Olympus SP-500 UZ Easy Digital Camera Review

The SP-500 UZ is Olympus’ version of an “ultra zoom” digital camera with its 10x optical zoom lens and 6 megapixels in a SLR-shaped body. The SP-500 still has compact 4.15 x 2.93 x 2.8-inch measurements, but weighs a relatively hefty 10 ounces without the card and batteries. The Olympus SP-500 UZ requires 4 AA batteries to work, which makes finding spare batteries easy because AAs can be found just about anywhere. However, the battery life isn’t as long as cameras with rechargeable lithium batteries. Still, the Olympus SP-500 has a lot to offer. It has 21 scene modes and a full auto mode to please the point-and-shooters, along with manual, aperture priority, shutter priority, and 4 custom modes to please the manual control freaks. The Olympus SP-500 has a lot of desirable features at a reasonable $379 price.

 

The Olympus SP-500 UZ has a 2.5-inch LCD screen that is nicely sized, but doesn’t have great resolution. It has 115,000 pixels on the screen, which is paltry compared to other models that have 230,000 pixels on the same sized display. The rough view makes viewing and controls like manual focus quite difficult. There is a much smaller electronic viewfinder with 201,000 pixels. The resolution is better, but there is no plush eye cup to make viewing comfortable. The viewfinder is plastic – as is the rest of the body. While the camera’s shape is SLR-like, its control buttons are more like those of a compact model. There aren’t that many. And the ones that are there are large, nicely spaced, and simple to use. One of the best buttons is the Easy Print button, which makes direct printing quite simple. Connect the camera to the printer with the USB, select the picture you want, press the Easy Print button, and voila.

 

 

This digital camera has lots of built-in features for photographers who want to avoid editing software. There are 11 shades to choose from in the saturation, contrast, and sharpness options in-camera. In the playback mode, frames and titles can be added. So in a matter of a few minutes, you can snap a shot of your kids sledding and add a holiday themed frame and a “Happy Holidays” text title. Press the Easy Print button and you’ve got this year’s holiday card all set. Sound a little excessive for a digital camera? The Olympus SP-500 also has nine slide show transitions like fades, wipes, and checkerboards.

 

As the flagship of the new SP series of Olympus digital cameras, the SP-500 UZ has a lot of versatility. Additional wide and telephoto conversion lenses can be used on this camera. Flash accessories cannot be used, but the SP-500 has a pop-up flash that evenly lights and has a decent reach. The Olympus SP-500 can act as a video camera as well, recording 640 x 480-pixel video at a smooth rate of 30 fps up to the capacity of the xD-Picture card or the 10 MB of internal memory. The long 10x optical zoom lens can be zoomed in the movie mode, but there is no image stabilization to keep faraway shots from looking shaky. The Olympus SP-500 doesn’t produce the best color and has a slow burst mode, but can shoot from 3 cm in its macro mode and packs 6 megapixels with ten image size options (twenty-one if you count compression options). The SLR-shaped camera is easy to use with its few buttons, 21 scene modes, and help guide option. The Olympus SP-500 UZ gives beginners and intermediate users a lot of versatility and zoom at a relatively little $379 price.

Olympus SP-500 UZ Compared to the...