135compact.com       35mm ultra compact cameras       Olympus mju III Wide

The Olympus mju III is an extremely small, fully automatic and water protected 35mm film camera with a wide zoom lens. As the mju II, it's designed around the film cartridge, small and lightweight. It has even an integrated flash. It's form, round and flatter to one end, makes it easy  to slide it into a small pocket.
Its main features are:

28-100mm F4.6-11.9 lens, 7 elements in 7 groups, autofocus with focus lock, min. focus 0,6m  (0,8m at 100mm)
Wide aperture priority (2.8-11), electronic shutter, 4sec.-1/630 (1/410 at 100mm), flash ready and focus o.k. indication in the viewer window
Size 117x61.5x42.5,  Weight 220 gr. without battery
50-3200 ISO, automatic DX coding, self-timer, automatic film advance and (re-)spooling, time/date stamp possibility with Quartzdate model


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Closed and well protected.

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Back side. LCD sreen, film indication window, self-timer/remote button, flash mode button, focus mode button and mid roll respool button. The camera has 6 flash modes: auto-flash (default), red-eye reduction, off, fill-in flash, night scene flash and night scene red-eye reduction. If you slide the cover open, remember that  it's default auto flash every time. Flash guide number ~21 (!) (m/ISO 100), which gives you up to 4,6 m at the wide end (F 4.6) and 1,8 m at the tele end (F 11.9).

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Seen from above.

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Seen from below. Battery compartment (one CR123 battery) at the edge, opens to the side, tripod socket.

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Cover open.

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The lens only extends a bit to the wide position and the flash pops up.

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Lens extends enormously for the tele position.

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Camera back open.

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Film compartment.

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Original Case.

There are very few ultra-compact zoom cameras which start at 28mm and have a nearly 4x zoom. In comparison to high class ultra compacts with 28mm lenses, you only lose one stop at the wide end, as they are mostly F 3.5. By losing one stop you gain an impressing zoom. Even if it's F 11.9 at the zoom end, it might be very helpful.

The mju III is a point and shoot zoom camera at it's best. It has good autofocus. Picture quality is not bad, but did not impress me. A tiny little camera which is even water protected.

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