Despite its small 1 in. thick size, the Casio V8 packs the largest zoom lens of any ultracompact on the market, with a 38-266mm (7x) zoom lens that is just about long enough for zooming in on sports and fast action photos.

The Casio V8 has below average high ISO - even in daylight situations it will produce photos that are noisy and blotchy, and it’s almost useless for any kind of fast action in low-light situations. The V8 can continuously take photos at 1 frame per second. This is about average for a camera in this class, but not enough to make a difference - within that 1 second, the action will have already elapsed.

The V8’s autofocus, like many other consumer cameras, will barely be able to keep up with the fastest action in daylight, but is simply not fast enough to focus on fast-action in low-light situations. The V8’s shutter lag is very good, and you shouldn’t experience many significant delays.

The Olympus Stylus 820 is a 5x zoom, ultracompact camera from Olympus’ mju line of weatherproof camera (with an IPX4 weatherproof rating, the 820 can withstand direct splashes of water). The 820’s 36-180mm zoom lens isn’t quite long enough to get good close-ups of sports photos, but it will do a lot better than ordinary 3x zoom cameras.

The Olympus 820’s high ISO images are simply average - fast action images in daylight might be a little noisy, and photos in low-light will be unusably noisy. The manufacturer’s information doesn’t specify what its continuous shooting rate is, but the Olympus 820 does have a “high speed” mode that can take up to 11 photos at 7 frames a second, albeit at lower 3 megapixel resolution. Although image quality won’t be great, this is extremely fast, and will allow you to take a quick burst and pick and choose the best shots or peak moments afterwards. The Olympus 820’s shutter lag is a bit below average, which may make it difficult to capture precisely-timed shots, although this is less of an issue if you just continuously shoot a burst of photos.