Olympus SP-570 UZ

Size / Portability (7.75)
At 4.7 x 3.3 x 3.4 inches (118mm x 84mm x 87.5mm) and 16.7 oz. (445g) before batteries, this is a substantial camera, but feels quite light in your hand because there's not much weight for the bulk of the body. At the same time, it doesn't feel insubstantial or cheap. We carried the 570UZ in a leather business case, along with lots of paperwork and a laptop computer, while taking test shots on a recent trip, and found it entirely manageable. If you insist on a camera that fits in your pocket, of course, this isn't going to fit the bill, but when you consider that a lens with this range of magnification on a 35mm camera would require a case, a tripod and quite possibly a hernia exam after a long day of shooting, the size and portability equation comes out heavily in favor of the lightweight 570UZ.
 

Handling Ability (9.00)
Olympus did an excellent job building a body that feels secure in your hand at any angle. The sculptured design is partly to thank, with the substantial rubberized grip in the front and the perfectly positioned thumb rest, also with a rubber pad, directly behind to create a rock-solid handhold. The weight of the camera also works in its favor: you're really not fighting gravity much as you move the camera around. Finally, the balance is right, with the weight of the batteries in the grip helping to anchor the camera in your right hand while the left side stays light and readily movable. In short, when it comes to the mechanics of handling the camera, the 570UZ is just a pleasure to shoot with..

Working with the 570UZ is exceptionally fast and comfortable.

Control Button / Dial Positioning / Size (9.75)
Camera controls are well designed and conveniently placed, for the most part. The shutter and exposure compensation controls placed on an inclined platform, with the control knob for adjusting exposure comp right behind them, makes fast adjustments simple. The mode dial snaps into position authoritatively, and the power switch is within easy reach of your thumb.
 

The row of four buttons along the left side of the LCD mostly makes sense, though we would have swapped the position of the MENU and DISP buttons so MENU was at the bottom. Clearer labeling of the erase button (the second one down, which does double duty controlling the shadow adjustment function while shooting) would also be welcome. The only truly odd button placement is the continuous shooting mode control, which is located on the lens barrel. instead of the camera body for no logical reason; guess they just ran out of real estate. All the camera buttons have a nice feel to them: easy to push but with enough resistance to let you know you've entered a command.
 

Buttons are well placed and feel good, but the blue and red
labels are hard to read on the black camera body.

There's a single programmable button, prominently placed at the top position of the four-way controller cluster. We appreciate the thought, though as noted elsewhere in this review, we have some quibbles with the implementation. The following functions can be bound to this programmable button, by way of the Setup menu:
- Image Quality
- Image Size
- Compression
- Fine Zoom
- Digital Zoom
- AF Predict.
- Image Stabilizer
- Flash (Int/Ext, RC or Slave)
- Still photo audio annotation
- Noise reduction

The oddity is that several shooting-mode adjustments that might realistically be useful to access with a single button press aren't available here. Why not offer one-click access to ISO settings instead of bringing up the camera menu?  One-button access to the white balance setting system, or the white balance manual adjustment feature, would certainly be more useful than an express route to external flash modes or digital zoom settings.
 

The My Mode system, on the other hand, is well conceived and executed, with one small exception. Available through a dedicated spot on the mode dial, My Mode lets you store four sets of shooting settings, including every option in the camera menu plus a few from setup: we couldn't think of an additional option we'd add to the mix. The system is easy to use, too. If you have the camera working just the way you like it, save those settings to one of the four My Mode slots. Alternatively, you can visit the My Mode Setup section of the Setup menu and click through the camera options directly. As for accessing your stored modes, you can use the Function Menu or Control Menu when the mode dial is set to My Mode, available by pressing OK while shooting. Here again, we have a camera function that could be helpfully mapped to the custom button in the four-way group... except you can't. Are you picking up on a trend here? More important, though, is the inability to change the name of the mode you've created to provide some idea of what's hiding behind the generic label.
 

A cornucopia of settings can be stored
in each My Mode group.

Menu (6.50)
The 570UZ maintains the same menu structure as you'll find on simpler Olympus point-and-shoot cameras, which has its pluses and minuses. Instead of launching into a tabbed menu structure, or a single long list of setting options, pressing Menu takes you to an intermediate icon-based display with nine available slots. The still photo or video modes share one icon-based home screen, while Playback mode has a different one, both with the identical Setup submenu in the same 3 o'clock position.  The screens are easy enough to read, with text labels supplementing on-screen icons for clarity's sake. What's unclear is why certain items are placed where they are.  In the Record menu, for example, Image Quality is given a top-level berth, even though you'll probably set it once and forget it. while more frequently used settings for white balance and ISO require a trip to the Camera Menu subsection. In the Play mode menu, most of the image-altering functions are grouped in an Edit submenu, but Perfect Fix (an automated boost for dark subjects) is positioned on the top level, and image rotation is found in the Playback Menu subsection rather than Edit.

Having a Silent Mode option at the top level of the menu system is potentially useful, if you're the type you fluctuates between wanting the camera to chirp, beep and otherwise pester you sometimes, and keep blissfully silent at other times. We used it once to shut down the audio, and that was the end of that.

The Camera and Setup menus are quite long, with over 20 settings each, organized in successive 5-items screens. Cursoring down through all these options to reach those on later screens is time-consuming, though there is a shortcut once you notice it: pressing left on the four-way controller lets you skip down a full screen at a time.

For all the on-screen menus, additional information is available by pressing and holding the DISP button. The on-screen text that's presented is terse to the point of worthlessness. The explanatory text for Metering reads 'Sets picture brightness for taking pictures.' And then there's our favorite: the cryptic menu item Picture Mode is defined 'To adjust how images are produced.' Text-based help a button-press away is potentially very worthwhile, but you have to get it written to get it right.

The saving grace of the entire record mode menu system are the Function or Control Panel quick-access menus that appear when you press the OK/FUNC button (you set whether you want to use Function or Control Panel in the Setup menu). The more useful of the two is Function, which brings up an L-shaped overlay, leaving the  scene you're shooting visible in the background. Using the four-way controller, you now have easy access to the settings for white balance, ISO, metering mode, image size and compression setting. We found ourselves using this screen all the time during our lab testing and shooting out in the field. For a camera that lacks dedicated buttons for ISO or white balance, this system is nearly as fast.

The Function display puts key settings at your fingertips.

The alternative Control Panel display takes over the entire LCD, switching the current view to the electronic viewfinder. This feels more like SLR shooting, and provides fast access to a much wider variety of settings, including items such as flash intensity, saturation, sharpness and contrast settings that are otherwise buried deep in the menu structure.

The Control Panel mode offers a wider array of settings,
but is more difficult to navigate than the Function display.

Record Menu
The Record Mode menu includes image quality and panorama shooting options on the top screen, a SCN (scene mode) option that is greyed out unless you're in that mode when you call up the menu, and most of the key shooting settings one level down in the Camera Menu.

Play Mode Menu
The Play mode menu offers a calendar view of your stored photos from the top level (the same view is available by zooming out repeatedly during playback). Multi-image erase, the Perfect Fix image adjustment, slide show utility and direct print options are also positioned at the top level. Most but not all of the important features here are choices within the Edit Menu, with the Playback Menu home only to image protection, rotation, voice annotation and the Index Play movie playback option.

 

Ease of Use (7.00)