Olympus Stylus SH-50 iHS Digital Camera with 24x Optical Zoom and 3-Inch LCD (Silver)

CUSTOMER REVIEW



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The Olympus Stylus SH-50 has an awesome zoom, nice image quality, and tons of great features.



Design wise the Olympus is very handsome and understated. It has a rubberized grip on the front that makes holding the camera easy and the camera feels great in the hand. The camera's materials are very nice with a metal front plate. The buttons and dials feel high quality and work smoothly. It's nicely assembled and feels sturdy. Size wise it's not going to fit into a jean pocket but will travel well in a jacket pocket or a small bag. Included with the Olympus is a USB cable that plugs into your computer or the included power adaptor. The battery charges in camera. Also included is a stylus to operate the touch screen, but I found the touch screen worked well enough that I didn't need it.



The Olympus has lots of features that cater to photographers of every skill set. For those who prefer to let the camera do all of the work there is an automatic mode, a handful of scene modes, and a few artistic filters (pinhole, fisheye, etc.). One thing to be aware of is that in automatic mode the camera will rarely fire the flash. The Olympus would rather keep the shutter speed low. That may result in blurry photos due to camera and/or subject movement. To make matters worse, in automatic mode you're only given two choices for the flash, automatic and off, so you can't even force the flash to fire manually. The solution is to shoot in P mode or the indoor scene mode, where flash fires much more readily. This is a pretty odd way for the camera to behave, and I think it is the Olympus' biggest flaw. For those who want more control the camera offers a fully manual mode that lets you choose the aperture (only two available at any given zoom), shutter speed (from 15" - 1/2000), and ISO speed (there is no auto ISO in M mode). Additionally, there are two presets for custom white balance. One thing I don't like is that the Olympus does not have a dedicated macro button. If you want to access the closest shooting range you have to enter the macro scene mode, which is completely automated.



Using the Olympus is easy. The buttons are well laid out, the menu system is simple and easy to understand, and the touch screen is very responsive. The thing about the touch screen is that it only controls a very limited set of functions. When taking photos it will let you tap take the photo or just set the focus/exposure. It works well and responds quickly. In playback mode you can use the touch screen to go through photos or pan when zoomed into a photo.



The Olympus is a very speedy camera. After you turn it on it is ready to shoot in about 4 seconds. It focuses at wide angle in about 1 second and the long end in about 2 seconds. It rarely hunts for focus, even at full telephoto. Continuous shooting speeds are also great. When shooting full resolution you are offered a choice of two speeds. The faster one takes a few photos every second and stops after 17 photos, while the slower speed takes about 1 photo every second and I stopped at 50 photos but the camera could keep shooting.



Photo quality of the Olympus is great. Color, exposure, and focus are perfect about 99% of the time. Overall, the photos have a very pleasant and appealing look with rich accurate color and nice tonality. However, the one place where the Olympus falters is with resolving fine detail. This is a small sensor packed with pixels and in order to combat noise (color speckling) Olympus chooses to blur it away. Therefore, even at the lowest ISO speeds, details like grass and hair end up looking mushy and indistinct. I'd consider up to ISO 400 as where you'd want to do most of your shooting, use ISO 800-1600 in a pinch, and stay away from higher sensitivities as photos look less like photos and more like blotchy watercolor paintings. Still, unless you're making huge prints, or cropping photos dramatically, you probably won't even notice the loss of detail and will be very happy with the photos the Olympus takes. The image stabilizer is very effective and I was able to take sharp shots at wide angle at 1/5 and at telephoto at 1/250. Strangely, the stabilizer will sometimes make a loud squeaking/farting noise at full telephoto. Be careful in a quiet setting as people may think the noise is coming from you!



Movies shot with the Olympus are quite nice. They are full high definition and have stereo sound. You can use the optical zoom while shooting, but you'll hear the motor on the recording in quiet environments. The image stabilizer is very effective, and movies are smooth and have little shake.



The lens on the Olympus is quite a performer. Not only does it start at a nice wide angle of 25mm (letting you fit more in the photo), but also the 24x optical zoom lets you get really close without reduction in photo quality. The lens is sharp, and even wide open at wide angle the corners are only a little soft. Another nice thing about the lens is that is starts at f/3.0 on the wide end. That number represents the lens' aperture. The lower than number the more light the lens can collect. Most cameras in this class start at f/3.3 or more, so at wide angle the Olympus will be a better camera in low light. At telephoto the lens is a not so great f/6.9, so you won't want to zoom with the Olympus in low light unless you have a tripod or are willing to live with the detail loss the required high ISO speeds will entail.



Battery life is great and I was able to take 386 photos with lots of zooming, reviewing, and menu navigating before the battery died.



All in all... a terrific mega-zoom compact camera.



Feel free to leave a comment with any questions you may have and I'll answer them as soon as I can.



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