Photos of the Olympus SP-590 UZ with a discussion of its design and features.
Lori Grunin
I've been reviewing hardware and software, devising testing methodology and handed out buying advice for what seems like forever; I'm currently absorbed by computers and gaming hardware, but previously spent many years concentrating on cameras. I've also volunteered with a cat rescue for over 15 years doing adoptions, designing marketing materials, managing volunteers and, of course, photographing cats.
While the SP-590 UZ certainly doesn't qualify as compact, the big grip, necessitated by the use of four AA batteries, makes it easy to handle. It's not the lightest of its competitive group, but it's not the heaviest, either.
In addition to the standard set of manual, semimanual and automatic exposure modes, Olympus includes a Beauty mode that blurs skin slightly (faces only). It only produces 2-megapixel photos, though, in addition to an untouched original at full resolution, and the overhead of the processing slows shooting down immensely.
The SP-590 UZ has a fairly typical button layout, but there are some annoyances. For instance, the playback button is flush with the body and in a recessed curve by the thumb rest, which makes it kind of difficult to press.
