Olympus mju-I (Infinity Stylus)

Cross-shop it against the Nikon AF600 and the gap comes down to about an inch of body and a few millimeters of focal length. The Nikon is smaller and goes wider at 28mm, and people who love it never shut up about that. The mju-I answers with a 35mm view that feels like the way you actually see a street, plus a barrel-shaped body that disappears into a jacket pocket better than the slab Nikon does. Both lenses open to f/3.5, so this is a fight over reach and shape, not speed. Pick your religion. Both came out of the same early-90s race to build the smallest capable autofocus compact, and both still get bought for the same reason: they are tiny, they are sharp enough, and they shoot in the rain.

Olympus put it out in 1991 as the heir to the XA, and the mju line went on to sell in numbers most cameras never touch. The signature move is the clamshell. A curved cover slides over the lens and doubles as the power switch, so the camera is either sealed shut or ready, never half-awake in your bag burning the battery. The lens is a 35mm f/3.5, a simple three-element design, and it is better than three elements has any right to be in the middle of the frame. Corners soften wide open. Nobody buying this camera cares.

Using it is close to thoughtless, which is the point. Active multi-beam autofocus racks from about a third of a meter to infinity, the program meter picks shutter and aperture, and a leaf shutter runs from a slow 1/15 up to around 1/500. There is no manual mode and no aperture ring, so you are trusting the box. The viewfinder is small and squinty, a real downgrade from any rangefinder, and the autofocus will sometimes lock onto the gap between two people instead of the people. The flash also loves to fire on its own in program mode whether you wanted it or not, and overriding it means cycling a button every time you power on.

The honest weakness is the battery. This thing runs on a CR123A and it is dead without one, no mechanical backup, no half-press of life when the cell sags in the cold. The light seals age, the rear door can develop a leak, and a tired electronics board is not worth repairing on a camera this cheap. Buy a clean one and treat it as semi-disposable.

That leaf shutter is quietly the best argument for the body. Because the blades sit in the lens, flash syncs at every speed, so you can drag a touch of fill into a bright backlit portrait without fighting a sync ceiling. Meter the scene with the Zone Light Meter app, set your fill against the daylight reading, and let the camera's own program handle the ambient. As a price-class object today the mju-I lives just under its glamorous sibling the mju-II, the one with the f/2.8 lens that collectors bid into the stratosphere. The mju-I gives you most of that camera for a fraction of the hype tax, which is exactly why the people who know keep buying this one instead.