Olympus SP-800UZ

Front

Looking at this fearsome lens from the front, it's important to remember that the camera body is only 4.2 inches wide. The three holes to the lower left of the lens cover the speaker, the two to the upper right of the lens shield the mono mic.

My, what a big nose you have, SP-800UZ.

Back

All of the back controls are found in a panel to the right of the 3-inch, 230,000-dot LCD. The top red button triggers movie recording directly, without fiddling with mode dials and such. There's an activity indicator lamp below that. The dial with an OK button in middle works two ways: as a control dial that turns, and as a push control providing access to the info display toggle and image delete function. Below that is the menu button, and beside it the question mark, which accesses the built-in user manual.

The red button provides instant video recording.

Sides

The left side simply shows off your zoomin' human potential to jealous passersby, and provides a spot for attaching the shoulder strap. On the right are the AV/date and HDMI ports.

The camera's left side.

The AV ports are inside the door at top right.

Top

From the top we see the pop-up flash, on-off button, zoom control and shutter, conveniently placed on the top of the right hand grip.

The right hand grip is fairly deep and nicely textured.

Bottom

The placement of the tripod socket is a bit odd, and using plastic rather than metal here seems to be a mistake for a camera which, given the zoom ratio, practically begs to be tripod-mounted.

The off-center tripod socket is problematic.