Olympus SP550 Digital Camera

Saturday, December 29, 2007

It is that time of the year again when we’re all skinned, knee deep in debt from the Christmas period but I could not help myself browsing around for a better and bigger digital camera to play around with. There is absolutely nothing wrong with my Kodak EasyShare Z740 but I've got my eye on a model from Olympus that is more in my budget range.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present you the Olympus SP550 Digital Camera. Olympus has been a global player in the camera market since I can remember and they still continue to play a role in the market. The Olympus SP550 is the next step for any photography enthusiasts who crave the need to play around with both manual and automatic settings.

The Olympus SP550 has an amazing 18x Optical Zoom feature which is far better than the 10x Optical Zoom digital cameras on the market. You can really zoom up close and personal to any subject you want to take a photo of. The focal length spans an amazing 28-504mm, could have been better but will have to do. An industry standard for picture quality has been set at 5MP and the Olympus SP550 has 7MP built in, which is an improvement.

Before buying any digital camera, you will need to jot down what you need the digital camera for. Some people love taking family photos and nothing else, which would be up close and high image quality and not a lot of optical zoom capacity, is required. Others prefer to take photos of both landscapes and family shots where the quality image does not have to be that high and an optical zoom is preferred. Remember that when using zoom, avoid buying a digital camera which only has digital zoom, it should have optical zoom as well for better image quality from a distance.

Olympus SP550 digital camera specifications:

Movie Mode - QuickTime Motion JPEG. 640 x 480 pixels at 30 frames/second.

Card Type - 20Mb built in memory plus xD memory card slot.

Exposure - Programme AE. Auto, Programme, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority. Plus scene modes (Portrait, Landscape, Landscape with Portrait, Night scene, Night scene with portrait, Sports, Indoor, Candle, Self portrait, Available Light Portrait, Sunset, Fireworks, Cuisine, Behind Glass, Documents, Auction, Shoot & Select 1, Shoot & Select 2, Snow, Beach, Underwater Wide 1, Underwater Wide 2, Underwater Macro).

Shutter Speeds - 1/2 second - 1/2000 second.

Focus - TTL iESP auto focus with contrast detection. 1cm close focus in Super Macro Mode. Predictive AF. Manual AF.

LCD Monitor - 6.4cm / 2.5 inch TFT LCD monitor with 230,000 pixels.