Last month, for a bit of fun, I shot a roll of cheap film over the space of a week with my Mju:II. I kept the camera in my car and in my pocket most of the time just taking pictures of things that looked interesting. There’s nothing revolutionary about this concept, and I’ve been carrying cameras around with me for quite some time now. But there seemed something different this time. The fact that the camera only offered a limited amount of options to the user. No manual settings, no zoom, an auto focus, auto everything pretty much. Every other camera I own has manual settings, so I wasn’t sure how far I’d get with this automatic plastic fantastic Olympus. Also, I’d never used the camera before so thought it’d be a good opportunity to test it out.

To say I was happy with the results is an understatement. This little camera has now shot up the list of my current favourites. The lens is sharp, and i think the photos it produces (looking at the prints) has a distinct look. Its also very compact and strong. I was walking over rocks covered in moss once and managed to slip over (I’m normally not that clumsy). The camera was in my right hand, which took the full weight of my body when I fell over on the rocks. The camera survived with just one scratch, a lot better than me who managed to be bleeding from my arms and back =/ . The camera had this roll of film in it too, so I was worried at one point that the back may of opened, or something cracked letting light in, but everything was completely fine. I finished shooting the roll that day.
Photos were taken in the Sydney CDB and suburbs, quite often driving to or from things. There’s a night shot in Circular Quay where I just put the camera on a fence and let it select its own shutter speed which turned out perfect. There’s some other night ones where I turned on spot metering and turned the flash off.
Here are some shots.

Here is a more detailed review of this neat little camera.