Compare Prices : Olympus SP 500 - Expert Reviews

Review summary: The SP-500 UZ makes it easy to capture great images in a variety of lighting situations with 21 pre-programmed scene modes, such as Night Scene, Indoor Portrait or Cuisine Mode. The Aperture Priority and Shutter Priority modes gives users versatility ...

Verdict: Olympus' TruePic TURBO™ Image Processor enhances image quality and delivers faster overall processing speeds for rapid startup, shutter release and playback. TruePic TURBO enables the SP-500 UZ to capture information from all 6.0 million pixels with ...

Review summary: The Olympus SP-500 Ultra Zoom is a competitively priced camera with a long zoom lens, and numerous scene modes that will appeal to many photographers.

Pros: Inexpensive ; good image quality ; has remote control ; can create and save groups of settings ; 10X zoom lens ; lightweight ; long battery life

Cons: No image stabilization ; short shutter speed

Verdict: The most exciting aspect of the SP-500 is its impressive 10X zoom lens. But because the camera has no image stabilization, this long zoom can be a mixed blessing. In anything other than bright sunlight you may end up with blurry pictures because the ...

Review summary: The biggest thing about the Olympus SP-500 UltraZoom is the lens: it's an impressive 10X model that is significantly longer than those on most point-and-shoot cameras. However, it has no type of image stabilisation, so this long zoom can be a mixed ...

Verdict: This well-priced model has a long zoom lens that will suit beginners and casual photographers who want to get close to the action. Shame it doesn't offer anti-shake, but the overall model is so good that you can do without.

Review summary: * Supplied accessories may differ in each country or area

Pros: Decent results with good detail and natural color, Low noise at low ISO settings, still fairly low at ISO 400, Comprehensive photographic controls, Rugged, lightweight construction and excellent handling, Lots of scene/subject modes, Huge range of ...

Cons: JPEG images look soft compared to much of the competition, Mild exposure problems in high contrast / bright scenes, Writing to xD picture card slow (much better with newer high speed cards)., Raw mode slow (much better with newer high speed cards)., ...

Verdict: Taken on its own merits the SP-500UZ is a more than capable camera with a huge feature set, great handling and perfectly good results - at a very competitive price point.

Review summary: The biggest thing about the Olympus SP-500 Ultra Zoom is the lens: it's an impressive 10x model that is significantly longer than those on most point-&-shoot cameras. However, it has no type of image stabilization, so this long zoom can be a mixed ...

Pros: Low cost. Long zoom lens. Good colour reproduction.

Cons: No image stabilization. Low resolution. Blurring at long zoom.

Verdict: Colours are impressively reproduced, and the camera accurately exposed the images. We did see some slight distortion when using the zoom lens at its widest settings, and the photos also looked rather soft. With a long zoom and no stabilization, ...