SOME of the most memorable moments people have had on vacation have been committed only to memory instead of, well, the memory card slotted into the digital camera they brought along for the minibreak.

No, this wasn’t on account of a senior moment, or some growing reputation of being a scatterbrain, but largely due to the fact that people treat their digital camera—like everything else in their ever-growing collection of gadgets—with kid gloves. Especially on vacation, when we would think nothing of exposing our bare skin to the elements but shudder at the thought of our digital camera getting borked because, say, we gleefully waded into the cool azure waters of Boracay—and forgot we had our shooter attached to our wrist. The same pricey shooter we are still paying for off our credit card.

If such is your recurring nightmare while on vacation, it’s time to get tough. Or, more specifically, the Olympus mju Tough-8000 digital camera, which appends the word “tough” to its name with good reason.

Notwithstanding that it is not that much bigger than a deck of cards, this baby is touted to be waterproof to a depth of 10 meters, shockproof against falls to 2 meters, freeze-proof down to -10° Celsius and crushproof up to 100 kg. Needless to say, the mju Tough-8000 should emerge unscathed from all the extreme adventures you have signed up to in the hope of landing a spot in The Amazing Race.

No matter its small frame, the Olympus mju Tough-8000 has considerable heft to it on account of its body that has been fashion mostly out of metal—even the lens in front of the camera is protected by a retracting metal cover. The front of this 12-megapixel snapper features a microphone, a flash, a LED and, on top, the shutter release and the power button. The back is dominated by the 2.7-inch, 230,000-dot LCD display, with the zoom rockers, mode dial (for iAuto, Program, scene, Beauty, movie and playback modes), and various function buttons arrayed on the side.

The Olympus mju Tough-8000 comes with 45MB of memory built-in, and more photos and video can be captured via the xD-Picture Card memory expansion slot (a microSD adapter comes with the box). Did we say “video”? Yes, this baby can also capture movies with sound!—although only at the typical 640x480 or 320x240 pixels in either 15 or 30fps, definitely more than serviceable when you’re in a pinch but nothing that would replace a standalone video camcorder.

As far as shooting modes go—those preset-scene configurations that take the guesswork out of capturing photos in various conditions—the Olympus mju Tough-8000 comes with 19 modes in all, along with an iAuto mode, where the snapper takes in the shooting conditions and automatically chooses the best scene mode; a P (as in professional) mode, where you take control over the settings for white balance, ISO and the like; and a Beauty mode, a rather gimmicky feature that’s nonetheless fun to use where the camera employs visual trickery to improve skin tone and remove blemishes and those awful dark circles under the eyes.

An even nicer touch is the LED sandwiched between the flash and the lens, which quickly becomes exceedingly useful when capturing stills (a precious flower you happen by during an evening stroll at the beach? a page of a book that you can’t take out of the library?) at very close range and proper illumination is a problem. Just choose the supermacro with LED mode—the other choices are normal macro and supermacro—and you’ll be fine.

Another thoughtful feature, especially for those who have the wherewithal to go on a ski vacation in Aspen, is the “tap control system”, which allows you to peruse the camera and its various settings without requiring you to expose your pretty fingers to the freezing temperature. Simply tap the Olympus mju Tough-8000 on the sides, top and back plates to switch from various scene modes, from record to playback mode and back, and confirm the settings you have chosen.

The various stills we took on this baby during our recent trip to Stuttgart, Germany, turned out to be on the whole sharp, vivid and vibrant, although there were a couple or three snaps that looked a bit fuzzy in the outskirts—which, to be honest, may be on account of wrong scene selection than anything else.

What we didn’t have the nerve to test is the toughness of the Tough-8000 for fear of breaking or borking it. For a fleeting moment, we were quite tempted to have it “accidentally” slip out of our jacket pocket and onto the pavement, but ultimately lost our nerve. Officials from Axis Global Technologies Inc., the distributor of Olympus cameras in the Philippines, did assure us that the Olympus mju Tough-8000 can survive the conditions as advertised, and, hey, we’ll just take their word for it.