEEEeeeewwwww) fought it out to be the supreme irrelevant the Olympus mju III was waiting for it’s moment. In a move reminiscent of Doc Brown it has vualted forward from 2003 and staked it’s claim to be the preeminent irrelevant camera from around the turn of the last century. It’s 37.5-150mm (really 1/2 a mm wider you coun’t have rounded?) lens is something to behold. That’s 150mm in a Point and shoot! I’m not aware of any PS film cameras that had a longer lens.
So why wouldn’t it just win hands down, it’s lens is the longest? The reason is that it lacks much of the control that the Pentax and Canon have such as exposure compensation and that neat feature of automatic zoom for portraits. Features like that really help when your trying to be the best of the abandoned. And the Olympus is champagne coloured, please that is so 2000. The Canon and the Pentax are a “real” camera colour silver, which isn’t really a colour because it’s just a reflection…..
So how did it perform? It took some getting used to because it seemed to want to use the flash all the time every time. This was annoying and required me to poke at teeny little buttons until the flash symbol was off every time I turned the camera on (camera on-flash off-camera off-flash on-camera on-flash off) I think you get the idea. The one feature it has and luckily is useful is the spot metering.
The results though were good, again if good had stayed the same since 2003 but good is better now than it was then, (flash-off) After all this which one would I choose you might ask if you cared. The thing is they all have a certain charm. The Pentax for it’s control and 24mm wide lens, the Canon for it’s looks and image quality and the Olympus for it’s 150mm long lens. If you thought choosing a camera a decade ago was hard it’s far worse now. There are more categories of cameras and more cameras in each category and new one replace old ones at a rate that even the all mighty internet can’t keep up with.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this little blast from the resent past, and take a moment to reflect just how much has changed between 2003 and 2013 (note if it isn’t 2013 when you read this ignore that)