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"This is a great camera" on by kinetic1
Pros: very long battery life uses 4 AA batteries alkaline or Ni-MH rechargeables. I took over 500 shots with fully charged 2500 mAh Ni-MH batteries. Plenty of settings from full auto to manual
Cons: I have non so far, very happy with the SP 510
Summary: I have read several negative reviews on this camera that are not justified. Reading these reviews I am certain that these people have not read the ADVANCED MANUAL that is included in the CD that came with the camera. I have the adapter lens (CLA-4)and TCON-17 (1.7X) Telephoto Conversion Lens. This lens really does help pull in subjects. I will also be getting the WCON-07 (.7X) Wide Conversion Lens. I am so happy with this camera that I am buying two more to give as gifts. The price drop is an added bonus.
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"A good camera but not so good in the end..." on by nitro912gr
Pros: Cheap!
Very nice zoom!
Very customizable settings in manual mode, they are also so well placed that you can change your configuration in a matter of few seconds.
Long battery life, I use it with 4x duracel Ni-Mi batteries at 1800mA and I can shot all dayCons: So much noise! Even in bright daylight and ISO 50 the noise is more than viewable once you see the picture in actual size.
Summary: I bought this camera a few years ago, at a time when I wasn't aware of the internet reviews.
At the beginning I was very happy with my new camera (I used to had a C 220z, so it was a big upgrade for me) and I was very happy to get this in a low price like 250 euro with 4x NiMi duracel batteries, a charger for them and an olympus camera case.
Once I got a handle on the camera and started taking some serious photos (I was learning photography at the time in college) I started notice the big con of this camera.
Noise! So much noise that I felt like an idiot to take worst pictures than many cheaper compact cameras out there. And I don't talk about today cameras, but back then when I got this camera.
I am really disappointed since I was trusting olympus, anyway I will not make the same mistake again.
Next time I will check for some reviews first and then buy. -
"OK camera, but would not buy again" on by mrkva123
Pros: 10x optical zoom, pretty good super-macro
Cons: very noisy pictures, slow, lousy video
Summary: My father bought this camera without consulting me, I'm not a pro but i know a thing or two about cameras. I would not buy this camera again, it is generally ok, but there are few very important things which I believe this camera fails to deliver, so i believe that there are some better options in this price range.
First of all - noise. There's lot of it, even at the lowest ISO value (50) the pictures turn out pretty grainy. I rarely put ISO above that value cause when you do, the pictures are basically unusable. I believe you can see what are the limitations to this.
Then, pictures generally lack sharpness, so i almost always have to sharpen them on the PC.
This camera is pretty slow at continuos shooting, forget about "burst" or something like that, it takes forever for this camera to take two or three consecutive shots. And when shooting in RAW mode a beautiful dusk could become a dawn while you take two consecutive pictures.
The LCD screen on the back does not do a true representation of what the image will look like on a bigger screen or when printed in that way that most pictures look brighter on the camera screen than when printed/looked on PC (and i've watched them on CRTs, LCDs and Plasmas)
Video recording is really bad IMO, especially the sound in the videos. I know, this is not a dictaphone, but I would expect it to record better videos with sound than my Nokia cellphone (which it doesn't). Noise reduction works badly so i leave it off all the time.
Enough of the bad things - I really like that you can use rechargeable AA batteries and they last pretty long, I can generally take between 800-1000 pictures without recharging the batteries, which i think is really good. I love the 10x zoom and super-macro, they work really well. The menus are really simple and so is the mode selection (M, P, A/S etc.), i mostly shoot in the "M" mode.
I'm not comparing this camera to a Canon DSLR, but i've seen pictures with some other cameras in this price range and i highly prefer those. -
"This camera is phenomenal!!" on by rofthorax
Pros: DV-quality video, Rock-steady Image Stabilization, Battery Life, Ease and Features
Cons: Audio sampling rate (8Khz), Battery Door (no biggy), 1 gig XD card take too long to transfer
Summary: I've only owned this camera for since Friday, but given that I owned a C-750 previous to this, I knew what to expect and what to look for.. It was fairly easy to get up and running, the battery life on this camera is much better than the C-750, I'm still working off of the alkalines that came packaged with the camera. On a 1 gig card upto 700 7.1 megapixel images can be taken, or upto 10 minutes of 640x480 30fps video (DV-quality video).
The major advantage of the Olympus class of cameras, that sets them apart from most every other camera is their ability to take practically point-blank photos, in this case a in super macro mode you can take photos of images from 3cm to infinity.
One thing that is missing is in video mode there isn't the ability to re-focus the lens after pressing the trigger. The C-750 has this capability, and is something I'm missing on this camera. As with the C-750, if audio recording is turned off, the camera can zoom in on subjects while videotaping. I personally have a conspiracy theory than japanese companies intentionally cripple their products to discourage competition with product lines within the company, so supporting this theory I doubt that there is a digital camera that will do all what a DV-CAM does and vice versa. This SP-510 UZ, however comes quite close to matching the image quality, and while in movie mode one can enable image stabilization which for zoomed-in shots is indispensible. I've taken videos from far off with little or no jitter, without a tri-pod while in the video mode. Something bizarre happens to the videos taken while in this mode, you see others and yourself in ways that augment home movies tremendously. Personally, I started seeing resemblences in my face to my brother that I never saw before, all because of this Image stabilization, it's really strange.
While in display mode (which can be accessed while taking photographs, withouts touching the dial) you might notice that the photo zoom function blows photos up to sub-pixel level, such that it's hard to determine what is a suitable digital image quality. This camera can take really sharp photos if you know how to make the ISO and Aperature adjustments.. But I've found I do well to get good shots even in "Auto" mode..
There is also a time lapse mode, I haven't used, so I can't comment, but it's covered in the adobe PDF manual on the CD-ROM. The Camera comes with a very basic manual in paper form, and the one on the CD-ROM is about 99 pages.. I ended up printing mine with my HP Printer (note: HP printers, each cartridge has it's own print-head so you always get high quality images and fast prints).
MJPEG Movie mode is not great for compression of video, like MPEG4, but one problem with MPEG4 is the delta and inter-frame compression has the effect of morphing shots when the camera is moved quickly. I have this problem with a Pure Digital Point&Shoot I purchased from Target. MPEG4's are great as a target format, after using multi-pass encoding, that's the only way to really get good quality with MPEG4, it's not good as a master format. But MJPEG, on the other hand, is very close (if not practically the same) as DV encoding used in DV-cams. MJPEG is brain dead as far as video compression goes as it only JPEG compresses each frame and concatenates the frames together. But JPEG has less loss than MPEG4, especially in a single pass encoding.
The SP-510 UZ still has that terrible battery door, that failed on my C-750, but Olympus improved on how long it takes for the cannon to expand and contract upon power ups/downs,
I think this is partially why the camera has such a good battery life. You won't miss the Lithium-ions either, as I said I'm still running off the alkalines that came with the camera, I can only imagine how it would do with my Nickel-Metal Hydride batteries.
Memory cards, the high speed XD cards, even, are not fast enough when transferring data over a USB 2.0 bus.. A photo/video dump can take about 15-20 minutes on a 1 gig card.. I haven't tested this with another 1 gig card, but it's a dispurportionate amount of time to wait to transfer data, given that I could transfer photos on my 512MB XD in about 7 minutes over a USB 2.0 card reader. The camera is USB 2.0, unlike the C-750 which was USB 1.1 (about 40 times slower). But the memory cards could stand to transfer data out at the rate it takes to record data to the cards.. Like a 10 minute video takes all the space on the XD card, but it then takes 16 minutes to transfer that out to the computer.. Something is wrong, could be my computer..
Pixel quality is not terrific, but I'm not sure if this is a problem with the CCD array or the camera settings. I've noticed that it needs a bit more light than my C-750, but I can see more lines and details than I could with my C-750.
It seems very well thought out, compared to the C-750.. I'm beginning to wonder if C-net's digital camera reviewer doesn't spend enough time with the products as I really how any of these complaints serriously affect the quality of the picture or over-shadow the camera's strengths.. I'm wondering if they just look forward to reviewing the high-cost products and ignore the cheap point&shoots.. If you are easily fooled by shallow reviews, don't let this one pass you by. This camera is a steal!!! for 300 dollars (which is the going price). I had a Panasonic FZ7, which sold well in the stores over Xmas, and was serriously disgusted by the quality of the photos and videos taken with it, there was nothing I could do to improve on the quality.. But this SP-510 is soooooo much better.. That FZ7's 848x480 video mode looks like a up-sample 424x240 mode.. It helps to review these products in the store.. And if you feel you are getting ripped off, take the camera back.. I never just put-up with it.. I got a mp3 player, a Sansa E250, that failed to sync on me, and returned it to get a Samsung T9 that has since just totally blown my mind. The quality of the technology review is a product of the quality of experience of the reviewer.. A dis-interested and distracted reviewer will overlook features and go with the status-quo.. NOT ME! This
camera is fantastic!! -
"Had this camera 2-3 years, 5000+ pix, thoroughly used." on by jkwelch33
Pros: Looks nice. Great zoom. Takes good outdoor/still pictures...sometimes. I like that it takes simple AA's. I used the Lithium AA's with very good luck.
Cons: Horrible indoor pictures, action pictures, and low light/night pictures. Very grainy! No matter if there's a flash, no matter the setting. Very poor pictures. The video also is very poor quality. Takes okay outdoor video, but indoor is very grainy.
Summary: Honestly? I have WANTED someone to STEAL this camera for the last couple years! Then my cheap self would have a good excuse to go buy a different camera. Very disappointed with the quality of pictures. I've cussed this camera daily for the last two years! Takes grainy pictures indoor. Takes blurry pictures in action shots. Does not take good low light/night time pictures. Outdoor pix sometimes turn out grainy-- even in mid day! The color is also very bland. The video quality is very poor indoor, and just 'okay' outdoor. Can't zoom in and out once you start recording.
I had a different kind of Olympus many years ago, and loved it. That's why I bought another one. Just bought a new camera- a Canon. Phenomenal pictures! Take a look at the Canon EOS Rebel XS instead! Around the same price that I paid for this a couple years ago. And the picture quality is awesome!
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