Being an 'Oly' fan since the legendary OM1/OM2n film cams of the 60's, the last Olympus digitalcompact camera I bought was the C-5050UZ (2002) with it's peerless f/1.8 aspherical lens that is among the best cameras of dozens that I've owned since I was a shutterbug in my youth, and later as a professional wedding photographer - 'until death do us part!'
Six years down the track I've developed an interest in bird photography (as distinct from brides) and having switched to digital completely, I bought an SP-570 UZ last week, but returned it for refund within 7 days (as AU consumer protection laws allow).
During my brief possession of the camera I tested it intensively over several days in various shooting and lighting situations at appropriate but variable "MyMode" settings that I had selected. Dawn light landscapes at iso200/400 resulted in mostly washed out colour saturation of sunrises and serious under exposure of shadow areas. Some shots were out of focus due to low light AF failure. 'Golden Hour' light did yield some excellent SP-570 UZ images with soft, subtle colour tones. Overall contrast was a tad flat but acceptably sharp at full zoom. Some basic editing enhances both.
Bird shots taken on SCN mode, "Get the Shot", at 300mm weren't bad; only later when I d/loaded those images to Photoshop did I realise that the burst of multiple exposures produced were resolved at 5mp (not 10mp) - well, I admit, it was naive of me to expect the buffer in a budget camera to handle 16 x 10mps frames in the space of a second or so - I should have studied the manual more carefully FIRST!
But the SP-570 UZ has some redeeming features that will appeal to the amateur photographer ~ is powered by 4 x AA batteries (available anywhere), looks great, nice to hold, solid build, SCN (Scene) modes for all shooting situations, lens cap string attaches to camera prevents loss, well placed access buttons, ED (Error Diffusion) aspherical lens. The menu takes some figuring but like all things digital and diabolical, is easy when you take the time to study and master its mindless machinations.
In fairness to Olympus I will say that a very good English hard copy manual is included, although the CD software created some system conflicts in my pc. I also found that RAW (ORF) files created in the SP-570 UZ are unsupported by Photoshop and apparently can only be post processed using the Olympus editing software that comes bundled with the camera. That is strange because RAW (ORF) files created in the Olympus C-5050 are compatible with Photoshop CS3 and earlier versions. That was my main reason for returning the camera for refund, which is not to say that you shouldn't buy it after making sure that it will satisfy your needs.
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Aug 28th, 2008
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