The UZ stands for Ultra Zoom, which is Olympus’ way of referring to the monster 20x optical zoom that delivers the 35mm equivalent range of 26-520mm.
To put this into perspective, the average DSLR telephoto zoom is around 70-300mm, which, with a digital magnification factor of say 1.6x on a Canon DSLR, equates to a maximum of 480mm. That’s some 40mm short of the maximum zoom on this compact. And as an added bonus, the SP-570’s zoom benefits from image stabilisation, to help control the effects of camera movement at such excessive magnification.
This 10-megapixel superzoom is built into a very compact and well-designed body. Its lens condenses when not in use, helping to keep the camera’s overall footprint very small, particularly compared to older superzooms. When extended, the lens projects out from the otherwise compact design. The zoom action is controlled by a rotating ring around the lens barrel. Unfortunately this rotating ring has infinite travel in both directions, ie. it does not stop at minimum and maximum zoom. This is a touch disconcerting to use as you are not quite sure where on the zoom range you are. Obviously, you can use the 2.7in LCD screen or the EVF (Electronic View Finder) to see the travel of the zoom and its effect on your composition. It’s just a niggling, ergonomics thing. To be fair, that’s the only negative handling point.
The controls and menus are very well laid out and easy to understand. On the top of the camera to the side of the built-in flash and optional hotshoe are two dials. The first, labelled with icons, is the command dial, which selects shooting modes and image playback. The other, plain dial is used to set aperture and shutter speeds when you’re in interactive shooting modes such as manual, aperture-priority and shutter-priority.
Fast sequential shooting up to a rate of 13.5 frames-per-second is available. However, this performance is limited to the camera’s resolution being lowered to three-megapixels.
There is just the one memory card slot, for xD. Developed by Fujifilm and Olympus, this format is now being superseded by the more popular SDHC format, so it’s a surprise to see it used in this model. At the very least, we would have expected a dual slot for xD and SDHC. There is also 475MB of internal memory. That’s not going to get you far if you’re shooting at full resolution, or shooting Raw files.
Picture quality is rather a mixed bag, although the general performance is good. The SP-570 appears to lack contrast and it struggled with back lighting. The zoom range is very useful, but is slightly marred by the difficult to operate zoom ring. The image stabiliser does an average job and certainly helps keep down the shakes, but does not eliminate them. All in all, the SP-570’s report card might say something like adequate rather than outstanding.