Olympus SP-590UZ

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Olympus may be leading in the superzoom wars with its 26x optical zoom SP-590UZ, but it takes a lot more than a long lens to make a decent long-zoom camera. We're talking the same things it takes to make a good digital camera, like speedy performance, a competitive, useful feature set, and good photo quality. Unfortunately, this shooter doesn't really manage to distinguish itself from competitors in any meaningful way.

Editors' note:

This review is based on tests done by our sister site CNET.com. As such, please note that there may be slight differences in the testing procedure and ratings system. For more information on the actual tests conducted on the product, please inquire directly at the site where the article was originally published. References made to some other products in this review may not be available or applicable in Asia.

Design And Features

With the large handgrip, the SP-590UZ looks like a dSLR. (Credit: CBS Interactive)
(Click for larger image)

The design is typical: A big, solid body with a plastic chassis and a large, rubberized grip accommodating the four AA batteries that power the camera. For a nice touch, the bottom of the shooter extends out beneath the lens to provide a more stable platform when mounted on a tripod. Unfortunately, the camera takes two equally inconvenient forms of media: Olympus/Fujifilm's proprietary xD-Picture Cards or microSD media which fits into an xD card adapter.

Overall, the SP-590UZ is fairly straightforward to learn and operate if you've used a digital camera in the past couple of years. In addition to all the usual suspects on the mode dial, the snapper includes Beauty mode which blurs skin slightly. Even if it works extremely well, it's way too slow--approximately 20 seconds between shots--and the result is a 2-megapixel image. There is also MyMode which holds up to four groups of custom settings, which includes the focal length setting at the time you saved them. An OK/Func button pulls up frequently needed shooting settings, which include drive mode, white balance, ISO sensitivity, metering, image size and compression. Besides the standard continuous shooting, there are higher-speed drive modes: 6fps and 10fps. However, they operate at reduced image sizes of 5 and 3 megapixels, respectively. This includes a pre-capture high-speed mode that shoots 10 3-megapixel frames at 10fps from focus lock until you snap the photo.

Like most megazooms, the SP-590 UZ produces its sharpest shots in Super Macro mode, and the results are pretty sharp.. (Credit: Lori Grunin/CNET)
(Click for larger image)

There are dedicated buttons for exposure compensation, flash, macro mode, and self-timer, as well as toggling Shadow Adjustment and a custom button to which you can assign a variety of capabilities, including image stabilizer, focus/AE lock, and focus mode. You can exposure bracket up to five shots--most cameras limit you to three--in +/- 1/3, 2/3 or full stop intervals. While the SP-590UZ supports optical zoom when recording video, at best the camera does 30fps VGA saved as Motion JPEG-compressed AVI files. You can't zoom and record sound at the same time. That's certainly one way to defeat noise created by the lens mechanism moving.

Tags: DSLR, Optical Zoom, Mode, xD-Picture Card, Adapter

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