For years, point-and-shoot buyers have – if market research from the camera manufacturers is to be believed – wanted one thing, to the exclusion of just about all others: more megapixels. Although the (frightening) prospect of 18 or even, God forbid, 20 megapixel small-sensor cameras continues to loom just beyond the horizon, that race has slowed to a crawl compared to what it was not so long ago.
Which, in turn, opens the door to a kind of cut-throat technological competition between manufacturers that I can really get behind: more zoom range. Once upon a time, a 3x optical zoom on a point-and-shoot was a luxury, but this year’s Consumer Electronics Show has seen 10x zooms fitted into a growing list of pocket cameras, and obscenely wide-ranging 20x-plus optics mounted on otherwise moderate and mainstream ultrazooms.
Let me say for the record that I’m fully behind the idea of more zoom range in smaller cameras in a way that I haven’t been with more resolution since the six megapixel days came and went. But while adding zoom range – unlike boosting resolution – generally has lots of pros and few if any cons, when you start talking about cameras like the Olympus SP-590 UZ, which covers the equivalent of 26-676mm with a single lens, my unwavering “pro zoom” stance starts to crack just a tiny bit.
The fairly compact 590’s 26x optic raises some key questions about image quality and usability, in particular, but Olympus was kind enough to let us explore a pre-production 590 in much greater depth to see what answers we might uncover for our detailed hands-on preview.