Olympus Sp51
The Olympus sp51 appears to be a winner. It boasts a great design, a high quality and fast lens and a photographer's dream in manual controls. But some experts were not impressed with the overall product. It seems the Olympus sp51 is far from perfect in its performance and technical functionality.

Reasons To Buy An Olympus Sp51 Camera
Not only does the Olympus sp51 offer manual exposure controls, it also gives its users a 10X optical zoom lens. The Olympus sp51 camera case has a bulky body style with an SLR style grip on the right side. All the control buttons are within one hand's reach, which is an effective design. The interface itself has been praised by most users. One odd fact is that you cannot have the viewfinder and the 2.5 inch LCD screen on at the same time.

Some definite advantages of the Olympus sp51 digital camera lie in the high power lens, which allow for extra-low dispersion and aspherical elements, the kind usually found in SLR lenses. The lens, at 10X optical zoom with a 38 to 380 millimeter range, is competitive, though not exactly the best on the market. While wide angle lenses are limited initially, though if you purchase some special Olympus sp51 camera accessories, you can improve the quality; optional conversion lenses include 0.7X wide and 1.7X telephoto versions. The lens is not only powerful but fast, with a maximum aperture spanning f/2.8 to f/3.7. Other impressive features of the Olympus sp51 digital camera include raw image capture with a raw plus JPEG mode, front and rear curtain flash sync and a special time lapse setting. The Olympus sp51also has a video camera feature, which captures video at 640x480 pixels at 30 fps.

A Review Of The Olympus Sp51 Camera For Sale
The Olympus sp51has its negatives, though. While the unit scored moderately in start up and with flash, when shooting raw images the shot-to-shot time took a whole 10.6 seconds--though it should be stated many cameras at this level don't even include the raw capture feature. Shutter lag and continuous shooting tested average. The problems started to appear in image quality, with noise appearing at ISO speeds beyond 400. Even at a 50 sensitivity however, the images were not as clean as pictures produced by other quality digital cameras. It's alarming that noise begins to creep in, particularly in dark colors and shadows in levels as low as ISO 100.

The worse feature may be the lack of optical image stabilization. Practically every superzoom camera is expected to have image stabilization, which makes the problem a big one. Though Olympus tries to substitute Digital Image Stabilization, however this only boosts the ISO to shoot at a faster shutter speed.

Since many competing cameras have less noise and include image stabilization, this makes the Olympus sp51a hard camera to sell.