Olympus SP-550 UZ

Opinion: SP-550UZ(E) arrived today from Cameras2u. What a superb service. Excellent camera so far, superb ergonomics and nice and weighty and easy menu system coupled with a fantastic lens and image stability. Pictures with and without flash in dimmed room almost similar. Good value for money. Will check out comparability with my Nikon D80 and VR lenses so lets see later.

Opinion: i have just received my Olympus SP-550 UZ, apparently the camera is as good as shown in the papers, but after some shots you will realize that the image quality is not as good as they say. The colors used to appear washed, specially the red tones. The lens are good, but the pictures taken at 504 mm are not too sharp.
At ISO 50 the noise is under control but is higher than the noise showed by my old Sony MAVICA CD500 at ISO 100.
In conclusion, this camera is nicer in papers that in reallity

Opinion: Had the camera for one week and used it everyday out in the fields.
First impression is a well-constructed camera that feels good in the hand, is easy to hold and has all controls in the correct place, however, first impressions when used in the field are not as good as I expected. I found the big viewing screen is not as sharp as the big screen on my Ixus 55 and I found it easier to use the EVF, the zoom motor is slow and noisy and there is noise above ISO 50 that increases as the ISO is increased.

The auto mode is reasonable but I got better results in the manual modes and eventually created my own setting in the “My Camera” mode. Also had some impressive results at max optical+digital zoom in good light, and the “Super Macro is very good, however, when similar shots are taken late afternoon the results are quite different.

Opinion: Used it for a few days and I was not happy at all with image quality. Lots of noise and unsharp images at the telephoto end. I returned it for a refund.