Olympus SP-590UZ Comments

Well I personally think 26x zoom on a tripod will be very handy for checking out that bird at No.23.. Oh, dear who's that knocking at my door, sorry mister policeman I was taking photos of the sparrow on the ladies windowsill, I even said so on TR website, never noticed that half naked lady, honest.

The Oly superzoom series hit its peak with the SP560UZ. Since then we've seen the SP570UZ, the SP565UZ and now the SP590UZ. Each new incarnation has more gimmicks and a longer optical zoom but each falls short in picture quality, the main reason someone buys a camera, mainly because the lens is too long and the number of megapixels is too great. It's pretty pathetic.

Recently got my SP-590 and so far has been pretty satisfied. I used the max zoom mostly outdoor and the picture qualities were very good. The image stabilization was a great help. My mom could never take a non blurred shot w/ my "old" Canon Powershot A80 (4MP, 3x zoom) but she could do a lot of good ones w/ a much longer zoom w/ this Oly. This camera has become a favorite in my family (obviously as it is new - we'll see how long it lasts) which has been ultra compact camera users for a long while (my wife always carry Sony DSC T-20 (8.1MP, 3x zoom) and my 9-yr old daughter carries Canon A-480 (10MP, 3.3x zoom)).

Gotr this camera as a replacement for my old but trusty minolta....
I had read some reviews beforehand and must say that i am quite disappointed with the camera. large zoom is greta but the anti shake doesn't perform that well and sometimes its very hard to take good quality pics. No, I do not have parkinsons and keep my hands steady..
Has got a lot of options though but takes very long time to focus.
If I would have had paid full retail for this camera, I would have been majorly disappointed.

It is always disappointing to read criticism, negative or positive, from people who have not used the product in question. I am as anti-mega-compact as possible, but I've had to climb down most of the way from my prejudiced position. A friend and I recently exchanged kit for a weekend: he took my e-420 and its accessories and I took his SP-590.

Well, it is what it is. For example, there is no way of exploiting all of its zoom without a tripod, it's a 626 telephoto for crying out loud, and for the weekend I was reduced to using one of those little bendy ones... but the results were astoundingly good at the top end, given that it was a single-lens camera my colleague bought for about £230/240. Everything else was much as I expected: excellent value for money, even fun from time to time, but under-equipped for my expectations.

It's not a good camera for a photography fan, but it is an extraordinarily good camera for someone who wants to get good shots of just about everything they want to remember. That must put it at the top of the class for people who only look for those "memorial" shots, people who are probably the target market Olympus set out to please in the first place.

Results of the trial exchange? My colleague could consider a DSLR the next time he wants more out of a camera, so when I find the money to move on to an e-620 I'll let him try that, even though I think he'd keep the SP-590. I would still not consider buying a mega-compact, but I can see now why so many people do buy and enjoy them.

Horses for courses, and with that in mind I can't fault the SP-590.

This review is exceptionally harsh. This camera is very nice to use in Auto mode taking very good quality pictures. The Super Macro pictures are about as good as those from my Leica D Lux 4. The 26 x zoom can even be used in auto mode by eg. going into P mode first and then switching to Auto. Setting the Iso to 64 or 100 and colour to vivid gets you fantastic sharp pictures all the time at any focal length. Taking pictures of ships 8 miles out at sea you need to steady your hand against something to get a lovely sharp picture at full 26 x zoom. Well done Olympus. The ED lens is super high quality consisting of 14 lenses ( 4 aspherical elements ) in 11 groups. LCD at 230000 pixels can be seen in all lights but the next time Olympus will have to do 460000 pixels on a 3 inch screen. Excellent value for money with good quality small body.

guys which camera is good olympus sp590 uz or canon sx 10 s

I've just spent 3 weeks using the 590 in Madagascar in a variety of settings from jungle to open savanna and feel the results have been mixed and sometimes a bit disappointing. OK I've mainly used it on autofocus, but many of my shots were for clearly visible subjects, though the problem of vegetation near an animal could ruin a shot as the camera would focus on a leaf just in front throwing the animal out of focus. With time constraints of photographing animals I found it frustrating to see good shots ruined where with my old olympus slr I'd have manually focussed on the subject and nearby vegetation would not have been a problem. I also felt that the focussing sometimes struggled with the closeups of soft surfaces such as a lemur's fur and I often heard the camera struggling to get a subject which might be quite close in focus! I found the 12m setting quite slow to save pics not a good thing when trying to focus on a moving animal! So all in all not overly impressed and wondering if I can afford a digital slr!