Olympus SP-570 UZ
Digital Camera Review
Dec 28, 2008
- By Steve Morgenstern
2.2
If you feel your inner paparazzo yearning to come out and play, consider the Olympus SP-570UZ with its whopping 20x zoom lens – the equivalent of a 28mm-520mm zoom in 35mm photography. We had lots of fun shooting with this camera, which combines plenty of telephoto power with a healthy wide-angle range. Image quality isn't stellar, but it's not bad either, and manual controls and customization options abound. For a detailed rundown on the pros and cons of this 10-megapixel, $450 ultra-zoom, check out the full review.
| Top Point & Shoot Cameras |
|---|
|
Conclusion
Yes, there's room for improvement in the lab testing, and even after using it for a few weeks the sloppy zoom control is still annoying, but overall this is a camera we really enjoy. It feels great in your hand, delivers photos that stand up well at all but enormous print sizes, and provides enough manual control to satisfy our urges to tweak and fiddle. The controls are well organized for quick adjustments, and the LCD stands up to outdoor illumination better than most (with the electronic viewfinder as a perfectly serviceable backup). The full-resolution burst-mode is pokey, but snagging 5-megapixel images at a solid seven frames a second nearly makes up for that shortcoming, and the rock-solid image stabilization system is a true pleasure, making handheld long-zoom photography literally a snap. We usually grab an SLR when headed out to shoot, but recently we've found ourselves voting for portability and long zoom versus optimal image quality on several occasions, and that's high praise for the 570UZ.
|
Likes
|
|
- Excellent body design
- 20x zoom
- Extensive customizability and manual control options
- Effective image stabilization system
|
|
Dislikes
|
|
- Imprecise zoom and manual focus controls
- Mediocre lab test results in most categories
- Poor video performance
|
