Olympus Stylus Digital 1020 Review

Rotating the Mode dial to the GUIDE position will bring up the built-in Shooting Guide on the LCD screen. There are 14 selections to choose from.

By pressing the DISP. button you can choose between 4 different amounts of information on the screen. These include a live Histogram and grid to help you frame your images. 3 of the 4 screens include the shooting mode, number of pictures remaining, image size and quality. The other takes all the information off of the screen.

When you half-press the shutter release it starts the autofocus process and if it locks you'll get the "focus OK" green icon (top left). If focus fails you will get a red "can't focus" icon (not shown.) The "red lightning bolt" icon indicates the flash is charged and ready to fire.

Pressing the 4-way controller Up, Down, Left or Right allows you to quickly change settings for Macro focus mode, Flash mode, Self-timer, and Exposure compensation.

You can access a variety of Scene modes by rotating the Mode dial to the SCN position. As you go through the Scene selections an image depicting the mode is shown and then a brief text explanation of the mode is presented (shown above.) You can choose from modes like: Auto, Program Auto, Scene Preset (Portrait, Landscape, Landscape & Portrait, Night Scene, Night & Portrait, Sport, Indoor, Candle, Self- Portrait, Available Light Portrait, Sunset, Fireworks, Cuisine, Behind Glass, Documents, Auction, Shoot & Select1, Shoot & Select2, Beach & Snow, Pre-Capture Movie, Underwater Wide 1, Underwater Wide 2 and Underwater Macro (all underwater require the optional housing)) and Movie mode.

Pressing the OK/FUNC. button will bring up the menu of options shown above.

FUNC. Menu Options:

White Balance - Auto, Sunny, Cloudy, Incandescent, or Fluorescent 1, 2, and 3
ISO - Auto, H.Auto, 80, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600
Drive Mode - Single, Continuous, High-Speed Continuous
Metering - ESP or Spot
Image Size - 10M, 5M, 3M, 2M, 1M, VGA, 16:9
Image Quality - Fine or Normal

Press the MENU button to bring up the Record mode Menu. You can use the shortcut menus to quickly change image resolution, reset all settings to factor defaults, change the scene mode (when mode dial is set to the SCN position), use Panorama mode, enable Silent mode as well as enter the Camera or Setup menus.

Camera Menu Options:

White Balance - Auto, Sunny, Cloudy, Tungsten (Incandescent),
or Fluorescent 1, 2, and 3
ISO - Auto, H.Auto, 80, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600
Drive Mode - Single, Continuous, High-Speed Continuous
Fine Zoom - Off or On
Digital Zoom - Enable or disable digital zoom option
Metering - ESP or Spot
AF Mode - Face Detect, iESP or Spot focus modes
Voice Memo - Off or On
Image Stabilizer - On or Off








Movie mode lets you capture VGA (640x480, 30fps) or QVGA (320x240, 30fps) resolution motion video with sound. The length of a movie is limited only by the available memory (Max. 2GB clip size). The "wavy hand" symbol indicates that digital stabilization is enabled. Because the Stylus 1020 features a built-in microphone, the optical zoom may not be used during recording. However, you can preset the desired focal length before starting to record a movie.







Movie Function Menu:

White Balance - Auto, Sunny, Cloudy, Incandescent, Fluorescent 1,2,3
Metering - ESP or Spot
Image Size - 640x480, 320x240
Frame Rate - 30fps, 15fps