SZ-30MR

Noticed this one on the European Olympus site this morning:

http://www.olympus-europa.com/consumer/29_digital-camera_sz-30mr_24306.htm

Of interest to me on this one are -
CMOS sensor 16MB - will largely compensate for the slower lens
24x zoom, 25mm - 600mm - more reach at both ends without going to extremes
H264 Mpeg-4 video - will allow a tolerable video length on its Li-50B battery
Stereo sound - may separate musical instruments when I am playing with others

I am looking at this one as the big brother of my existing Stylus 9010. It is still a P&S, but with a bigger zoom.

The SZ-30MR does not have a hotshoe - but will it recognise my FL-36R flash and vice versa? The SP-550 did. The Stylus 9010 does not, so the FL-36R has to be set to Manual Slave mode. You need to understand what the flash display tells you.

For IQ the SZ-30MR will not compete with the XZ-1, since the latter has a bigger sensor.

But if the SZ-30MR is as noise-resistant as my SP-570UZ, I could live with it. Olympus has mostly been fairly discreet with its in-camera-processing and compression level. Let us hope they stick with that philosophy on the SZ-30MR.

DPReview does not list the SZ-30MR so far.

Henry

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Henry Falkner - SP-570UZ, Stylus 9010, Stylus 7020, D-490Z
http://www.pbase.com/hfalkner