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  • Physical Tour

  • Components

  • Design / Layout

  • Modes

  • Control Options

  • Image Parameters

  • Connectivity / Extras

  • Overall Impressions

  • Conclusion

  • Physical Tour
  • Components
  • Design / Layout
  • Modes
  • Control Options
  • Image Parameters
  • Connectivity / Extras
  • Overall Impressions
  • Conclusion

Physical Tour

**Back
**At the back of the SP-510 we have (from top left, clockwise again) the electronic viewfinder, the flash button, the display button (which switches between the viewfinder and the LCD), the display button (which toggles the display of information such as the shutter speed, etc on the screen), the menu button, the self timer/delete button and the directional controls and OK button. Then there’s the LCD screen; a 2.5-inch, 115k pixels model. While it is acceptably bright, it has a rather unpleasant grainy look, presumably caused by the low resolution of the screen.

**Left Side
**On the left side of the case we have the lanyard loop, the power socket and the cover of the xD-Picture card slot. This can hold a single xD-Picture card with a maximum capacity of 1GB, which should hold at least TK pictures.

**Right Side
**On the right side we have another lanyard loop (which is good for left or right handed users), a socket for the combined USB and A/V cable and the grille for the small built-in speaker.

**Top
**The top of the SP-510 UZ is a busy place, with a number of dials and buttons. Above the lens is the flash, then the power button, the anti-shake/power button, the shutter and zoom control, plus the mode dial.

**Bottom
**The main excitement on the bottom of the camera is the cover to the battery compartment. This has a locking switch, which is a good thing as with cameras that load from the bottom like this: it’s possible to accidentally open an unlocked cover, with the batteries falling out. The SP-510 UZ takes 4 AA batteries of either disposable or Nickel metal Hydroxide type.

Components

**Viewfinder
**The Viewfinder is, somewhat oddly, a higher resolution screen than the LCD screen. With 201k pixels, the LCD is sharp enough to accurately check focus, but it’s not as attractive as the higher resolution displays that we’ve seen on other models. The display update of the live video is smooth, however.

**LCD Screen
**The LCD screen is a 2.5-inch model located on the left side of the back of the camera, right behind the lens. While the 115k resolution of the screen is acceptable, it’s well below the resolution of the screens other similarly priced models. And this shows: images had a grainy, gritty look when displayed on the screen. While it is adequate for shooting and sharp enough to check focus, it really isn’t particularly attractive.

**Flash
**The small flash is located right above the lens, and pops up when the flash button is pressed or when the camera decides it needs it in auto mode. Olympus quotes the range of the flash a to 4.5 meters (14.7 feet) at the wide setting and 3.4 meters (11.1 feet) with the zoom at the telephoto setting. Both of these are acceptable, but not outstanding. The SP-510 UZ allows you to bump the flash power up or down by two stops, and there’s a hot shoe for connecting an external flash unit. You switch between the internal and the external flash from the on-screen menu, and you can also set the flash synch to front or rear curtain for longer exposures.

**Zoom Lens
**The zoom lens is one of the highlights of the SP-510 UZ: it’s an impressively long 10X model with

a focal length of 6.3mm to 63mm (equivalent to 38mm to 380mm). That’s great for sports and wildlife photography, because the longer end of the zoom lets you get closer to the wildlife without disturbing it (or getting savaged). But it’s not so good for family photos: at the wide end of the zoom, you’ll be hard pressed to squeeze more then three or four people into the same shot in a typical room. Olympus does offer a $160 wide angle adapter (called the WCON 007) which decreases the focal length by a factor of 0.7%, which might be worth considering if you’re planning to shoot both the wildlife at home and outdoors.

We weren’t able to do any in-depth testing of this lens, but the test shots we did try looked more than acceptable, with little evidence of barrel distortion or pincushioning.

Design / Layout

**Model Design / Appearance
**The SP-510UZ has a sizeable, chunky look and feel, although most of the case is plastic. But it feels robust and should stand up to everyday use. Our only major concern is the lack of a built-in lens cap: the large front element of the lens is exposed and could be easily scratched if the slip-on lens cap fell off in a case. The AF illuminator and microphone are also located a little close to the fingers: it would be very easy to inadvertently put your finger over both or either without realizing you’ve blocked them.

**Size / Portability
**At 12 ounces, the SP-510 UZ is in the middle of the scale for weight: it’s no lightweight, but it is a lot lighter than many of the other pseudo-SLRs that we’ve seen. It is a little bulky, though: at 105.5 mm by 74.5mm by 70mm, it’s too large to fit into a pocket or handbag. The square shape also may not work so well in some camera bags.

**Handling Ability
**The SP-510 UH handles well: the large grip fits well into the hand and the rubberized cover on the front means it won’t slip from your hand. It’s well designed for one handed use, with the shutter and zoom controls falling naturally under the index finger, and the mode dial falls under the thumb. That’s a nice design. Most cameras that we see need two hands to switch modes, but the SP-510 UZ allows you to go from full auto mode to aperture or shutter priority mode with just one hand.

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**Control Button / Dial Positioning / Size
**Most buttons on the SP-510 UZ require both hands. The menu and directional controls are on the rear of the case, so you need to use your left hand to brace the camera when using them. Other than this, they are well laid out and easy to use, with labels that illustrate what they do.

**Menus
**The menu system of the SP-510 UZ is a little confusing: some menu options are greyed out in certain modes: you can’t, for instance, access the camera menu if you are in the full auto mode.

The top level menu is broken down into five options: reset (which resets the camera to default values), Image quality (where you set the image size), Camera menu (where you set options like the white balance and focus mode), SCN (for Scene, with 21 to choose from), setup (where you set the basic options of the camera) and Silent mode, which disables the sounds the camcorder makes.

**Ease of Use
**The SP-510 UZ is a friendly, easy to use camera. Novice users will find the guide mode useful: this details 13 common problems (such as "reducing red eye"), then explains the solution and makes the appropriate changes to settings. This is a very useful feature for inexperienced users, but it would be nice if it covered more problems. On-camera help systems aren’t going to replace a decent manual or training, but it’s a nice idea to provide some hand-holding on the road.

Modes

**Auto Mode
**The full auto mode seizes control of pretty much every option of the camera: the user only gets access to a limited number of controls, such as image quality and shooting mode. That’s the point of the full auto mode, and it does a good job of turning the camera into a point-and-shoot model.

**Movie Mode
**The SP-510 UZ records movies as Quicktime files at four resolutions: 640x480 at 30fps and 15fps and 320 x 240 at 30fps or 15fps. Mono audio is recorded with the video, which can be of any length that will fit into the card. Our testing of this feature was limited, but the movies did seem to be of adequate quality

**Drive / Burst Mode
**The sequential shooting mode of the SP-510 UZ is rather limited: it can shoot only 3 frames at a speed of 1.7 frames per second. A faster shooting mode that can take more frames would be a good addition to the next model, as this can be very useful when shooting fast moving wildlife.

**Playback Mode
**The SP-510 UZ supports a reasonable selection of playback options: images can be viewed by date, organized into albums and slideshows and rotated within the camera. That’s a pretty average set of features; there are no new or innovative ways to present images offered.

**Custom Image Presets
**The SP-510 UZ also contains a solid selection of preset shooting modes: 21 in all, including the usual suspects of portrait, landscape, etc. The unusual modes include Behind Glass, Museum and Cuisine. A knife and fork are not included with the latter. Switching between the modes is pretty simple (set the mode dial to SCN, then use the up and down directional buttons), but the number of modes does make it a bit of an exercise to find the one you want. One interesting mode is Shoot & Select, which allows you to shoot a number of images, then scroll through a list and delete the ones you don’t want.

The "My Mode" setting on the mode dial allows a user to create 4 sets of customized settings and quickly switch between them. This is a nice, well executed idea, especially if the pre-defined scene modes don’t work for you. You could, for instance, create a My Mode setting for shooting outdoors at a school football game, and another for shooting in the locker room afterwards.

Control Options

**Manual Control Options
**The fully manual mode is accessed by setting M on the mode dial, and the left and right directional buttons then set aperture, with the up and down buttons setting shutter speed. This is a reasonable solution; it’s a lot easier than most small cameras (where you have to use one set of buttons to set shuttle speed and then hold down another button and use the first two to set aperture). But it’s not as easy as having two proper control wheels; you have to look away from the screen or viewfinder to figure out which buttons to press, so it does take a bit of time to set up a shot.

**Focus
**There are three auto focus modes: iESP (where the camera analyzes the scene and chooses the subject), spot (which uses a spot at the center of the screen) and area (which uses a user selected spot on the screen as the active focus point). The autofocus can also be set to constantly keep the camera in focus, even when the shutter isn’t being pressed halfway down. This can be useful for shooting movies where the subject moves around. The auto focus seems to be generally pretty responsive, zeroing in on the appropriate focus point quickly.

Manual focus is also supported, with a central area of the screen being enlarged to check focus. Setting the focus is relatively simple, but it does take a few seconds to go through the entire focus range.

**Exposure
**Exposure compensation of two stops up and down is offered from the Camera menu. It’s pretty easy to deliberately over or underexpose a subject in difficult conditions.

**Metering
**Three different metering modes are supported: iESP (which is a sort of average mode), spot metering (where a single spot at the center is used for measuring) and a center-weighted mode.

**ISO
**The SP-510 UZ has a huge range of ISO settings, starting at 50 and going up to an impressive ISO 4000. Settings above 1600 do have a price, though: the maximum resolution falls to 3 megapixels. Olympus refers to this feature as BrightCapture, TK.

**White Balance
**Six different white balance settings are offered, plus a manual white balance mode. Most cameras use a white card to set the white balance automatically, but the SP-510 UZ shows a live preview of the image and allows you to manually set the white balance on a 14-point scale. This is a different approach, and it works quite well.

**Shutter Speed
**The shutter speed range of ½ second to 1/1000 is a little bit small: some other similar cameras offer 1/4000 or higher. You can extend the exposure to 4 seconds by using the night scene mode, or up to 15 seconds by using bulb, though.

**Aperture
**The large lens may take a lot of room, but it has advantages in gathering plenty of light: the aperture range of f2.8 to f8.0 is better than some cameras we’ve seen. It would be nice to see some smaller apertures, although there are limitations when dealing with smaller sensors.

Image Parameters

**Picture Quality/Size Options
**A good selection of image size options are offered: 3072x2304, 2072x2048, 2560x1920, 2304x1728, 2048x1536, 1600x1200, 1280x960, 1024x768 and 640x480. The camera can also record RAW images at the maximum resolution, and can save a JPEG copy of a RAW file at the same time for convenience.

**Picture Effects Mode
**The SP-510 UZ does not offer any special picture effects for shooting, but it does allows you to process images after they have been taken to produce a black & white or sepia effect. But (as we say in pretty much every review) these are generally best avoided: you can get better results from using an image processing program on your PC or Mac.

Connectivity / Extras

**Connectivity
***Software
*Olympus bundles their own Master software with the SP-510 UZ, which can handle transferring images, organizing images and some basic editing tasks. It can also create panoramic images and create calendars and index cards for printing. It’s not particularly sophisticated, but it handles the basic tasks that most photographers will need adequately.

*Jacks, ports, plugs
*There are only two ports on the SP-510 UZ: the power port and the combined USB and AV cable port. The first one is pretty obvious (just don’t plug in the wrong power adapter by mistake), while the second is the location for the USB and AV cables. This combination port means that you can’t use a generic USB cable: they just won’t fit. If you loose the cable that comes with the camera, you’ll have to buy another from Olympus. The AV cable has stereo audio plugs and a composite video plug, so don’t expect anything too high quality from this. You control the image playback from the camera: there is no remote control.

*Direct Print Options
*The usual suspects line up here: support for both DPOF and PictBridge is included, so you can select images to be printed on the camera, or connect the camera directly to a printer without having to use the PC. That’s useful if the kids are busy playing games and you want to print out some cute baby pictures in order to scare them off so you can play.

*Battery
*Four AA batteries power the camera, and Olympus claims an impressive battery life of 630 shots. We haven’t been able to test this to verify their ambitious claim yet. NiMH rechargeable batteries can also be used.

*Memory
*Olympus didn’t specify how much internal memory is built into the camera, but it’s only enough for a handful of images at the maximum resolution. The highest capacity xD-Picture card currently available is 2Gb, but Olympus only claims compatibility with 1GB cards. The larger ones may work: we were unable to test them.

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**Other Features
***Electronic Image stabilization – *Olympus makes a big play of the image stabilization features of the Sp-510 UZ, and the electronic stabilization does seem to be quite effective in out (rather limited) tests. Enabling it did quite a lot to compensate for the shaky hands of your over-caffeinated, overtired correspondent, but we’ll reserve final judgment until we get to do a proper test in the labs. Electronic image stabilization is usually not as effective as the optical version (where an element of the lens shifts to react to movement), but that also likely helped to keep the camera’s price down.

Time Lapse - A rather nice time lapse feature is included, which can take up to 99 images at a user-defined interval of up to 99 minutes. The auto-power off is disabled when this feature is used, but you’d need to use the optional power adapter if you were shooting 99 images once every 99 minutes (which would take 6 days, 19 hours and 12 minutes.

Overall Impressions

**Value
**At a price of $329.99, the SP-510 UZ is well priced. There are a number of cameras that shoot at higher resolutions, but you pay a big premium for jumping from 7.1 megapixels to 10 when you may not need the extra. The larger size of the SP-510 UZ may put off some, but those who like to get close to the action with sports or wildlife will love the 10X zoom.

**Who it’s For
***Point-and-Shooters -* Although it can be used as a point-and-shoot camera, it isn’t a good pick for these users: too many features and buttons to control them.

Budget Consumers – The SP-510 UZ is well priced for budget users who want the long zoom without paying a fortune for it.

Gadget Freaks – Although it does have some fancy features, there really aren’t enough gee-whizz things here to attract the gadget magpies.

Manual Control Freaks – The manual mode is reasonably easy to use, but real photographers (or at least ones who think they are real photographers) prefer cameras with dials instead of buttons.

Pros / Serious Hobbyists – Pros will despair of any camera that offers something as insulting as scene modes, but it might make a good pick for a second camera to use for casual shooting.

Conclusion

**Conclusion
**The SP-510 UZ has a number of nice improvements over the SP-500 UZ. There’s more resolution, electronic image stabilization and a number of other small improvements. And the price has dropped: the SP-500 UZ was launched at $379, while the SP-510 UZ is launched at $329.95. That’s a pretty considerable drop which makes the camera even more attractive. The bulky case and weight will put of some users, but if you are looking for a well-featured camera with a zoom long enough to focus on the wildlife, the SP-510 UZ is definitely worth considering.

Meet the tester

Richard Baguley

Richard Baguley

Contributor

@@rbaguley

Richard Baguley is a veteran writer who has written about technology ranging from Alphabet to Zip file utilities. He has contributed to pretty much every major tech publication, including Amiga Format Magazine, PC World, Wired, CNET, Toms Guide, Forbes, and many others. He lives in the Boston metro area with his wife, dog, and an indeterminate number of cats.

See all of Richard Baguley's reviews

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