The new Olympus 570UZ is a 20x zoom digital camera with looks, features and specs almost like a digital SLR.
Introduction:
Olympus 570UZ is a really well thought our digital camera offering genuine manual controls for more professional suers, as well as brilliant Guide mode for people willing to educate themselves about more specific use of certain features, and an Auto mode for point-and-shooters. Whichever option you choose you should be more than satisfied with the image quality as the Olympus 570UZ is a really good performer in most areas.
Olympus 570UZ pros:
+ Excellent body design
+ 20x zoom
+ Extensive customizability and manual control options
+ Effective image stabilization system
+ Good battery life
+ Plenty of manual controls
+ Abundance of additional features
Olympus 570UZ cons:
- Imprecise zoom and manual focus controls
- Poor video performance
- Little built-in memory
- Xd-Picture Card support
The design:
Olympus 570UZ measures 4.7″ x 3.3″ x 3.4″ (118mm x 84mm x 87.5mm) and weighs 445 grams without batteries. The front of the camera is dominated by the 20x zoom lens, but the rubberized grip is also visible on the left. Between the grip and the lens are the self timer lam and the auto focus assist lamp illuminator. Above the lens is the camera’s built-in pop-up flash. At he back of Olympus 570UZ is the 2.7-inch LCD screen and on its left side are a few buttons. Above the display is the electronic viewfinder. Whereas on its right side is a circle mode of four buttons with the fifth inside it. On the right side of Olympus 570UZ you will find neck strap loop and a memory card slot covered with a rubber door. The left side of Olympus 570UZ houses three buttons, and the second loop. The top features a hot shoe for connecting an external flash, whereas the bottom houses the battery compartment and a tripod mount. The overall build quality of Olympus 570UZ is very solid which shows at the first sight.
Performance:
The Olympus 570UZ works on four AA batteries and although it can take over 350 photos with one set I would recommend buying a few rechargeable batteries. The Olympus 570UZ starts up in about three and a half seconds from pushing the power button which is not too bad for this class of digital camera. The Olympus 570UZ has also a few continuous modes. When you shoot at the highest quality you will get more or less one frame per second which is not so good, but if you want to boost it change the resolution to 5 megapixels and you will get 5 photos per second. And this already is quite nice, but going even further, if you take 3 megapixel photos you can get thirteen images per second. With the Olympus 570UZ you can also decide to save your photos as RAW files but it will take the camera about five second so save the large file to the memory card and that is how long you will have to wait before taking another photo.
The flash in Olympus 570UZ works really well and as it is a few centimetres above the lens it should keep the red-eye effect to minimum. The camera has, of course, red-eye reduction system as well. The flash is quick and usually ready to use almost instantly.
The 20x zoom lens had image stabilization system which works quite well. Should you decide that 20x zoom is not enough you also get the digital zoom which bumps up magnification by factor of 5x (transforming the maximum zoom to a 100x).
Image quality:
The Olympus 570UZ has two color modes: the Natural should be more suitable for professional photographers, whereas the Vibrant may be more suitable for amateurs who enjoy more colorful photos, but not necessarily accurate colors. As with most other cameras the Olympus 570UZ does quite a good job in certain lighting conditions, but slightly worse in others, but in this case even the worst performance was acceptable, so all in all the Olympus 570UZ does a very good job and often beter than the competition. Also when it comes to the noise levels the Olympus 570UZ stands out. In very low light the camera’s performance was not the best, but the lighter the better and in general it is very good again. The Olympus 570UZ can also record videos, but unfortunately it disappoints in this respect. The maximum resolution is 640 x 480 at the rate of 30 fps which is not bad for a digital camera. Although you can zoom in and out and have some other settings like white balance, contrast and saturation the clips made with Olympus 570UZ do not look nearly as nice as the still images.
Menus / ease of use:
The menu system in Olympus 570UZ is quite similar to other Olympus digital camera, but here is is quite elaborate due to its many functions and options. Some menus may seem a bit longish, but fortunately, when you find the optimal settings for you, you can always save them as My Mode so that you do not have to dig through the menus too often.the Olympus 570UZ has a few standard scene modes to choose from, plus some new modes like: Night + Portrait, Smile Mode, Multi Fireworks and a Guide Mode which will give you some hints as to what certain settings mean and what they will influence. All in all, the Olympus 570UZ is one of the best performers in its price range, so if you are looking for a digital camera you should have a look at this one.
Selected Olympus 570UZ features and specifications:
Sensor
• 1/2.33″ Type CCD • 10.7 million pixels total • 10.0 million effective pixels
Image sizes
• 3648 x 2736 • 2560 x 1920 • 2048 x 1536 • 1600 x 1200 • 1280 x 960
Movie clips • 640 x 480 / 30 fps • 640 x 480 / 30 fps
Maximum clip length • 640 x 480: 10 sec • 320 x 240: 29 min
File formats • RAW • JPEG Exif v2.21 • AVI (Motion JPEG) with WAV audio
Lens
• 20x optical zoom
• 4.6 -92.0 mm (26 – 520 35 mm equiv)
• F2.8- F4.5
Image stabilization
Dual Image Stabilization
Conversion lenses
48.4 mm Use CLA-10 to attach conversion lens
Digital zoom
5x
Focus modes
• Single Autofocus
• Face-Detection AF
• Predictive AF
• Manual focus
• Macro
• Super Macro
Focus distance
• Standard / Macro: 10 cm-infinity (wide), 1.2 m-infinity (tele)
• Super Macro: 1 cm closest focus distance
AF area modes
• TTL iESP auto focus with contrast detection
• 143-point selectable spot AF
Metering
• ESP Multi-Pattern
• Center-weighted
• Spot
Live Histogram
Yes
Exposure compensation
+/- 2EV in 1/3EV steps
Exposure bracketing
• 5 frames • +/- 1/3EV steps
Shutter speed
1/2 – 1/2000 sec
Continuous shooting
• Sequential shooting mode 1.2 fps / 7 frames (Full Image Size)
• Sequential shooting mode (high speed) 7.2 fps / 30 frames (in 5MP mode)
• 13.5 fps / 30 frames (in 3MP mode)
• Interval shooting Ye
Flash
• AUTO
• Red-eye reduction
• Fill-in
• Off
• Red-eye reduction & Fill-in
• Slow synchronisation
• Flash compensation +/- 2 EV
Viewfinder
LCD electronic viewfinder
LCD monitor
• 2.7-inch LCD
• 230,000 pixels
Connectivity
• Combined USB 2.0 Hi-speed and AV output • DC input
Print compliance
• PictBridge
• Print Image Matching III
• DPOF
Storage
• xD-Picture Card
• 47 MB internal storage
Power
• 4 x AA batteries
• Optional AC adapter
Other recently reviewed digital cameras:
Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1, Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ28, Nikon D90, Pentax K20D, Canon PowerShot SX10 IS.