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[OM] Re: New Oly SP500UZ gets scorched in dpreview

Subject: [OM] Re: New Oly SP500UZ gets scorched in dpreview
From: Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 06 Feb 2006 15:44:39 -0800
Chuck Norcutt wrote:

><http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/OlympusSP500UZ/>
>
>Bottom line, not a bad camera overall but this is a 10X zoom and in the 
>10X zoom market you better have image stabilization like your 
>competitors.  This one don't got it.  This one you don't want to got it 
>either.
>  
>
Well, my reading is that it's more than just missing IS. The review 
confirms the slow operation Jamie noted a few days ago. Up to 4 seconds 
for long end and 1.5 for short end AF in moderate light or low contrast? 
3.5 seconds from on to taking first pic? "...long end...missed focus is 
also far too common for our liking. " Bad Oly!! Smack!! (Sound of 
knuckles being rapped.)

With f3.7 at the long end and what looks like pretty decent iso 400 
noise characteristics, lack of IS doesn't strike me as being as big an 
issue as the other performance problems. IS still, last I heard, doesn't 
help with subject movement, where lens speed and film speed allow 
shutter speeds that do. Of course, I'm the doofus happily taking pics 
with an f6.3 480mm eq. lens and no IS all the time.

Odd quote right at the beginning, "Five and a half years ago, long 
before Panasonic launched the FZ series, before Canon, Kodak, Minolta - 
or anyone else for that matter - had joined the 'big zoom' party there 
was the Olympus C-2100UZ."

Nice to give Oly the credit, but the Canon Pro90is, or whatever it was 
called, was a contemporary camera using what was obviously the same 
lens. I'm pretty sure it was a Canon lens, too, which Oly used to get 
their patented IS. If Oly had designed their own lens based IS that 
worked as well as the 2100UZ and didn't infringe on others' patents, we 
would surely have seen more IS lenses from them since.

Moose


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