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Olympus SP-560UZ Review,
Richard Butler, December 2007
Review based on a production Olympus SP-560UZ with firmware V3.1
Olympus was one of the first manufacturers to realize that building digicams around small sensors allows much longer zooms to be offered without the bulk of the camera becoming unmanageable. With its "Ultra zoom" range, starting back in 2000 with the 1.3MP C-2100UZ, Olympus almost single-handedly created a niche for digicams offering 10X optical zooms in relatively compact formats. Over the years, that niche has developed into a popular and fiercely fought market segment.
Realizing that the utility of a 10X zoom was great enough to make many users overlook the compromises that such a large zoom range entails, Olympus decided to investigate whether customers would put up with still more compromises if the zoom range was even greater. The result was the SP-550UZ with its astonishing 18X zoom range. And, just a few months later, the Olympus was joined on the market by similar offerings from Panasonic and Fuji, suggesting it wasn't alone in its thinking. So here we have Olympus' second-generation 18X zoom camera, the SP-560UZ. The question is, having lost its unique selling point, can the Olympus still make a convincing pitch for your money, and have the SP-550's shortcomings been overcome? Let's find out...
Headline features
- 18X optical zoom, giving a 27mm-486mm equiv. range
- Dual IS, combining sensor shift technology with high ISO settings
- 8.0 million pixel sensor
- ISO 6400 at 3.1MP
- ISO 3200 at full resolution
- RAW mode
- Face detection
- Face detection-combined In-camera red-eye reduction
- Rapid continuous shooting (up to 15fps at 2MP)
- 25 scene modes
- Smile mode (waits for subject to smile)
- Expression Edit
- Shadow Adjust
- Control of off-board flashguns, with latest firmware
SP-560UZ key specifications
| Street price | • US: $375 • UK: £260 |
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| Body Material | Plastics |
| Sensor |
• 1/2.35" Type CCD |
| Image sizes |
• 3264 x 2448 |
| Movie clips | • 640 x 480 @ 30 fps • 320 x 240 @ 15 fps •160 x 120 @ 15 fps • AVI Motion JPEG with WAVE monaural audio |
| Lens |
• 27 - 486 mm (35 mm equiv) |
| Focus |
• TTL contrast-type auto focus |
| Focus distance |
• Normal: 10 cm (wide) / 1.2 m (tele) - Infinity |
| Metering |
• 'ESP' metering |
| Shutter speed |
• 15-1/2000 sec (extremes depending on exposure mode) |
| Aperture | • F2.8-F8 (wide) • F4.5-F8 (tele) |
| Shooting mode | • Auto • Picture Stabilization (auto High ISO) • Natural Light • Natural Light with Flash • Movie • Program • Aperture Priority • Shutter Priority • Manual • Scene modes |
| Scene modes |
• Portrait |
| Sensitivity |
• Auto (Up to ISO 400) |
| White Balance | • Auto • Fine • Shade • Fluorescent (daylight) • Fluorescent (warm white) • Fluorescent (cool white) • Incandescent • Custom |
| Continuous |
• 1.1 fps for around |
| Flash |
• Built-in pop-up |
| Storage | • 47 MB internal memory • xD-Picture Card (not included) |
| Viewfinder |
• Electronic viewfinder (EVF) |
| LCD monitor | • 2.5" TFT LCD • 230,000 pixels • Brightness boost • Approx. 97% coverage |
| Connectivity | • USB 2.0 High speed • A/V out (NTSC/PAL switchable) |
| Power | • 4 x AA batteries alkaline or NiMH (alkaline included) • Charger optional |
| Other features |
• DPOF |
| Optional accessories |
• Leather case SP-550UZ |
| Weight (no batt) | 460 g (16.2 oz) inc memory card and batteries, 365g without. |
| Dimensions | 116 x 78.5 x 78 mm (4.6 x 3.1 x 3.1 in) |
Design
Considering its extreme zoom range, the SP-560UZ is a pretty compact camera. It's also a fairly pretty compact camera, with a smooth, understated appearance. The rather retro, convincingly metallicized mode dial gives off really nice 'camera' (rather than consumer electronics), vibes. It's just a pity that the surrounding buttons and levers don't continue the aesthetic. Olympus should also be commended for the excellent choice of materials employed on the SP-560UZ - the faux-magnesium alloy finish and use of thick plastics and weighty chunks of rubber make the camera feel much better built than its competitors. Whether this translates into real-world durability isn't really something we can sensibly test but it does make the camera feel a bit special.
In your hand
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The SP-560UZ is a very comfortable camera to hold. The front of the body has been molded into a smooth rubber grip. Although it isn't as bulky or prominent as a grip on an SLR, it fits very comfortably in the hand and the prominent thumb support on the back of the camera encourages a good grasp on the body.
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As we already pointed out in our review of the FujiFilm S8000fd, the the lens in the Olympus and the Fuji are remarkably similar. Specification-wise, they both cover the range from 4.7 to 84.2mm with a maximum aperture that falls from f/2.8 to 4.5 across the zoom range.
Body elements
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The SP-560UZ uses AA batteries which have been well-sited within the body to leave the whole thing feeling well balanced. Rechargeable AA's won't last as long as a dedicated Li Ion battery would but they're cheaper and much more readily replaceable in those 'I've put the batteries to charge - at home, 200 miles away' moments. |
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Unlike its FujiFilm opposite number, the SP-560UZ accepts only the unloved xD Picture Card format. xD cards are not available in the larger capacities or the faster speeds of the more popular SD / SDHC format. The effects of this choice will become apparent on our timings page. |
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The SP560-UZ's 2.5-inch screen has a high resolution (230,000 pixels), LCD display. In bright light, the Electronic View Finder (EVF) can be used instead. |
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The SP-560UZ has a similarly small electronic viewfinder to that found on the Fuji S8000fd, though Olympus give no details of size, resolution or refresh rate. It appears to show the same view as the LCD and features adopter adjustment for the wearers of glasses. |
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Hidden under a rubber flap are the SP-560UZ's power input socket and a combined USB/AV socket. |
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The SP-560UZ features a very nice mode dial, the appearance of which is let-down somewhat by the slightly plasticy zoom lever and surrounding buttons. We'd also question the need to include a 'play' mode on the mode dial when there is a 'play' button on the back of the camera. |
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The lens is likely to be the main reason most people buy the SP-560UZ. A lens covering such an extreme zoom range inevitably brings compromises but if you're willing to accept these drawbacks, then it's a very flexible tool. Like the FujiFilm S8000fd, the Olympus lens covers a range from 27mm to 486mm in 35mm equivalent terms. Starting at a relatively wide 27mm equiv. is just as much a factor in making this camera flexible as is the extremely long 486mm end of things. |
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Mounting the flash further away from the lens than would be possible in a compact camera helps reduce red-eye. This, combined with pre-flash and in-processing all-but eliminates red |
Operation and controlsThe SP-560UZ lies in the gulf between the point-and-shoot compact and a fully-fledged DSLR. As such it tries to let the user interact to whatever degree they see fit: it has plenty of scene modes to tailor its settings to the image being shot and will happily detect faces and meter accordingly. Alternatively it has the spot metering and manual controls that the more hands-on user will want. Including both sets of features without overwhelming one group of users or frustrating the other is a delicate balance. So how does the SP-560UZ manage? Let's find out... Rear of camera
The SP-560UZ takes advantage of its large size to offer a large selection of buttons. There are no real surprises here, with the utterly ubiquitous four-way controller giving access to exactly the same options as pretty much everyone else's cameras. The button above the screen switches between the LCD screen and the electronic viewfinder, while the one at the bottom right activates the 'shadow adjust' feature that tries to boost the lighting in regions of shadow (Not massively unlike the active D-lighting feature in the latest Nikon DSLRs). Top of camera
"One touch" White BalanceCustom white balance is one of the great underused benefits of digital photography - it is the best way of ensuring accurate color in your photographs, yet only a handful of users seem to use or appreciate it. The user interface of the SP-560UZ goes some way to explaining this puzzle. The Olympus features a "One Touch" White Balance function. We know this because it says so in the manual (not the printed one that some users might read, but the PDF one included on a CD). The fleeting references it makes do little to help locate this quasi-mythical function but at least reassure you that there is something waiting for you at the end of your quest. It's not available through the quick-access 'Function' menu - From there you can engage a custom white balance but not set one. Instead, the "One touch" screen is tucked away, four menus deep. We have yet to find a way of setting a custom white balance and engaging it in fewer than nine button presses. Presumably "Nine Touch" white balance sounds less snappy. What makes this farce even harder to forgive is that Olympus used to include White Balance as one of the features that could be assigned to a custom button on its compact cameras. On the SP-560UZ there are 15 functions that can be assigned to the custom button but white balance, irrespective of number of touches, isn't one of them. DisplayIn use the SP-560UZ behaves in a fairly predictable manner and is easy to get along with. A quick-access 'Function' menu attempts to bring the most frequently changed options a bit closer to hand but, as we have seen with White Balance, only allows options to be selected, not modified. This makes quick access to a manual white balance setting or auto-bracketing pretty useless, as you have to wade into the full menus to define their behavior.
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Menus
The Olympus isn't the first camera to struggle somewhat under a user interface that probably once worked well but has now had so many features added to it that it needs to be totally re-thought. The camera menu and setup menus that are themselves already one, inexplicably icon-driven, layer into the menus, contain 46 options between them, many of which have further settings and sub-options.
Annoyingly, you can't just press the shutter button to jump back out of the menus, instead having to re-press the menu button to climb back out of the menu level you've delved into. You can still shoot images while viewing menus but the menus then jump back up, preventing you framing or reviewing your image.
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Pressing the menu button gives you the choice of which menu you wish to proceed to. The camera and setup menus have most of the option you might want in them. It's unclear why image quality isn't in the function or camera menu or why silent mode and reset are given such direct access, at the expense of more regularly used features. |
The camera menu covers 24 options over five screens. The options stretch from metering and focusing behavior through to time lapse and panorama mode. |
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| The setup menu offers another 22 options, including four that define how, when and how loudly the camera beeps and clicks. This is also where you choose from the 15 different functions that can be assigned to the custom button. | Image quality gets its own icon in the top level menu. Yet, with the exception of engaging RAW mode (which we wouldn't bother with on this camera), it's an option we'd rarely use. |
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| In playback mode you are also faced with a level of icons before reaching any menus. The distinction between 'edit' options and the 'perfect fix' methods of, er, editing images, is nothing if not subtle. | Edit allows you to tweak the colors of, crop, frame or create calendars with your photos. There's even an option to blur everything but the faces in your shots. Handy. |
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| The perfect fix menu allows you to lighten the shadows of your image (Much like the adjust shadow mode) or correct for red-eye. These are presumably for occasions on which you've forgotten to engage these modes before shooting. | ...the Setup menu that includes all sorts of other options, including the highlight color used on the menu system. It doesn't let you stop or delay the lens automatically retracting while in playback mode, though. |
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| As well as all the scene modes, there's a guide mode that tries to help you achieve particular results. It even lets you jump to the settings its recommending but struggles when there are two settings to change (you end up having to go back through the menus to engage the second change). | One really good feature in the guide mode is the ability to preview the effects of the different white balance modes. It's particularly good for judging which of the three fluorescent settings to use. |
Timing & PerformanceIn use the Olympus is a fairly pleasant camera to take photos with. As long as you avoid RAW mode (see below), it is acceptably brisk. Playback mode can get a bit bogged-down when trying to scroll through multiple images or, really, any action that involves reading from or writing to the xD card, but on the whole, it's a camera that you can use without the speed really getting in your way. The focus lag will rule out any quick 'grab shots,' but on the record side of things, the performance is within expected margins. Timing NotesAll times calculated as an average of three operations. Unless otherwise stated all timings were made on a 3264 x 2448 Fine JPEG image (approx. 3,250 KB per image). The media used for these tests was a 512MB H-Type Olympus xD card.
Lag Timing Definitions
Continuous modeThe tables below show the results of our continuous shooting test, indicating the actual frame rate along with maximum number of frames and how long you would have to wait after taking the maximum number of frames before you could take another shot. The media used for these tests was a 512MB H-Type Olympus xD card. Shutter speed was kept above 1/200 sec during these tests. Continuous drive modeThe Olympus has a variety of shooting modes, including a 15fps mode that is more like a movie mode than a conventional continuous shooting option. However, as soon as you engage one of the fast modes, the sensitivity defaults to a minimum of ISO 400 that, combined with low resolution, mean that the results are of little real use as photographs.
File Write / Display and SizesTimings shown below are the time taken for the camera to process and "flush" the image out to the storage card, the timer was started as soon as the shutter release was pressed and stopped when the activity indicator went out. This means the timings also include the camera's processing time and as such are more representative of the actual time to "complete the task". Again a 512MB H-Type Olympus xD card was used.
Unfortunately, although the xD picture card was considered fast at its launch in 2000, it's now some way behind the competition. Unlike the most recent offerings from FujiFilm (Which co-developed xD with Olympus), the SP-560UZ cannot accept SD of SDHC cards. The side-effect of this dedication to an outdated standard is appalling write times. The SP-560UZ takes over 10 seconds to write a RAW file (Using the fastest available, H-Type xD card). This is still between four and five times longer than the Panasonic FZ-18 takes.
This is a great shame because compact cameras, which are more likely to have compromised lenses and limited processing power, arguably benefit more from RAW conversion than DSLRs. Unfortunately, the use of xD card makes the SP-560UZ's RAW mode slow to the point of being unusable. If you choose to shoot a full quality JPEG alongside your RAW file, you'll have to wait around 18 seconds before you can next shoot an image. This isn't quite long enough to go and make yourself a cup of tea but does give you time to reach the kitchen, fill the kettle and turn it on. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
White Balance
The SP-560UZ offers six white balance presets (sunny, cloudy, tungsten lightbulb, and three fluorescent settings) as well as the usual auto white balance and a custom (manual) setting. Outdoors we found the auto white balance to be excellent, though in artificial light (as our tests show) it rarely produces a 'neutral' result - even using the manual presets. If you don't like color casts when shooting indoors at night you need to switch to custom white balance.
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| Incandescent - Auto WB Red 6.1%, Blue -9.1% Average |
Incandescent - Incandescent preset WB Red 2.7%, Blue -10.7% Average |
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| Fluorescent - Auto WB Red 3.1%, Blue -19.1% Poor |
Fluorescent - Fluorescent preset WB Red 5.2%, Blue -12.6% Average |
Flash Performance
The flash on the SP-560UZ offers pretty reasonable performance, reaching 4.5m (feet) at the wide end of the zoom at ISO 200. Its combination of preflash and post-processing also does well at avoid red-eye. It also offers the choice of front- or rear-curtain synch, giving a better choice over flash behavior than most similar cameras. Recycle times can be pretty pedestrian, but that is likely to be affected by the chemistry of the batteries you choose to use.
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| Skin tone Good color, excellent exposure |
Color chart Excellent color, good exposure |
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Wireless flash
As well as having two synchro flash modes, the SP-560UZ has a feature not shared by any other compact we can think of: the ability to wirelessly control and off-board flash. With 'RC' mode engaged, the SP-560UZ can trigger the Olympus FL-50R or FL-36R flashguns. Arguably much more useful than a hot shoe, this allows much more professional lighting than most compacts can achieve (if you're willing to buy a flash that will cost nearly as much as the camera again). It can only control a single flash but even this allows much more subtle lighting than is possible with the onboard flash.
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| FL-50R flash used wirelessly | Onboard flash |
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Macro Focus
The SP-560UZ has two macro modes; standard and 'super'. The standard macro mode lets you get as close as 10cm at the wide end of the lens (120cm at the long end), while the 'Super Macro' option reduces the closest focus distance to a very impressive 1cm (under half an inch), capturing an area just over an inch high. However, although the macro performance is pretty good, there is very little overlap between the focusing distances covered by Macro mode and those available in normal shooting modes, so you have to engage Macro mode to focus closer than 70cm at the wide end and 1.5m at the long end.
Although it's lovely to be able to say that the SP-560UZ can focus down to a 1cm distance, the reality is that it's almost impossible to ever do so. Because the lens is so large, it blocks out most light hitting your subject when you get that close.
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| Wide macro - 98 x 73 mm coverage 33 px/mm (846 px/in) Distortion: Average Corner softness: Average Equiv. focal length: 27 mm |
Wide Super Macro - 53 x 40 mm coverage 61 px/mm (1552 px/in) Distortion: Moderate Corner softness: Average Equiv. focal length: 56 mm |
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Barrel and Pincushion Distortion
Considering the zoom range - 27-486mm equivalent - distortion is kept to a (just) acceptable level, though it is visible at both ends of the zoom.
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| Barrel distortion - 1.0% at Wide angle Equiv. focal length: 27 mm |
Pincushion distortion - 1.0% at Telephoto Equiv. focal length: 486 mm |
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Specific image quality issues
As with all the cameras we review, we take around 500 real-world images in addition to the studio shots. You can see some of the best of these in the samples gallery at the end of the review but we also look through them to search for any characteristics that are visible in the real world that might not appear in our more formal tests. The SP-560UZ is a camera that has to make compromises in some areas in order to do all the things it does. And, to be completely fair, it does most things pretty well. It takes pleasant images with quite subtle, realistic color representation.
However, a couple of factors count against the Olympus when you're out and about using it. The low base ISO sensitivity means you risk losing image sharpness by shaking the camera during the relatively long exposures it brings, or losing it to noise and noise reduction if you try to up the shutter speed by increasing the ISO setting. The camera struggles to focus as soon as the light levels start to drop, again risking blurred photos. It also loses some sharpness and contrast at the long end of the zoom because of its ambitious design. The combined effect of these problems is that around 10 percent of our images (shot in a variety of conditions), were marred in some way.
Purple fringing
It a zoom as long as the one on this camera, fringing was always likely to feature, especially if our suspicions about it sharing a lens with the CA-prone Fuji S8000fd are correct. And, sure enough, it is visible in images taken at the long end of the lens. That said, it does appear better controlled than on the Fuji, suggesting that Olympus are devoting some degree of processing to the problem.
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100% crop |
486 mm equiv., 4.5 |
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Contrast / tone curve
In common with many cameras built around small sensors, the SP-560UZ struggles in scenes with extremes of light and shade though its metering does a good job and rarely gives up on the highlights altogether. In extreme circumstances it will do, however. It is also somewhat prone to letting the red channel overexpose and 'clip' when confronted with saturated reds in a scene.
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100% crop |
45 mm equiv., F3.3 |
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ISO Sensitivity / Noise levelsISO equivalence on a digital camera is the ability to increase the sensitivity of the sensor. The works by turning up the "volume" (gain) on the sensor's signal amplifiers (remember the sensor is an analogue device). By amplifying the signal you also amplify the noise which becomes more visible at higher ISO's. Many modern cameras also employ noise reduction and / or sharpness reduction at higher sensitivities. Olympus SP560-UZ vs Panasonic Lumix FX18 vs Fuji FinePix S8000fd
Like all such cameras the SP-560UZ struggles with noise at anything but the lowest ISO setting, and once you get beyond ISO 400 the output is firmly in the 'emergency use only' camp. Compared to its main competitors the SP-560UZ does a pretty good job of suppressing chroma noise up as far as ISO 1600. Some luminance noise starts to creep into the gray and black samples from ISO 200 upwards and appears to have been blurred somewhat by noise reduction, reducing contrast and definition from the image sample. A fraction less luminance noise reduction might have left more detail, even if it resulted in 'grainy' noise. Noise reduction really kicks in at ISO 800 with the amount of chroma noise visibly dropping and no real rise in luminance noise visible compared to the ISO 400 image. Unfortunately, this means the amount of detail in the image is drastically reduced and only suffers more from then onwards. Luminance noise graphCameras compared:
Indicated ISO sensitivity is on the horizontal axis of this graph, standard deviation of luminosity is on the vertical axis. RGB noise graph
Indicated ISO sensitivity is on the horizontal axis of this graph, standard deviation of each of the red, green and blue channels is on the vertical axis. Low contrast detailWhat the crops and graph don't show is the effect of noise reduction on low contrast fine detail such as hair, fur or foliage. An inevitable side effect of noise removal is that this kind of detail is also blurred or smeared, resulting in a loss of 'texture'. In a new test the crops below show the effect of the noise reduction on such texture (fur) as you move up the ISO range.
This test attempts to re-create the conditions that appear in real-world images. Whether it's grass, distant leaves, hair or fur, fine detail of a similar color can easily confuse noise reduction routines, which can just smear all of the results together and remove or distort fine texture in the final images. With the SP-560UZ you can see the definition of the hair starts to reduce at ISO 200 - the brightest and darkest details are still well represented but everything in between is starting to posterize to one or two shades. By ISO 800, as the previous test would lead us to expect, all the detail begins to get swirled together and, although not visible in the ISO test, blotches of chroma noise are starting to appear. At ISO 1600 and above, I defy anyone to guess what the item being photographed was. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Zoom range
Olympus created the first 18X zoom camera with the rather disappointing SP-550UZ. While it may not have been the greatest all-round camera, it does appear to have grabbed the attentions of the technicians and marketers at other camera makers. As a result, the SP-550UZ's successor no longer has the advantage of being the only 18X zoom on the market.
One of the most useful aspects of the lens is not so much the extraordinary length of the telephoto end of the zoom (which is only truly useful in a very specific situations), but the wide-angle end of the lens that extends to a really handy 27mm. This is as wide as the kit lens supplied with most contemporary DSLRs and obviates the need to lie in gutters, back yourself into corners or only befriend contortionists and structural elements of human pyramids, in order to get your chosen subject in shot.
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| 27mm (equiv) Wide | framing compared | 486mm (equiv) Tele |
Image stabilization
The SP-560UZ, like its rivals from Panasonic and Fuji, features an optical Image Stabilization system (in this case, like the Fuji S8000fd, using a moving sensor). This is pretty much essential with such a long lens because the longer the zoom, the more it will tend to show signs of being shaken. As a result, a long focal length usually requires fast shutter speeds so that there simply isn't time for the camera to noticeably shake while the shutter is open. The traditional approximation used was that most photographers can consistently, steadily hand-hold a camera down to around 1/equivalent focal length. Consequently, a 486mm equivalent zoom requires high shutter speeds or some kind of stabilization to be useful.
The stabilization test
In this simplified version of our SLR IS test, eight hand-held shots were taken of a static scene with the stabilization off and on. The shutter speed was decreased by a third of a stop and repeated (from 1/250 sec to 1/50 sec). The zoom was set to its maximum position (486mm equiv.), the test chart was 4.5 m away from the camera. This procedure was repeated ten times.
The resulting images were then inspected and given a blur score - 'Sharp' (no visible blurring at 100%), 'Mild Blur' (the kind of camera shake that is tolerable at small print sizes) 'Heavy Blur' (unusable due to camera shake) and 'Very Heavy Blur' (little discernible detail).
As the charts below show we were able to get a measurable one and a third stop advantage. More importantly we were able to get 'usable' results around half the time at shutter speeds of 1/60th of a second, rather than the one-in-ten hit rate we could manage hand-held.
Hand-held, no stabilization (486mm equiv.)
Already at 1/250th of a second we're not guaranteed to get a sharp shot every time and below 160th of a second, less than half of the images we take are properly sharp.
Image stabilization on (486mm equiv.)
With IS on, you're still not certain to get steady shots every time at 1/200th of a second. However, we found that you could still expect around half your photos to be sharp at 1/60th of a second, when you would be very lucky to get any at all with IS turned off. Overall, this doesn't appear to be quite as effective as the system employed in the Fuji S8000fd and means you'll still benefit from taking a couple of shots to be sure of getting a perfect one. It is still a feature worth having, not least because it stabilizes the image on the viewfinder, rendering distant detail distinctly.
Expression Edit
In one of the stranger features tucked away in the SP-560UZ's labyrinthine menus (and afforded one whole sentence in the full instruction manual), is the heroically gimmicky Expression Edit function. And, to be fair to the limited space given to it by the manual, it is pretty self-explanatory: it's a post-shooting special effect that manipulates the facial features of a picture in which the camera has detected a face.
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Here is a picture of the glamorous model whose services we use for the fine detail noise reduction test. She may not be one of London's great beauties but she is nothing if not amenable. And, when the moment came, was the only 'person' we could find willing to have the end results of this function shown in public. |
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So there you have it, a function that turns your friends into the four rather un-nerving caricatures: Happy, Grumpy, Skeptical and Terrified. And turn them into ex-friends if you put the images up on the Internet.
Shadow Adjust
On a slightly more sensible note, the SP-560UZ has a 'Shadow Adjust' mode which uses a combination of changed exposure and tone curve alterations to brighten faces it has recognized (it will also lift shadows in contrasty scenic shots). Here are the results of switching the mode on and off:
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| Shadow Adjust off (Face not recognized) | Shadow Adjust on |
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Movie mode
Movie mode on the Olympus is a lot like that featured in most compacts. It creates video at 640x480 pixels (VGA in slightly old-school computer terminology), at 30 frames per second. There are also two lower resolution options, both at 15 frames per second.
The Olympus's video quality is really very reasonable, with smooth-running results showing little in the way of artefacts. Movies are stored in the all-but-universal AVI standard. Like most compacts, you can't use the zoom during filming, though you can specify white balance which helps if you're shooting indoors. Sound quality suffers from the same limitations as many of its peers - a tiny microphone built into the body means that you pick up the sound of hands shifting around on the body or any slightest breeze, but not a lot else. Add to this the long lens, which can mean your subject is too far away to be heard and you may find yourself wishing you could mute the sound recording.
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Unlike stills recording you cannot choose the amount of information overlaid on the live preview image. This doesn't matter, as you're given everything you might sensibly need. |
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A thumbnail of the video, in pretty sproket-hole frame, represents the video during review mode. |
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When playing back the video, you are able to play, advance incrementally through the video or jump to the beginning and end. There are no editing or other controls available. |
Sample movies
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640x480 pixels @ 30 fps Shot at wideangle Click on the thumbnail to view the movie (caution: large file) |
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Compared to... Olympus SP-550UZAlthough most consumers will compare the SP-560UZ with the 18X zoom cameras offered by Panasonic and Fuji, we thought it'd be interesting to also compare it to its predecessor, the SP-550UZ. The SP-560UZ offers another million pixels over its predecessor but also has a larger sensor, so we'd expect the differences between the two to be pretty subtle. Studio scene comparison (both cameras @ ISO 50)
At the starting pistol, both contenders are looking pretty competitive. The Olympus SP-550UZ was a groundbreaking camera in the sense that it was the first to include an 18X zoom. By comparing the SP-550UZ with the SP-560UZ, we can be sure than any differences between the two are down to the change in sensor, not the compromises induced by the absurdly long zoom. At their base ISO settings, the cameras produce consistently pleasant images with details rendered well. There's little to choose between them, but the very slightly greater contrast and small resolution advantage in the SP-560UZ gets it off to a flying start. | ||||||||||
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