Black Friday see store specials
The Olympus SP 550 UZ is a digital camera that falls under the Super Zoom style of cameras that feature optical zooms of 15x or more. With the 550 UZ Olympus sat down and decided they were going to try and be the top of the game for all the headline key features. This results in class-leading specifications: 18x optical zoom with a wide angle lens that is the equivalent of 28-504mm, ISO5000 capability, and a 15FPS continuous shooting mode. Olympus has also thrown in a large variety of features and shooting modes. However, because this camera is SLR-like and not a real SLR, all of the controls for managing these features are accomplished through button presses on the back and not by control dials on the lens itself.
MSRP $499.00
Release date March, 2007
love it
want it
have it
tag it
Pros & Cons5
Reviews1
Details
Buy It
Competitors1
Related
Gallery6
Pros & Cons
1 positive
0 mixed
0 negative
![[i]](/images/info.png)
How is the ProSCORE calculated?
show me!
The ProSCORE is calculated based on the ratio of Pros & Cons about this product as voted by
approved reviewers from the ProductWiki community.
ProSCORE = 100 x (Pro votes) / [(Pro votes) + (Con votes)]
Numbers used for this ProSCORE:
Pro votes = 3
Con votes = 2
Total votes = 5
If you want to help improve the accuracy of the results, register and start voting!
» see the top ranked reviewers
[close]
Details
At such high zooms, the tiniest amount of movement will cause a dramatic amount of blur. As a result Olympus has incorporated a two stage form of anti-blur with the first stage being a mechanical method that shifts the image sensor accordingly. While the high-level specs are impressive some of them come at a high cost. To gain access to the 15FPS shooting mode the image resolution is capped at 1.2MP. Slower shooting modes allow the resolution to be increased. At full resolution the frame rate is 1 frame per second, for 3 frames.
For storage the SP 550 UZ utilizes the xD Card storage format which was developed by Olympus and Fujifilm. xD cards have a maximum storage capacity of 2GB, with slower transfer speeds the more common SD cards. As a result of using xD cards the time between successive shots at normal resolution can reach up to 4 seconds.
Submit a link
This report was started
May 17, 2007 at 1:36 am by
ckmunson
with the last edit occurring
December 5, 2007 at 12:48 pm by
Amanie
This page has been viewed
3850 times,
with
22 edits by
5 contributors.
See the
full report history »
Buy It
Competitors
MSRP $400.00
Released July, 2007
Pros
- Long zoom lens
- Good price for its features
- Intelligent mode lets you take good pictures without changing settings
Cons
- Image processing can cause artifacts
- No zoom with movies
Olympus SP 550 UZ
vs.
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ18
Reviews
May 17, 2007
approved
reviewer
want it
Pros
- Very high optical
zoom level
- A lot of features
- Great battery life
Cons
- Image quality suffers for features
- Long time between consecutive shots
Did you find this review helpful?
Yes
/
No
Price comparison information by:
