Reviewing point-and-shoot cameras for you guys, no matter how complex, is like writing about light beer for a wine magazine. What can you say but that it goes down smooth and tastes great? Can you talk about the vat-grown malty flavor? Can you talk about the bottle and clever spelling of “lite?” Absolutely, but you and I both know we’re doing each other a disservice.
Me, for reviewing a point-and-shoot that aspires to be a DSLR and you for thinking about buying a point-and-shoot when you know that a nice Nikon or Canon with a good, basic lens costs about $700 on a bad day and will take great pictures without any of the lag, drag, and sag found in most point-and-shoots. That’s why I’m so bitter about the Olympus SP-570UZ. I was excited, nay, supremely interested in the camera and now I feel like I had to drink a case of Mickey’s Big Mouth.
The SP-570UZ is a 10-megapixel camera with image stabilization and 2.7-inch LCD screen. Its real claim to fame is a huge 20X zoom, offering an effective range of 26-250mm. Add in a 5x digital zoom and you’ve got 100x zoom. I’m all for big zoom range. It’s fun. You can sit on a bench and take pictures of people a few hundred yards away. Outdoors, this camera is a tourist’s dream. Indoors, however, it is problematic.
Even in Auto mode, the camera needs a flash indoors, regardless of lighting, and the flash does not pop up automatically. This means it’s hard to take good pictures indoors without washing out the picture and causing sharp shadows and to get that flash you have to press another button. That’s fine for most photography, but the camera has so much untapped power that this failure in Auto mode turned me off completely, initially, and I was afraid to even review it. A point-and-shoot camera that is not good indoors in Auto mode is an abject failure. It ignores its audience and forces folks who might not want to learn about fancy things like “f-stop” and “taking good pictures” to read the manual, something an entry level camera shouldn’t require you to do. At about $499, this camera is exactly that: something you pick up when you want to move one step above your old tiny digicam but aren’t quire ready to figure out what all those lenses and filters do in DSLR land.
Olympus does throw us a bone by adding an on-screen guide, but the guide is fairly truncated. In Guide mode, you have the option to brighten the subject. Their advice? Turn on the flash. That’s it, basically. No automated shutter speed fixes, no ISO levels. Just pop on the flash and get an ugly picture. Ok. End of rant. How about the good stuff?
We took this camera on a trip to Majorca with us and as a tourist’s camera it’s great, presuming you’re outdoors. As you can see, I tested the zoom and found it quite impressive. The picture below shoes a sort of before-and-after. Before is a shot of the scene and a playground about a hundred yards away. After is a close up of my wife and son on the playground using only the zoom. The picture is fairly sharp — sharp enough to blow up safely — and quite bright. I did the same with a number of shots and even took some nice macro shots. This camera excelled outside.
So why was I so upset initially? Because a point-and-shoot must not be initially difficult. Even a DSLR takes acceptable shots out of the gate, but this Olympus frustrated me so much initially that I almost gave up. Imagine someone picking this up and ruining shot after shot of a kid’s birthday party, fiddling with the settings until suddenly figuring out that you have to physically press the flash button to get anything good out of this camera.
Another pet peeve is that it supports only xD cards and a proprietary USB connection port. It also does not come with a rechargeable battery. Overall, this camera is very uneven. It takes great zoom pictures outdoors, in bright sunlight but begins to fall apart indoors. Thanks to the other little details, I’m hard-pressed to recommend it to novices and to skilled amateurs I’d suggest just getting a DSLR. This camera sits uneasily between two extremes and, aside for the rare ornithologist, doesn’t satisfy a few important basic requirements for the price.
Specs:
* 20x optical zoom (equivalent to 26-520mm*) – from extreme close-ups to stunning scenes
* Avoids blur thanks to Dual Image Stabilisation
* Don’t miss the moment with high-speed 15fps sequence shooting**
* Face Detection Technology for perfectly focused and exposed faces plus correct exposure of other image areas
* P/A/S/M exposure modes for creative freedom
* 22 scene modes for the best results in different situations
* 10 Megapixels to make poster-size prints
* See and share images on the 6.9cm/2.7″ LCD
* Better low light shooting thanks to BrightCapture Technology
* Great for shots of flowers and detail from as close as 1cm with Super Macro mode
* Liven up your memories with movie recording with sound
* TruePic III image processor for faster image handling and higher image quality
* 38 languages on board
* Dioptric correction
* Flexible shooting with internal memory or using xD-Picture Card
* Supplied with Olympus Master software 2.03 including Muvee Pack trial version plus four AA batteries
* TCON-017 teleconversion lens and CLA-10 adapter ring optionally available for maximum of 884mm (or 4420mm when combined with digital zoom)
I agree 100% with this review.
I have been an Olympus fan for sometime since I was using the C-765 and C-770 and now the DSLR E-510 which I like very much. After using a DSLR there is no going back for me to point-shoot. Image quality of PS will never be satisfing again. I advice anyone who is willing to pay $500 for the SP-570 to come up with another $150 and get the E-510 two lens kit. By the way, Nikon is coming out with the Coolpix P80 which has 18x, its due soon in the market.
I don’t why camera manufactorers don’t use good quality sensors for some PS such as the SP-570 and sell it for more. I would be the first to buy 20x PS for $700 or 800 that offers an image quality equal to mid range DSLR.
I received this camera yesterday. My photos indoors and out are coming out excellent. I did not find this camera difficult at all. This is about the 30th point n shoot digicam I’ve owned.
I am also able to use this camera with my ebay Gadget infinity remotes using my Canon 580EX II flashes and even an old Vivitar 285HV flash.
Granted,photography is my livelihood but my 82 year old mother aced this after 15 minutes and this was her first attempt at digital photography.
I don’t use this cam for my real work but just easy to carry around in case that opportunity for a great news or stock shot presents itself.
With any digicam you own you need to spend a few minutes with the manual and pressing a button for a flash really is not the hard!
So far,I love it and find the size is quite nice too.
eyedo
I wouldn’t buy a camera that turn’s on the flash without me asking. Notice how bad most flash pictures are?
Kim
I agree. I use flash only when necessary, I don’t care for flash pictures. I actually bought a camera with a flash that pops open every time I take a picture outdoor just because its a little shady, I returned it for a refund.
Interesting review.
Is it possible that you got a defective camera? None of the other reviews I’ve read mentioned problems comparable to yours, and I’ve seen a good variety of sample photos that indicate things are working fine, including indoors and very-low light.
And where did you get the information that this is a point & shoot camera, and the identification of its target audience? From the variety of features in this camera, I suspect it is targeted at a variety of niches, as much as at any narrowly defined single market.
It doesn’t seem to me that a camera with full manual exposure and focus modes, auto-bracketing, nearly-full settings feedback, RAW and RAW+JPEG save, is a “point & shoot.”
Supplementing your “good basic lens” on your Canon or Nikon DSLR with 26mm to 520mm equivalent lenses is going to really run the cost up, run the weight up, run the physical size of the kit up, and have the user juggling lenses. Not a very pretty picture for a lot of folks. DSLRs aren’t necessarily the be-all and end-all.
I’ve owned SLRs since they didn’t have built-in metering, much less auto-this and auto-that. I started out with a folding roll-film Zeiss that required setting aperture, shutter, and focus by rings on the lens, and if you forgot to cock the shutter, you didn’t get a picture. It took great pictures. I was never convinced that my first SLR was as much of a step up from that as it was touted to be.
So I kept going back and forth between SLRs and rangefinders, et al.
Of the several cameras I remember as special favorites, only one SLR (an Olympus OM-2 m/d) made the cut. I haven’t looked at a DSLR yet that seemed like it might be a candidate. Many of them are nice enough tools for many purposes, but none of them seemed to have the potential to become special friends. The SP-570UZ seems like it might.
To me, its biggest weakness is that it is missing a hyperfocal mode for autofocus – where the far edge of the depth of field for the selected aperture and focal length is set to infinity, and everything from the near depth-of-field edge to infinity is in focus. It would be very useful in soft or low-light or fast-changing situations where regular autofocus is too lame or too slow. Tell me about a DSLR that includes this, with automatic adjustment as the aperture changes or the lens is zoomed, and I might be tempted.
I’m also disappointed that although all aperture and shutter are shown on the display, focal length isn’t. I would prefer full-disclosure.
But it has a hotshoe (aka ‘accessory socket’), which I consider vital. It has a sufficient wide-angle for most purposes. It has a sufficient tele for most purposes.
It has full-manual control, gracefully degrading through various semi-automatic modes to full automatic when one just doesn’t feel being picky.
It has RAW+JPEG save, which means most shots can get their final touch-up in Picasa and get uploaded to the web or printed out in small format without having to screw around with fancy software, but the RAW is still there for when there is a JPEG problem or a larger print means more tweaking.
Try looking at the camera again (or a non-defective replacement) and consider a target audience of folks who are looking for a full manual, long-zoom camera that also gives them options to back off and let the camera do the hemming and hawing.
I’d be interested in knowing what you think.
And I still think it sucks that they make so many of these things so it is so hard to hang a polarizing filter on them.
I mean’t Olympus got the camera right. The flash should only come on when specifically set – not automatically when the light is low. If you can’t be bothered with pushing a button, the camera is not for you.
Kim
Kim,
You are so right about bad flash pictures. It just amazes me when even respected photographer/authors will right about fill-in flash and provide examples where the flash is “not noticeable” yet to my eye is blatantly obvious = often these images have jumped out at me before I even realized the page was about flash use and the image was supposed to be a good example, not a bad example..
This is typically because the color balance of the flash is inappropriate to the scene – too cool a white for evening or incandescent scenes, too warm for sunny-day outdoor shade. Camera makers could address this by creating a flash with two tubes – one yellowish and one bluish – which would both fire for “daylight”/maximum output, one or the other alone for extremes (fill-in doesn’t require maximum output) or proportionally to get any color temperature between. The color balance could be automated via the camera’s white balance, with manual options.
The second problem is that the flashes usually need a diffuser, but using one lowers the guide number. I think diffuser should be provided with every consumer flash, and should be in place as a default, with a note in the specs that diffuser must be removed for maximum guide number.
You are also right about this camera being for button pushers. I would think that anyone worried that the flash requires a button-push would have been unlikely to get past the plethora of other buttons and controls. I had wondered, though, if some of the provided scene/SCN modes that call for flash would raise the flash automatically.
Alan
I hear what you guys are saying and I loved this camera for outdoor shots. All that zoom in bright light is great. I had quite a bit of trouble getting indoor shots in Audio, Scene, and Guide mode so it could have been the camera or my own stupidity. I don’t know. All I do know is that the average point-and-shoot – and this would be ALMOST a prosumer camera although I still believe being a DSLR is one important requirement for prosumer models and I’m willing to be flamed for it – took better pictures in low light out of the box than this one did. As a fairly astute photographer but by no means an expert, the problems I had would have baffled my father, for example, who knows cameras as well as I do but is not well-versed in digital.
CrunchGear focuses on out-of-box experience. Indoors, out of box was bad. Outdoors it was excellent.
The superiority of this camera over the competing Nikon Coolpix P80 is that the Olympus has RAW mode and the Nikon does not. Unfortunately the Olympus uses only xD flash memory chips while the Nikon uses standard SD memory. The largest xD chips available are 2 GB while SD chips are available up to 16 GB.
The contradiction is that RAW files are enormous compared to JPG files and use lots more memory storage. Yet the Nikon P80 whose JPG’s use memory frugally can have 16 GB of storage. The Olympus 570UZ’s RAW files (and RAW+JPG) use memory prodigally but can have only 2 GB available.
The choices seem to be only far too much and far too little.
I agree the xD card is a very stupid move, and whats with the “panorama mode only available on Olympus branded cards” ? O ya and xD cards are also 2-3 times more expensive than SD cards and the 2 gb limit also sux.
What i don’t get is why do these “almost DSLR” cameras have such small sensors (1/2.5″ – 1/2.33″ ) even my first digital camera (BenQ DC C1000) had a 1/1.8″ sensor at the same 10 megapixels. I’m looking for a replacement for it, something with more than 3x zoom, but not DSLR.
Anyone know if this camera can zoom during movie recording ?
I’m also very interested in the new Nikon P80, it’s a real shame it doesn’t do RAW , and that’s stupid cuz’ it’s just a software limitation as far as i know. I’d really want an honest review of it, but i can’t find any since it only went on sale 5 days ago.
Sensor size and lens size are very closely matched by the designers of these cameras. A larger sensor would require a larger lens – think bulk and weigh going up by roughly the cube of the sensor size change, and price would escalate as well.
Sensor quality and lens quality are also very closely matched. If you just scaled up the same lens design, very quickly the improved image quality from the enlarged sensor would be lost due to lens image quality limitations.
Making the lens keep pace with the larger sensor in image quality as well as price would quickly result in a a very, very expensive camera.
Finepix S100FS
The choices seem to be :
Nikon P80, Sony H9 — no RAW
Panasonic FZ18 — RAW, but won’t zoom in video
Olympus SP-570UZ — RAW, zooms in video, but small flash memories
WHY does this have to be so difficult?
Here are the cameras i’ve found:
Panasonic Lumix FZ18 – 8Mp, 18x, has RAW but no movie Zoom
Canon Powershot S5 – 8Mp, 12x, No RAW but has movie Zoom
Nikon Coolpix P80 – 10Mp, 18x, No RAW movie zoom unknown
Sony Cybershot H50 – 9Mp, 15x, No RAW but has movie Zoom
Samsung Pro815 – 8Mp(2/3″), 15x, Has RAW but no Image Stabilization(its a 2005-2006 model something newer should have appeard, but not yet)
Kodak Easyshare Z1012IS – 10Mp, 12x, 720p HD Video, unreleased
Fujifilm S8100fd – 10Mp, 18x, No RAW
Olympus Sp-570UZ – 10Mp, 20X, RAW, has movie zoom but no movie sound or movie sound but no zoom, but not both at once (stupid right ?even my BenQ C1000 is smarter then that it has movie zoom and sound but it mutes the sound only when zooming)
I need to pick one from these, RAW capabilities are not as important as movie zoom or Image Stabilization, but i need more info on the new arrivals before that.
If u know of any other ones that i have missed i’d love to know.
AND THE WINNER IS …….
I have settled on the Panasonic DMZ-FZ50 (How ancient a crock is one to remember that DMZ once stood for DeMilitarized Zone?)
Pros: Most important feature is that the lens zooms manually so one does not wind up screwing around with trying to frame with a wide-tele switch. I think that would be annoying unto maddening. It doesn’t so much zoom during movies as it allows you to zoom manually.
The Olympus SP-570UZ has a zoom ring but it activates a motor which actually does the zooming.
It also shoots RAW and uses SDHC memory (available up to 16GB), not xD (up to 2 GB).
It has what is claimed to be the optical equivalent of digital zoom. Zooms to 432 mm equivalent at full resolution, then to 770 mm at progressively lower resolutions down to 3 Mpxl. I am not sure what exactly that means but that is what I read. It also has a 2x digital zoom. Even if it is eyewash, 432 mm equivalent, while not the very longest, is pretty good.
As I understand it, digital “zoom” is not a zoom at all but a cropping and magnification of the image. I don’t understand how what Panasonic is doing and calling it optical is any different, but there is a lot that I don’t understand.
Good user reviews on B&H. People like the Leica lens, though one has to wonder whether their judgments are affected by the brand name. Still it’s better than them hating it.
CONS: Heavier (23.6 ounces) and bigger (like a very small DSLR) than I wanted.
PRICE: $440 at B&H versus $450 for the Olympus SP-570UZ
What makes all of this so frustrating to me is that what I really want is the Canon G9, which is a technically superior camera in a number of ways. But its lens zooms only to 44 mm, or 210 mm equivalent. I have had the experience on long bicycle trips of seeing some wonderful and amazing wildlife but so far away that all I got on my camera was a brown dot when I what I saw was a small herd of musk oxen. It will be just my luck that immediately after I can no longer return my new camera, Canon will announce the G10. But one just has to accept that anything one buys will be obsolescent in six months, obsolete in 18 months, and a joke in three years. Sigh.
DeMilitarized Zone? lol, actually it’s DeMilitarized Coffeeshop (DMC-FZ50 at least thats what the panasonic site says).
The camera isn’t half bad, especially the 1/1.8″ sensor with 10Mp , but it’s to big, to heavy, to expensive, 5 cm Macro is just not enough, and 2″ screen ? smaller then it’s predecessors ? It’s not bad but it’s not for me.
JoeS and my frustration with the whole situation have convinced me. I am going with my multo-heavy monster-large DSLR and its ton of lenses. I will just have to forgo other luggage I might have taken on my bike trip, like food, water, sleeping bag, tent, and tools. I sent for a Nikon 70-300 zoom which is cheap, relatively light, slow, and rumored to be soft in the focus at 300mm. With the DSLR’s focal length multiplier of 1.5 it becomes a 105-450mm which is as long as most of the compact superzooms.
I can keep the telephoto lens on the camera by default in case of momentarily glimpsed wildlife, and switch to wider in case of slower-moving things like panoramas, flowers, and sunsets. With all summer to fiddle with it, I might even learn to use it.
A full DSLR camera and at least 2 lens sounds pretty expensive, and u might actually need a separate backpack for them lol. I didn’t say DSLR’s are bad, but there just not for me, not now anyway.
I’ve narrowed it down to the Nikon Coolpix P80 and the Sony Cybershot H50, (the Kodak Easyshare Z1012IS with its 720p HD Video sounds pretty good especially at 300USD or less,) And i forgot to mention that this camera is more for my sister than me. She calls the shots cuz’ she paying for it.
I have to wonder what camera the reviewer was using. The review does not seem to match the camera in any way.
I just received my SP-570uz yesterday and took it to a large indoor awards event in the late afternoon through evening. The camera was absolutely amazing, I was able to take fully zoomed shots indoors from 40+ ft, no flash, with backlit subjects, while I was standing, handheld with no mono/tri-pod. Were the shots perfect, of course not, under those circumstances it is not possible to get perfect shots. Where the shots good, no they were exceptional. I doubt there is another camera in the world I could have used under those circumstances and got the variety of shots, both close and far, wide and narrow, with the clarity and color range I achieved with this camera.
I specifically picked this camera because after 30 years of using SLRs I have given up on them. They are too big, and require that you either carry multiple cameras or deal with time wasting and inconvenient lens swapping. I was able to use the 570uz as if it was a point and shoot camera and still able to get some amazing shots.
Regarding the flash comments. I do not understand any concerns about the flash. It is a popup flash, leave it down and it will never flash. I did test my old Vivtar flash unit on the hotshoe, it worked fine.
HTPC Guy has more or less ruined the discussion by actually knowing what he is talking about from first-hand experience. I wondered if the reviewer had an agenda to not like the camera from the get-go. He never stops assuming and insisting that any DSLR is automatically better than any compact zoom lens camera. This argument is no more persuasive than JoeS saying this or that “is not for me”. (He is right about his criticisms of the Panasonic DMC-FZ50 though, and dissuaded me from getting it. Which is why I am still in this discussion.) I also suspected the reviewer, John Biggs, of having an agenda not to like this camera when he reported the zoom range as 26-250mm rather than 26-520mm. Since the zoom range is the most salient marketing feature of this thing, that seems close to a deliberate dishonesty. The fact that simple arithmetic would show the error and the correct figure is below in the quoted specifications does not make me feel easy about the honesty of Biggs’ intentions. There are no other typos or misspellings in Biggs’ text so it clearly was edited at least once. I don’t think the error was an accident.
I have a Nikon D200 which is a very fancy and very large and heavy DSLR. I am vaccilating over whether to take it on a long bicycle trip in northern Canada and Alaska or to take a compact like one of those we have been discussing here. I also have the longest range zoom Nikon makes, an 18-200mm which in 35mm would be 27-300. But it is big and heavy and complicated. The lenses and the sensor are better, but a) I will be outdoors in daylight on almost every shot so I will be able to use high speeds and small apertures which will make the compact’s lens and sensor just as good, and b) to take really exquisite shots with the Nikon I would need to take a tripod, not something I am eager to do on a long bicycle trip.
So going back to my original objection to the Olympus SP-570UZ, my question to HTPC Guy is: How many RAW+JPG shots can you take before filling the 2GB xD memory card?
“So going back to my original objection to the Olympus SP-570UZ, my question to HTPC Guy is: How many RAW+JPG shots can you take before filling the 2GB xD memory card?”
I’m not HTPC guy, but per the manual downloaded from olympusamerica.com, a 1G card will hold 69 RAW (without sound) or from 205 to 10,660 JPEG (without sound). 2G should hold just over double those numbers (some of system overhead is fixed).
You shouldn’t need highest quality JPEG, since you’ve got the RAW & the JPEG will mostly for quick email/blog/drugstore-prints.
So do the math & pick your own total somewhere in the 100 to 140 range, give a take a few.
I don’t think JB is dishonest, though possibly careless, unknowledgeable, irresponsible, and oblivious to his biases. But isn’t everybody, to some degree?
The two things that almost kept me from buying this camera were the use of the xD card format and the non-standard USB connector.
I will run a test of RAW+JPEG and let you know how much space they take up. I purchased a 2GB type-H card, there are 4GB cards available. The type-M are cheaper and if you are not doing long video shots you probably don’t need the higher speed type-H card.
Wait, I think I have part of the answer to my own question. The Nikon D200 has 10.2 megapixels and will store 208 RAW+JPG on a 4 GB memory card. Presumably it would store 104 on a 2 GB card.
The Olympus also has 10 megapixels. The Nikon uses 36-bit color and the Olympus uses 24-bit color, so the Olympus stores only 2/3 as much information per pixel as the Nikon (24 divided by 36). Given the same number of pixels, the Olympus files should be two-thirds as large. All other things being equal, the Olympus should be able to store half again as many pictures on a 2GB card as the Nikon — 156 pictures. Of course, “all other things” are not likely to actually be equal given the complexities of high-tech electronics, but it is as good as one can get with guessing.
That is the equivalent of 4 and a 1/3 rolls of 36 exposure film (remember those?). It is not huge but it would likely suffice for most purposes. One would need a second, backup chip, just as one needs a second, backup battery. So maybe this is the camera to get after all.
The reviewer, John Biggs, says this camera is great for outdoors. The owner, HTPC Guy, says this is a terrific camera for indoors too.
The only thing that’s missing is bokeh, and I can probably live without it. I probably don’t have the hands nor the eyes to pick a bird off a distant branch with full aperture so as to put the surrounding branches out of focus so only the bird stands out.
I agree with Alan Winston. Perhaps because it is an election year in which nobody is to believed because everybody has a concealed agenda, I defamed John Biggs’ character. That was unfair and I apologize. After all, all we are doing here is discussing consumer goods. There is nothing here important enough to get personal about. Again, I apologize.
The test results are in for JPEG+RAW.
I took shots of the same outdoor scene using various storage settings, all at 10MP (3648×2736). All were shot at 4.6mm (26mm equiv.), 1/25sec, F5.6. Please find the results below.
JPEG Fine setting: 3.58MB
JPEG Normal setting: 1.72MB
RAW: 14.46MB
I shot JPEG Fine, JPEG Normal, RAW+JPEG Fine, RAW+JPEG Normal. The RAW+JPEG setting simply creates both files, the RAW and JPEG files shot with this setting do not vary from the files created with RAW only or JPEG only settings. Therefore if you want to use RAW+JPEG you can simply add the RAW file size to your prefered JPEG file size and calculate storage.
Using a blank 2GB type-H card the camera reports the following number of available pictures.
JPEG Fine: 410
JPEG Normal: 799
RAW: 138
RAW+JPEG Fine: 118
RAW+JPEG Normal: 118 (yes the camera reported both the same)
Note: the camera is extremely conservative in reporting available space for JPEG. With the camera set to JPEG Fine and 37 photos taken, including 4 RAW, the camera reported 380 available, for a total of 417 including the 4 far larger RAW. I estimate I will get roughly 450-500 photos on the 2GB card in JPEG Fine. Due to the long write time I do not intend to use RAW format except in rare occasions, rather I will use the sequential shot option more frequently.
Capture speed should have read 1/125 sec (not that it matters).
I recently bought a Nikon Coolpix P80 and immediately returned it to store after seeing the results. Noise is abysmal and present at all times, regardless which ISO-settings I used.
Also, all images were 2-2.8Mb large, strongly indicating that jpeg-compression is pretty heavy.
When I compare the shots from P80 with my new Olympus SP-570UZ I can clearly see the difference between the two cameras and what they produce. Olympus is a winner for me I think.
People are never satisfied regardless of what they get. I have been and will be a professional photographer for as long as I can hold a camera. I shot Nikon 35mms for years and loved every minute and now I just shoot for the fun of it and love it even more. I sold most of my Nikons a few years ago and got out of the professional business for personnel reasons. Shortly there after my wife gave me an Olympus C-770 UZ and I have carried it all over the world as I traveled and it has served me well. For this past father’s day I got the new Olympus SP-570 UZ and again it does as advertised and does it exceedingly well. If you look closely at any camera you can find fault and there in lies the problem. A friend of mine asks me once, “What is the best camera?” I told him whatever camera you like as long as you learn to use it fully without having to lookup its functions in a manual. The camera will to be your friend and you need to be its friend, but first go to a good school/class and learn how cameras work then you will understand how to make them your friend! Taking good pictures is very easy if you know how too. The camera is just a tool and like any good workman you need to know how to use your tools!
What a stupid review. All the guy complains about is that you have to press something to get the flash. And he goes on and on about it. That’s actually a good thing! I hate cameras whose flash turns up automatically. It reduces my artistic freedom.
Anything else about the camera? How is it performing? How about the different ISOs? Good? Bad? Why don’t you learn to review cameras before posting?
After Reading this review, AND actually OWNING a SP-570UZ.
This reviewer holds joint 1st place in talking out of his ass, & being the only reviewer to overly trash the camera.
He either has; a) No idea what he’s talking about, b) Had a deliberately bias agenda c) Had a faulty camera.
But to be continually comparing to a DSLR is a rubbish stance to take, as it is NOT what the camera is tying to be, contrary to his opinion.
- His original beef being that it is difficult to use? – Rubbish! – You want simple, reviewer? Go buy a Casio EX-Z80, or something run-of-the-mill point & shoot like that!!!
Crap & inacurate review.. ONE Star to the Reviewer. FIVE stars for the camera!!
I own an the earlier 550UZ and my only complaints about that camera are the bad shutter lag and the “hard” exposure with flash. The first is a pain and the second I overcome with the excellent natural light capability. I looked up this review as I have it mind to upgrade to the 570 but no one has mentioned the shutter lag so does that mean that it is no longer an issue? For the rest, as the 570 has to be at least as good as mine (I hope even better) then the 570 has to be a GREAT camera for its purpose! Would appreciate comments re the shutter lag issue.
I own an the earlier 550UZ and my only complaints about that camera are the bad shutter lag and the “hard” exposure with flash. The first is a pain and the second I overcome with the excellent natural light capability. I looked up this review as I have it mind to upgrade to the 570 but no one has mentioned the shutter lag so does that mean that it is no longer an issue? For the rest, as the 570 has to be at least as good as mine (I hope even better) then the 570 has to be a GREAT camera for its purpose! Would appreciate comments re the shutter lag issue.
I am an SP-570UZ, but she continues to shoot at 640×480 (30fps) with a maximum of 40s, even with the H type of memory card I bought on eBay. Do you have an idea of what?