Olympus SP-560UZ Digital Camera Review

The SP-560UZ has a CCD contrast detection system that includes a new face detection system. This finds faces in the frame and automatically focuses on them; this technology is included on many other digital cameras. The SP-560 is one of the first Olympus cameras to include face detection. Some cameras include a button specifically for face detection, such as the Fujifilm FinePix F40fd. The Olympus SP-560UZ instead opts to stash it among other menu items.

In the Recording menu, the Auto Focus modes include Face Detect, iESP, Spot, and Area. The Face Detect mode is quick, but not as quick as systems on Panasonic and Canon digital cameras. Sometimes it finds a face and places a green box around it, but it didn’t track well. It loses contact when heads turn, as well. It recognizes up to three faces when testing. The Standard Auto Focus modes work fairly well, albeit a bit on the slow side. The SP-560 has a Predictive Auto Focus mode, but it doesn’t show significant improvement in focus from the standard mode. Subjects in the Movie mode aren’t focused well. We thought this was a preproduction phenomenon, but the problem of soft subjects still exists on the production model.

The SP-560 can focus from 3.94 inches to infinity when the lens is zoomed out and 47.24 inches to infinity when zoomed in. The Macro mode gets up close and personal and can be found on the left side of the multi-selector. There is also a Super Macro mode that can focus as close as 1 centimeter. In the Recording menu is an option to turn the full-time Auto Focus on and off, along with on and off options for the autofocus assist lamp.

Overall, the SP-560’s Auto Focus system has great specs, but its face detection is behind the competition and is generally slow.

 

Manual Focus (3.75)
The Manual focus is available in the Recording menu. When it is engaged, a vertical bar appears on the left side of the LCD. There are guide numbers to help find the correct point of focus. The center of the image is magnified, and it is often difficult to see just how sharp the subject is within the magnified area because of the preview’s noise and the LCD’s resolution (which is good, but not good enough to support this).

ISO (9.0)
The SP-560UZ outdoes its predecessor with a wider ISO sensitivity range. The new model has Automatic and High ISO auto settings, along with a robust selection of manual settings: 50, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, and 6400. The SP-550’s top ISO was 5000, although both cameras max out at 1600 in full resolution. The SP-560’s top two sensitivity settings shrink the image size to 3 megapixels.

The ISO correlates to the amount of noise that appears in images. Included on the camera’s new image processor is a second-generation advanced noise filter Olympus claims has "evolved further to reproduce subjects faithfully and reduce noise by isolating the image and noise signals accurately." This noise reduction system seems to kick in right around ISO 800, where noise levels drop significantly. More details are available in the Testing/Performance section, but the SP-560’s ISO settings produce more noise than the average digital camera.

White Balance (8.0)
The white balance can be changed in the Function or Recording menu, although the first menu is preferable due to its large live preview. The Recording menu has a live preview, but it’s hidden behind much larger text. The following options are available: Auto, One-Touch, Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent 1, Fluorescent 2, and Fluorescent 3. There is no flash preset, but the other presets seem to cover the basics.

Changing the custom white balance is a simple process. There are on-screen directions that prompt users to frame something white and press the OK/func button.

White balance compensation can be tweaked in the Recording menu up seven steps toward a blue hue or down seven steps toward red. This isn’t quite like Panasonic’s more involved white balance compensation, but is still included, unlike many other similar models that don’t include this feature at all.

We tested the accuracy of the white balance presets and the automatic setting in our imaging lab. The full results are in the Testing/Performance section, but the basic idea is that the auto setting works in most situations, and the presets are preferable only when indoors and dissatisfied with the hue in images. 

Exposure (8.0)
The exposure can be manually adjusted with access to the aperture and shutter speeds. There is also an all-purpose exposure compensation adjustment that is available in almost every exposure mode. Its +/- 2 EV range in 1/3 steps is typical of consumer digital cameras. There is a Bracketing mode available that can take three or five pictures to ensure just the right exposure is captured. Unfortunately, it works more like a Burst mode, so users need to remember to continuously push the shutter release button; the camera doesn’t automatically snap all those pictures.

Users can monitor the exposure with the histogram, turned on or off in the Setup menu. A "direct" option shows highlights in the image as red and shadows as blue.

Recent Olympus digital cameras pay special attention to extreme portions of the exposure such as highlights and shadows. The Olympus SP-560 has a button specifically for shadow adjustment so details aren’t lost to dark portions of the image. This option also automatically activates the face detection technology. 

Metering (8.5)
Like other digital cameras, the Olympus SP-560UZ has three Metering modes available: ESP, Spot, and Center-Weighted Average. They can be changed in the Recording or Function menus. The Function menu is preferable because it provides a preview of what the exposure will look like, whereas the Recording menu has an opaque background. When the face detection system is activated, the camera meters directly from the face wherever it may be in the frame.

Shutter Speed (7.5)
The Olympus SP-560UZ has a typical shutter speed range of 15-1/2000 of a second, although the longer exposures are cut to a maximum of four seconds in the Auto and Scene modes. There is a bulb setting in the Manual mode for longer exposures of up to eight minutes. Beware of long exposures, though, because tests in our lab showed large glowing spots in lengthy exposures. The SP-560’s shutter speeds can be manually adjusted via the exposure compensation portion of the multi-selector and the OK/func button. In the Manual mode, the full range of options is available, with the caveat being that the 1/2000 setting can only be accessed if the aperture is smaller than f/4.5. Olympus included an improved noise reduction system in the camera to keep longer exposures clean; it automatically turns on when shutter speeds are slower than a half-second.

Aperture (7.0)
The aperture can open to f/2.8 when the lens is zoomed out to 27mm. When zoomed in, the max aperture shrinks to f/4.5. The smallest aperture available is f/8. The aperture can be accessed with the exposure compensation portion of the multi-selector and the OK/func button. The aperture on the preproduction model we reviewed a few months ago had a lot of problems, but those have been ironed out.

Previous | Next