Olympus SP-565 UZ

Review summary: The $450 Olympus SP-590UZ has the biggest zoom in town, a whopping 26x lens, but lacks the performance or features to distance it from the competition.

Verdict: The Olympus SP-590UZ arrived with a splash, thanks to it's record-breaking zoom magnification. However, it comes up against stiff competition from other companies putting forward strong cameras in the ultrazoom category

Pros: Full feature set addressing the needs of experienced photographers as well as the snapshooters ; Helpful on-board user guide ; Decent performance on several levels ; Natural-looking colors ; Good detail capture at low ISO settings ; Base ISO of 64

Cons: Lens distortion at extreme focal lengths ; Tendency to clip highlights in high contrast shots ; Relatively small (2.5 inch) LCD compared to other Olympus superzooms ; Purple fringing along high contrast edges ; Only two levels of JPEG image compression

Verdict: New features include Shadow Adjustment technology and enhanced Face Detection, which can now recognize up to 16 faces. On the other hand, the camera's smaller size reduces the LCD to 2.5 inches versus the 570's 2.7 inch display. But the 565UZ is ...

Review summary: The Olympus SP-565UZ is a super zoom digital camera. At 20x zoom it has the longest zoom currently availa...

Pros: Features - Design

Cons: Faster turn on time

Verdict: To be honest I don't think there is a great deal to choose between most super zoom cameras. Unless you are very fussy about picture quality they all do a decent job, so a lot of your decision to buy is likely to be based on features and handling. ...

Review summary: THE Olympus SP-565UZ does well for super-macro photography, but images may require a fair amount of post-processing.

Pros: 20x zoom lens, image stabilisation, comfortable to hold and easy to use, good for macro shots

Cons: Photos lack contrast, noticeable noise above ISO 200, noticeable barrel roll, images look soft

Verdict: The SP-565UZ packs a lot of useful features for manual photography, but its image quality doesn't cut the mustard. Consider this camera if image quality isn't your primary concern and you are just interested in its zoom and super-macro capabilities.