New record-breaking cameras from Olympus

After Kodak's 24x optical zoom monster which was unveiled yesterday just in time for CES, Olympus has gone one better with the announcement of the SP-590UZ — the world's largest optical zoom compact at 26x.

The SP-590UZ boasts the world's longest optical zoom in a compact camera. (Credit: Olympus)

This record-breaking camera features a wide-angle lens (26mm) and a function which Olympus is touting as "background defocus" — which either means the lens will have an amazingly wide aperture or the camera will blur the background after the photo has been taken. The latter seems to be the most logical, given that to use this function you have to be in a dedicated scene mode.

Along with the announcement of the SP-590UZ, Olympus also unveiled four other updates to their range, including two new additions to the Mju Tough line. All models will be available in Australia in March, with pricing to be announced.

Here is a look at the models announced today. We will have reviews of these models soon.

	Model	Specifications
	Mju 7000	12 megapixels 7x optical zoom 3-inch LCD HDMI output
	Mju Tough 8000	12 megapixels 3.6x optical zoom 2.7-inch LCD Shockproof from 2 metres Waterproof to 10 metres Crushproof to 100kg Snowproof to -100 degrees Celsius
	Mju 9000	12 megapixels 10x optical zoom 2.7-inch LCD 28mm wide-angle lens World's smallest compact camera with 10x optical zoom and 28mm lens
	Mju Tough 6000	10 megapixels 3.6x optical zoom 2.7-inch LCD Waterproof to 3 metres Shockproof to 1.5 metres Snowproof to -10 degrees Celsius
	SP-590UZ	26x optical zoom 2.7-inch LCD 26mm wide-angle lens CCD image stabiliser HDMI output