Olympus SP-510

Viewfinder
The Viewfinder is, somewhat oddly, a higher resolution screen than the LCD screen. With 201k pixels, the LCD is sharp enough to accurately check focus, but it’s not as attractive as the higher resolution displays that we’ve seen on other models. The display update of the live video is smooth, however.

LCD Screen
The LCD screen is a 2.5-inch model located on the left side of the back of the camera, right behind the lens. While the 115k resolution of the screen is acceptable, it’s well below the resolution of the screens other similarly priced models. And this shows: images had a grainy, gritty look when displayed on the screen. While it is adequate for shooting and sharp enough to check focus, it really isn’t particularly attractive.

Flash
The small flash is located right above the lens, and pops up when the flash button is pressed or when the camera decides it needs it in auto mode. Olympus quotes the range of the flash a to 4.5 meters (14.7 feet) at the wide setting and 3.4 meters (11.1 feet) with the zoom at the telephoto setting. Both of these are acceptable, but not outstanding. The SP-510 UZ allows you to bump the flash power up or down by two stops, and there’s a hot shoe for connecting an external flash unit. You switch between the internal and the external flash from the on-screen menu, and you can also set the flash synch to front or rear curtain for longer exposures.

Zoom Lens
The zoom lens is one of the highlights of the SP-510 UZ: it’s an impressively long 10X model with a focal length of 6.3mm to 63mm (equivalent to 38mm to 380mm). That’s great for sports and wildlife photography, because the longer end of the zoom lets you get closer to the wildlife without disturbing it (or getting savaged). But it’s not so good for family photos: at the wide end of the zoom, you’ll be hard pressed to squeeze more then three or four people into the same shot in a typical room. Olympus does offer a $160 wide angle adapter (called the WCON 007) which decreases the focal length by a factor of 0.7%, which might be worth considering if you’re planning to shoot both the wildlife at home and outdoors.

We weren’t able to do any in-depth testing of this lens, but the test shots we did try looked more than acceptable, with little evidence of barrel distortion or pincushioning.

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