OLYMPUS SP-550 UZ: Point-and-shoot with many features of an SLR camera
Jim Jamieson
Province
What is it? Olympus SP-550 UZ digital camera
Price: $599.99
Why you need it: You want to increase your capabilities as a photographer but you still want to have the ease of a point-and-shoot.
Why you don’t: You want your digicam to be small enough to slip into your shirt pocket.
Our rating: 3 mice
Anyone who’s taken a point-and-shoot to get an action shot of his or her kid’s soccer game knows that can be a hit-and-miss proposition. In fact, it’s usually more miss than hit.
For those of us who aren’t quite ready to take the leap into the interchangeable- lens world of SLR cameras, Olympus has just released a new ubercamera that offers many of the features you would expect from a more complex package.
The 7.1-megapixel SP-550 has some features that jump right out at you, the most gaudy being its 18x optical-zoom lens. This basically allows the user to shoot telephoto, wide-angle and macro shots, all with one lens. The range, in 35-mm language, is from 28 to 504 mm — the largest among consumer-level digital cameras.
The second part of the package that jumps out at you is the shutter speed — two high-speed shooting modes and a burst rate of 15 frames per second.
The specs are impressive, but reviewers have quibbled with image-quality issues at the highest speeds — no surprise, considering it still requires an SLR to capture a professional-quality action shot.
Still, the SP-550 is an impressive package. Part of the high-speed feature is something called Pre-Capture, which enables the user to capture the action before fully pressing the shutter button. As well, it offers 30 shooting modes and high-quality audio and video.
Power usage is good, with an estimated 500 shots on four rechargeable AA nickel-metal-hydride batteries.
Available at London Drugs, Future Shop, Lens & Shutter and Kerrisdale Cameras.
© The Vancouver Province 2007