How versatile is an 18x zoom?

Shooting Vegas with the Olympus SP-550UZ

Megapixels may be overrated these days, but zoom range is another matter. The lens on a point-and-shoot can't be changed the way an SLR's can, so the wider the built-in range the better. Most compacts have 3x or 4x zooms, so that the widest angle you can shoot is equivalent to about 35 mm for a film camera and the longest telephoto is about 105 to 140 mm. If you've ever tried to use such a lens to shoot a closeup of more than a few people, capture a landscape, or get closer to a sporting event, you know how limiting this range is.

We've tested some cameras with 12x, and even 15x, zooms, but Olympus's new 7-megapixel SP-550UZ goes further than anything we've seen. Its 18x optical zoom is equivalent to a 28- to 504 -mm lens for a film camera. Its range is wide enough for shooting in both tight quarters and at great distances. Although its lens doesn't match the quality of the ones professional sports photographers use, a 504-mm telephoto is in the same ballpark, so to speak.

The SP-550UZ is surprisingly compact when turned off. Its lens automatically retracts like a turtle pulling its head back into its shell. But even extended at its full 504-mm zoom capabilities, the lens protrudes just about 2.5 inches from the front. Here's what it looks like next to (on its left) a full-sized Nikon D100 SLR. (Click on the thumbnail for a larger version of the image.)

To get some idea of how versatile such a lens is, I took an SP-550UZ to the intersection of Las Vegas's Strip and Tropicana Avenue, where the MGM Grand and New York-New York hotels face each other, connected by a pedestrian bridge. It was dusk, so natural light was weak, which made shooting crisp images harder than it would be in bright daylight. And I didn't use a tripod, which would also help when shooting at 504-mm. While the sun was still up I spot metered on the landmarks themselves to minimize the effect of the backlighting, later switching to a metering mode that balanced the entire image. Image stabilization was turned on for all shots.

These shots don't measure the SP-550UZ's image quality. For that, we'll have to await results of our lab tests. But they do give you some idea how close it can zoom and how wide it can shoot.

The first photos, shown below, were a wide angle shot of the New York-New York skyline and closeups of its individual landmarks, including the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, and Chrysler Building, all of which are many stories tall and were hundreds of feet from me. ISO was set at 800 and resolution at 6 megapixels.

You can click on each thumbnail below to see the full-size version of the image. (Warning: Each image is over one megabyte in size.) For detailed shooting specs (such as the shutter speed) download each JPG image to your hard drive and inspect the file's EXIF properties. (Note: Multiply the focal lengths shown in properties by a factor of 6 to convert from digital to the film equivalent.)

Next, I shot close-ups of subjects nearer to me — a statue above and some tourists on the pedestrian walkway over the Strip. With subjects so near, I found it harder to minimize camera shake, so I cranked up the camera's ISO to 5000 (yes, you read that right) to allow for a faster shutter speed. The camera automatically reduced its resolution to 3 megapixels. I also turned spot metering off.

(Click on each thumbnail for a larger — over one megabyte — version.)

I shot both the collage-style image and the scene on the pedestrian walkway shown below at wide angle, so I was able to drop back to ISO 800:

(Click on each thumbnail for a larger — over one megabyte — version.)

My final two shots were taken from the pedestrian walkway over the Strip, looking north. Both, I believe, suffer from being shot at ISO 3200 and at a resolution of 3 megapixels. I'd expect crisper images in bright sunlight, with a lower ISO and higher resolution setting. Still, in the telephoto shot, the signs for Caesar's and The Mirage — which my maps tell me were about a mile away — are quite readable.

(Click on each thumbnail for a larger version. These are under one megabyte in size.)

The SP-550UZ has other nice features, such as the ability to store a shot as both RAW and JPG files, and the ability to shoot continuously at speeds up to 15 frames per second (at a very low resolution). For a more thorough assessment of the SP-550UZ based on precise lab tests, check our First Looks on the ConsumerReports.org Web site in the near future.

— Jeff Fox, Technology Editor

—Jeffrey Fox