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Introduction
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01.Physical Tour
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02.Color and Resolution
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03.Noise and Video
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04.Speed and Timing
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05.Components
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06.Design / Layout
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07.Modes
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08.Control Options
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09.Image Parameters
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10.Connectivity / Extras
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11.Overall Impressions
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12.Conclusion
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13.Sample Photos
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14.Specs / Ratings
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15.Comments
Olympus SP-570 UZ
Previous: Page 4
Speed and TimingNext: Page 6
Design / LayoutViewfinder (8.25)
The electronic viewfinder is a very handy option when shooting outdoors in bright light, when an LCD can be difficult to see. And with the 570UZ there's a secondary benefit: when you switch to the electronic viewfinder, the LCD can automatically switch to an interactive display that shows most camera settings, letting you move among them using the four-way controller and change settings quickly using the control dial.
The viewfinder display is quite bright – in fact, it boosts the brightness noticeably indoors, which can be useful if not entirely accurate. The view doesn't keep up entirely smoothly when you move the camera quickly, though, causing a noticeable blur. You wouldn't want to shoot a sports event this way, or you might find your lunch lurching.
What you see through the electronic viewfinder matches closely
with the area captured in your photo.
LCD Screen (6.50)
While using the LCD screen or electronic viewfinder to line up a shot, pressing the DISP button toggles between four information displays. The basic screen shows the current shooting mode, flash mode, ISO setting, metering mode, image size and compression settings, aperture, shutter speed battery charge and additional icons as appropriate. Pressing DISP once clears the screen of everything except the battery icon. Another press returns the shooting information and adds a lined grid overlay (if you've enabled the overlay in the Setup menu, which offers two grid design choices). A final press clears the grid and adds a histogram display.
The rear display toggles between four display modes while shooting.
Flash (8.00)
When it's popped open, the center of the built-in flash sits approximately two and a quarter inches above the center of the lens, enough to keep red-eye to a minimum. Of course, there's a red-eye reduction flash mode that pre-flashes into your subject's face to tighten up the iris and cause unpleasant facial expressions. Additional flash modes include auto, fill-in (always-on), fill-in with red-eye reduction, slow synchronization and slow synch with red-eye reduction. The slow synch settings are designed to fire the flash to illuminate subjects in the foreground, then hold the shutter open longer to capture the darker background scene. In addition, the 570UZ offers a second slow synch mode which fires just before the shutter closes, mostly useful on those rare occasions when you want to catch the car-lights-streaming-backwards effect.
The flash works well, with good power and more even illumination than we're used to with built-in flash units; there was some light fall-off around the edges when shooting a blank wall but not much, and no discernible hot spot. The flash recycles quickly. On a fresh set of AAs, it was ready to fire again by the time the previous image had been stored to memory (admittedly a little slow on this camera in the first place, but that's not the flash's fault).
Flash output intensity can be adjusted through the menu system, in a range of ± 2 EV. It's a useful feature, but buried 11 clicks deep in the camera menu, and for some strange reason not available for mapping to the custom function button in the four-way controller group.
In addition to the built-in flash, there's a hot shoe for connecting an external flash unit, plus compatibility with the Olympus wireless radio-controlled flash system.
The flash covers a wide area with even illumination.
Lens (13.75)
The 20x optical zoom lens is, of course, the be-all and end-all of the 570UZ. The range is 4.6mm-92 mm (which equates to 28mm-520 mm in 35mm photography). For practical photographic purposes, that 28 mm spec is as important as the tremendous telephoto side of the equation, since you need that wide angle both for capturing scenic vistas and for squeezing everybody into a picture when shooting in close quarters. There's good news on the lens speed side too, with a range of f/2.8-f/8.0 at the widest setting and f/4.5-8.0 at maximum telephoto. That means the lens is quite fast at close range, making available-light photography more practical, and even at the furthest zoom you still have a fairly wide aperture, making faster shutter speeds possible. Combined with the built-in sensor-shift image stabilization system, we found it perfectly practical to take handheld long zoom shots without visible blur.
No, we didn't walk down the street and take pictures. We just stood in one spot and let the 20x zoom do the work.
This formidable snout collapses down to leave the camera
only about 3 inches deep for portability's sake.
There are also two forms of image stabilization, always-on sensor-shift stabilization and ISO-boosting digital stabilization that can be turned on and off.
Shop for the Olympus SP-570 UZ
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