After owning an Olympus C-3030 for a few years and getting several comments on the excellent photo it produced, I was ready to upgrade to something with more features, zoom, resolution and compatibility.

I first purchased a Canon A650-IS bundle for Christmas and was immedaitely displeased with the graininess of indoor shots without the flash. I know Canon makes good digicams, but in the megapixel race, I felt they just crammed too many pixels onto the sensor to produce quality low-light images. So, back it want.

Now, the SP-570UZ is not the ‘be all and end all’ in prosumer-level digital cameras, but for what it is designed to do, it does, for the most part, pretty darned well. The range of the lens alone is fantastic. I can get excellent wide-angle shots and wonderful zoomed close-ups. Perfect for a typical consumer wanting decent quality shots of kid’s sports, snapshots and outdoor landscape photos. The various preset scene modes are fairly good and I’ve done well with sunset/sunrise shots.

I have had the camera for a month or so and had photos from my wedding, honeymoon, softball games and other family events turn out awesome. There is still some annoying noise in low-light situations, but not nearly as bad as the Canon. I can definitely live with it and I have found some ways to deal with it afterward that make the shot acceptable for larger prints. The zoom ring takes a little time to get used to and it does lag a bit and can make it hard to make fine adjustments, but I sort of like it now.

The night-scene mode is great for those cityscape and dusk shots. I really love the fact that I can shoot in RAW (however, I still have yet to work alot with RAW images), because, as my wife says I “just can’t leave the image alone” prior to printing. The panoramic mode that can be used with Olympus cards is neat and does a good job stitching in-camera, but some scenes can cause a portion of the stitched image to skew quite a bit, requireing a re-do.

One drawback is the fact that it will only take xD Picture cards, but this I can live with as well. The Olympus “color” I have come to love is still present and so far, my prints from my HP Photosmart C-7180 look phenomonal!

I am giving it 5 stars, not due to it being perfect, but for perfectly satisfying all my primary reqquirements, for the overall cost, and then some. This camera will be a perfect carry-along P&S camera before I break down and get a DSLR to extend my photographic capabilities.

Product Description
Experience the power of 20x zoom with the SP-570 UZ. This compact 10 Megapixel camera does it all - from wide-angle perspectives to breathtaking close ups. Dual Image Stabilization even ensures images come out blur free. And for high-action moments, this model shoots at up to a whopping 13.5 frames per second in 3 Megapixel mode!