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2026-10-27 Olympus SP-510UZ Digital Camera

    The Olympus SP-510UZ was introduced in 2006. Normally it has ISO from 50-2500 with 7.1 Meg images, but can go from 2500 to 4000 with a resolution of 3 Meg. Using 4-AA batteries it can capture 630 images with half using flash. It has 21 M internal storage and uses xD cards. It has 21 scene modes. 








    The flash pops up when the flash release is pressed (the dark grey button just to the right of the eye point), but if you don’t pop it up the camera just muddles on as best it can. The dark band around the zoom lens is soft rubber and helps trap the fingers on the grip.
    The fingers gain traction on the rubber coating on the handgrip. There is a self-timer LED under the perforated mike location almost level with the “Olympus” nameplate. 









    The camera’s speaker is on the left end of the camera, under the cover for the USB cable. 















    The large four battery compartment has a clever lock. When loaded  and locked, there is no chance the batteries can pop out.
    
    The battery loading directions are clearly moulded into the plastic of the camera. It could be an internal battery has failed, but the date and time have to be input after loading the batteries.
    There are some complaints the camera is slow to fire-up (2.4 sec), slow to shoot even if prefocussed (0.088 sec) and slow to store the image once the shot is taken. On the other hand the lens is good and sharp, without visible distortion, the colour is good, and as mentioned earlier the camera can take a lot of images on a set of batteries.
With a card and batteries loaded the camera weighs just short of a pound (15.98 oz) / 453 g.


Shooting the Olympus SP-510UZ


The Olympus SP-510 UZ uses Digital Image Stabilization. This means the camera  is aware of the focal length you have chosen and using an internal gyro sensor calculates the shutter speed required to make a sharp image. Then the camera adjusts the sensor sensitivity so that shutter speed is possible.

All these shots were  taken using the AUTO mode setting on the camera’s top dial, at the 10x zoom position (380 mm 35 mm equivalent) with two shots taken with both a tripod and handheld. All the tripod shots had the self-timer delaying 12 seconds before the image was captured.The last handheld exposure (a vertical of the ladder) was taken with the upper body braced against a house.

    All images were taken in middle afternoon, in reasonably full sunlight.


Method: First two—ladder then flower—taken on a tripod. Then the camera was removed from the tripod and the first two shots were repeated handheld (flower then ladder). The fifth shot was an attempt at handhold shooting the ladder with a shoulder braced against a house. All the handheld shots were really moving in the viewfinder so were hard to frame exactly.



ON TRIPOD (ladder, distant) 800 sec at f/2.8, ISO 603



ON TRIPOD (flowers, much closer) 640 sec at f/3.7, ISO 230



HAND-HELD (flowers) 640 sec at f/3.7, ISO 213



HAND-HELD (ladder) 640 sec at f/3.7, ISO 470



HAND-HELD/BRACED (ladder) 640 sec at f/2.8, ISO 440


Notes: Strangely the first shot on the tripod had the camera setting the highest shutter speed, the widest aperture and the highest ISO setting.

    In comparison the first (on tripod) shot of the flowers used a slightly slower shutter speed, a slightly stopped down aperture and a reasonably low ISO setting.

    Then the handheld shots all used the same shutter speed, only changed the aperture for one frame and the ISO was half for the first shot compared to the last two.

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