Photo gallery: Olympus Tough Lite 790SWDo you like to drop your digital camera on the floor? Dunk it in water? Bury it in snow? Who doesn't? But usually, that can cause some problems, since most cameras hate water, won't operate in freezing cold temperatures, and don't take well to falls. However, Olympus' Tough 790SW, like the Tough 770SW before it, is tough enough to shoot in three metres of water or when it's -10 degrees Celcius. Plus, it can withstand drops of up to 5 feet, so if you're klutzy, you won't have to worry quite as much. If you swim deeper than most, the 770SW might be better for you than this model, since it can operate down to about 33 feet. Other than that, a slightly different body design, and a new feature or two in the 790SW, the two cameras are basically the same.
DesignIf it didn't say so on the front of the camera, you might not think that the Tough 790SW is a waterproof camera. While last year's 770SW's body design screamed rugged, with its all-metal construction and tougher-than-nails look, the 790SW has a softer look, with plastic accents on the top, side, and front. Also, the 790SW is about 20 grams lighter and comes in black, orange and silver, while the 770 SW only offered silver or blue colours.Features
All of the camera's buttons are on the right side of the camera back, except the shutter and on/off buttons, which are on the top. The mode dial, also accented with black plastic, is on the back, and in our opinion, a bit small. The plastic has little notches in it, though, so it's thankfully not all that hard to turn. Menus are separated into the shooting menu, accessed by pressing the OK button in the center of the four-way rocker, and the main menu, which you get to by pressing the Menu button. The main menu lets you activate the silent mode quickly, but makes you choose a submenu before proceeding to anything else. This slows things down a bit, but Olympus does organise the menus well, and the shooting menu and four-way rocker let you quickly change anything you need while shooting.Performance
In our lab's performance tests, the Tough 790SW had decent shot-to-shot times, but otherwise didn't impress. The camera took 1.3 seconds to start up and capture its first JPEG. Thereafter, it took 2.3 seconds between images with the flash turned off. With the flash turned on, that wait increased to 3.2 seconds. Shutter lag measured 0.6 second in our high-contrast test and 1.6 seconds in our low-contrast test, which mimic bright and dim shooting conditions, respectively. In burst mode we were able to capture an average of 1.5 full-resolution frames per second.
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
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Typical shot-to-shot time | |
Time to first shot | |
Shutter lag (typical) |
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
Image quality
Image quality isn't the 790SW's strong point, but it isn't particularly bad either at lower ISOs. Colours aren't quite as saturated as they can be on some other cameras, but they do look fairly accurate. The images also aren't as sharp as we'd like to see, but the clarity is not terrible, and given that this is a waterproof camera, it's not totally unexpected. The 790SW's automatic white balance leaves photos shot under incandescent lights to look slightly warm, but it does a good job with fluorescent lighting and, of course, natural sunlight.
