I picked up an Olympus Mju (Stylus) today, for the unheard-of price of $3.99. Several years ago, most people needing a compact camera bought point-and-shoot cameras with long, soft, slow zoom lenses.

At the same time, a handful of compact point-and-shoot cameras like the Olympus Mju-1, Mju-2 (Stylus Epic), Nikon Lite Touch, Yashica T4, and others filled a niche for impressive performance in a compact camera. They featured advanced auto focus and metering, fast, non-zoom (prime) lenses, and wide apertures. The simpler, prime lenses meant less light bleed-off and light loss. They allowed wider apertures than zooms, meaning better shooting in low light and shallower depth-of-field. Most of them offered flash sync at much higher speeds than most SLRs of the day, and could do “slow sync” – keeping the shutter open in low light, but firing the flash at the end of the exposure to light up the background in night-time shots.

The Mju-II even fired the flash indoors to color-balance incandescent light – a very cool trick.

Phil Greenspun wrote a great article on photo.net about point-and-shoot cameras that inspired me to carry an Olympus Stylus Epic in my camera bag. When I brought the bag, I left my 28mm SLR lens at home and used the Mju-II as both a backup camera and wide-angle lens. When the bag was too much to carry, the Mju-II came along, with a pocket tripod and a remote.

The Mju-1 was a stepping stone between the Olympus XA series and their final non-zoom point and shoot, the Stylus Epic. The auto-focus is a bit simpler, the lens a half-stop slower at f/3.5 instead of f/2.8 – but the camera has a great feel and shoots perfectly. The controls are simpler, and I find setting the flash much quicker with the Mju-1.

I have a box of Kodak 800 speed film I bought for a plane trip – I wanted to make sure I could hand-check my film so I tossed in some Kodak 800 and Fuji Superia 1600 into my bag. I’ll throw a roll into my Stylus and let you know how it turns out.