Olympus announced in January 2007 the newest of their Ultra-zooms, the SP-550 UZ.  The newsworthy item was the incredible 18x zoom, and starting off at 28mm! The camera specs certainly grabbed the media attention, and mine also.  I bought one as soon as they came out in March.  I got mine from Ritz camera for $499, and had a good shopping experience, your experience may vary.   There are several manufacturers with big zooms, but none that go to 504mm, or start off at the real wide angle mark of 28mm.  Currently, only Sony has anything close in the lineup, and that would be the new Sony H9, zooming from 31mm to 465mm. Let's get the ball rolling right away with the beginning of the review! Check the specifications here. Next we have a list of the box contents for the western U.S. 7.1mp camera. 4 AA non-rechargeable batteries. Neck strap. USB cable. A/V cable. CD-ROM Olympus Master 2 Printed manual. Lens cap and lanyard. Here's a shot of the box and contents. You have just about everything you need in the box to begin taking pictures except a memory card, but there is an internal memory of 20mb, so you can take a few shots if you don't have a card.  Since this camera uses xD cards, that's what you'll need to buy.  A 512mb card is about as small as you'll want to buy as it yields 122 shots at the SHQ setting, , the numbers coming from the monitor readout.  One note, you should buy an "H" type card which will allow faster operation and the longest movies possible, in the 640x480 30fps mode.  It's worth the extra money. Before you begin your photo excursion, you'll need to stuff the batteries in the compartment, be sure to look and see which way they go, there's a tiny symbol right by the tubes.  See photo below. There are some accessories you might want to check out.  Of course you can select from a pile of goodies from Olympus, one item of note is the wireless remote control ($57), very handy I think.  Don't miss the telephoto lens and converter, like you really need more zoom?  These items will set you back $150.  A must have is the underwater case, good for 40m, $379. The software supplied.  Olympus provides Olympus Master 2 with the kit, and it's pretty basic, though you get all you need for basic photo editing.  It's not much different than the Camedia software of 3-4 years ago.  Don't worry too much about messing with RAW, It's a 10.3mb file and there isn't much you can do with it with the supplied software.  Plus, the camera locks up for about 5 seconds, or nearly 10 seconds with the RAW+Jpeg option.  I don't think people will use this much, I don't.  You don't buy a camera like this if you're going to shoot in RAW.  If you want to mess with RAW, get a DSLR. Let's move on to the camera itself.  This is a fairly typical fixed lens DSLR looking camera these days.  It has the large right hand-grip, flip up flash on top and an electronic viewfinder with protrusion that looks like an optical viewfinder, as on a real DSLR.  The body is Gray with chrome trim.  It's not really lightweight, but it's much lighter than a real DSLR.  Fit and finish are pretty good, there's plastic galore, but it's nice and solid. We'll begin our tour of the Olympus SP-550 UZ with a full frontal shot, and I'll explain the features present. Starting off just to the left of the lens (from this point of view) is the AF "illuminat" lamp, which allows the auto focus system to work better in low light.  Next of course, is the big zoom lens, 28mm-504mm, F/2.8-4.5.  The three port oval on the right side is the microphone. The left side brings us a nice shot of the fully extended lens.  The button up by the flash is the flash release.  It's manually raised only.  Under the rubber cover to the very right is the I/O ports, for the USB, A/V, and DC connections.  The cover snaps into place with a nice fit. Up top, we have the electronic viewfinder, which actually works good, and is pretty sharp.  Notice the wheel on the left side, this is the diopter correction knob, used to focus the viewfinder.  Just to the right of the viewfinder and slightly below, is the button you push to get either the LCD screen or electronic viewfinder.  The big square box is the 2.5" LCD screen, with a respectable 230,000 pixels.  The screen works pretty good, but it blooms badly, the same as the screens of the past for Olympus.  If you point it at a bright spot, it'll turn purple and wash over the entire screen.  It doesn't make any difference on the outcome of the picture though, thankfully.  Let's move over to the far right cluster of buttons.  The top left is the menu, where you'll find the set up, image quality, reset etc.  If you're in playback mode you'll get even more options, like calendar, edit, print order, bulk erase etc.  It's pretty intuitive, but there's a whole slew of items buried deep.  You won't have to fool with the menu button to much, as there's a much faster way to get to the real important settings--read below. The big button in the middle is the four way controller.  This is a way to navigate through the menu items or scroll through you picture in playback.  On each button of the four way controller is a symbol, the top is for exposure compensation, -2EV to +2EV in 1/3 increments. The button on the right is for flash settings, use this for fill flash, auto, red-eye reduction, slow sync etc.  The bottom button is for setting the timer.  Pick 2 sec, 10 sec or off. Moving on to the left button, we have the macro settings.  Select off, macro or super macro where the zoom will be fixed. Now for the middle button.  The real important button.  Here you can push the button and display your most important items like White balance, ISO (a big one for me), drive options, like single advance of continuous, then metering, such as ESP, spot or center weighted.  This is a big time saver, you'll use this a lot if you're a step above the snapshot taker. Let's go to the top right button before we get too far away.  It's for playback.  Use this for viewing your pictures you just took and zoom in with the zoom controller. To the lower left is the display/info button.  Use this to pick what's shown on the screen, like a histogram, grid, camera settings etc.  It's also used for information by pressing and holding. The last button is the lower right one, and it's used to delete photos, one at a time.  For bulk delete, use the menu button. The left side has the card holder.  Keep in mind if you want to use the internal memory, don't put in a memory card.  The door fits nice, but it's easy to open accidentally. Here's the bottom of the camera.  This is the battery compartment, make sure you look at the way the batteries are supposed to be inserted.  Missing from the view is the plastic tripod socket. Last, but not least, we have the top view.  The pop up flash is the thing with the advertising stickers all over it.  Notice if you push "menu" for 2 seconds you'll get a "Demo".  The mode dial is on the right.  This is where you get the manual modes, scene modes, movie modes etc.  It's pretty standard and straight forward. Over to the right is the power button, the next button to the upper right is for image stabilization, if you put the camera on a tripod, turn it off. Up above the image stabilization button is the shutter/zoom controller.  The shutter button is the usual half-press focus, full press release operation.  The zoom controller zooms out in under 3 seconds, not bad for such length, also use this button for zooming in on pictures in playback mode. Next, I'll show you what I came up with in terms of image quality, shot-to-shot speeds and general lens performance.  I'll also compare the Olympus SP-550 UZ with a couple of other cameras--DSLRs--and show you how it compares. Overall camera thoughts. First, the colors are very dull and boring at their default settings.  I jacked up the saturation to +3 and contrast to +3 also.  In camera sharpening is plenty at the default level. The camera focuses quickly and accurately in most cases.  It has an AF assist lamp thankfully, and it works wonders over others that don't have it.  At the telephoto end, it does have it's share of missed focus attempts, sometimes failing completely to focus correctly-even in good outdoor light.  Mostly though, in the middle range and wide angle there is no problem at all.  The manual focus mode is near worthless as you can't tell by the enlarged screen area what's sharp.  The 2.5" monitor works good and seems to be accurate in color, but the viewing angles aren't very good, meaning you must look directly at it for best results.  Also, when encountering bright areas on the LCD in the preview mode you'll get a purple cast that washes over that area-but it doesn't show in photos, this happened also on my 4 year old Olympus C-750 UZ. White balance is pretty good, especially in the auto mode.  I used one-touch WB on the ISO studio still life shots and "auto" on the resolution, corner softness, center of frame and macro shot.  The camera has some issues with corner softness, especially from 400mm-504mm, which is normal for most less-expensive cameras and lenses.  Vignetting is nearly non-existent, better than I expected, especially at 28mm and 504mm at wide open-it changes little stopped down all the way. Resolution is good, but keep the lens open as far as you can, the sharpest shots are at or near full open apertures.  At f/8, it's much softer than F/3.5.  Also, stay away from the full 504mm end as the whole frame is very soft. The macro capabilities are very good, although corner softness is a drawback.  I would guess the magnification is between half and full life size, the center looks sharper than my Sigma 105mm F/2.8 center, attached to my Sony A 100, quite a surprise. Telephoto capabilities are good too.  At the full 504mm, you'll get a pretty good shot, nearly as sharp as my 75-300mm Sony lens at the full 300mm or 450mm equivalent.  That's over a one-thousand dollar combination, twice the price of the Olympus.  That's not really saying much, as both are really pretty soft, especially when compared to a good lens. ISO shots are good up to 400, but skip the 5000 as this is a mess even at smaller sizes.  You get full size shots up to 1600, then it throttles down to about 3mp for 3200 and 5000.  I've come to the determination that ISO 100 on this camera is equal to about ISO 400 or 800 on my Nikon D40.  I know that's not exactly comparing apples to apples but the price range is close, although the telephoto capabilities are much greater with the SP-550 UZ.  Keep the camera at ISO 50 or ISO 100 if you know what's good for you! CA is a problem, especially in telephoto at or near the upper limits.  It shows up around the 300mm mark, and gets progressively worse, stopping the lens down will do nothing.  By 400mm, and all the way up to 504mm for that matter, purple fringing is strong.   From 28mm up to around 300mm, it's not too bad at all.    Battery life.  Excellent-but caveat below.  I'm still using the original batteries that came with the camera, probably 500 shots at least, and lots of LCD review time.  Beware!  I noticed finally that the battery life indicator doesn't work for crap.  You'll need to carry extra batteries at all times.  I ran out after checking the meter-which read full-even after the camera shut down due to low power. Shot-to-shot speeds are ok, nothing special, this camera isn't for sports shooters. 15 FPS mode.  Yup, it really works.  Note that you'll only get 1280x960 resolution (1.2mp) about equal to a decent camera phone--and it sets the ISO automatically too (which could lead to disaster).  This setting should be used only in desperation.  You can get 20 shots in a little over a second with pre-capture off.  Pre-capture isn't terribly useful in my opinion; it stores 5 frames to the buffer after a shutter button half press, nor is the 15fps.  There is another choice, a 3mp step up at 7fps up to a max of 15 frames.  This setting is not too bad.  Macro shot. This is the "as close as you can get" macro shot of a standard US postage stamp, 1"x 3/4" or 25.4mm x 19mm.  Click on the picture for a full size inspection-1.48b.  Notice the very soft corners, especially when compared to the Panasonic DMC-FZ18, check that shot out here.  The specs for the SP-550 macro shot are; F/4.5, super macro mode, ISO 50, automatic white balance, which isn't so hot here but I had the camera lens almost on top of the subject, about 3/8" (10mm) away so I had trouble with getting light evenly across the frame.  Look at the cyan fringing on the black letters.  Stopping the lens down did nothing for the soft corners, but made the middle worse.  This is pretty much par for the course as far as super zoom cameras go.  I'm surprised at the amount of magnification and middle of the frame sharpness though.  I can't find the specs for the magnification but I'd estimate about 3/4 life size.  Distortion is present, (notice the left side of the shot) but not too bad, the camera zooms to about 60mm (equivalent) when in super macro mode. SP-550 UZ macro shot, as close as you can get! 1.48mb Studio still shot. Here's the whole shot before we get to the next set of ISO crops.  Click on the picture for a full sized version to examine at your leisure.  Specs are ISO 50, F/3.5 at about 60mm equivalent and one touch white balance mode. Studio shot, large file 4mb. ISO samples  The samples below are crops of the standard studio still life shots.  As you would expect, the high ISO shots are pretty crappy, especially after 400.  From ISO 1600 to the reduced size 3200 and 5000, you'll get a bad watercolor type picture.  Keep in mind though at small, website sizes those pics will still look good, say at 400-500 pixels wide.  I threw in a couple of comparison shots with the excellent high ISO Nikon D40.  I know they're not really the same but for quality conscious people, here's your chance to see the DSLR difference.  The Nikon D40 pulls more detail with it's 6mp sensor at ISO 1600 than the 7mp SP-550 does at ISO 200.  Don't believe it?  Look below.  The Nikon shots were taken earlier, hence the lighting difference, but keep in mind the SP-550 is using heavy sharpening in the processing, the D40 is at the typical DSLR "soft" setting.  If I bumped it up there would be even more apparent difference.  Check out the last set, the Nikon at it's lowest ISO of 200, and the SP-550 at it's lowest of ISO 50.  Not much difference here, the little Olympus is holding it's own. ISO 50 ISO 100 ISO 200 ISO 400 ISO 800 ISO 1600 ISO 3200 at reduced size ISO 5000 at reduced size SP-550 UZ @ ISO 200 Nikon D40 @ ISO 1600 SP-550UZ @ ISO 50 Nikon D40 @ ISO 200 Here's the worst vignetting or light falloff sample, coming in at the F/4.5 and 504mm setting.  This really won't be noticeable in real world shots so don't worry about this at all.  I'd say the SP 550 UZ handles this well. Next, I'll post some telephoto comparisons with the Sony A100 and 75-300mm lens for an equivalent of 450mm for the Sony, and 504mm for the SP-550 UZ. Telephoto capabilities. Before you are a couple of lackluster telephoto cropped shots from the SP-550 and Sony A 100 75-300mm lens combo.  If you look closely, you'll see there's heavy sharpening going on with the Olympus, and it's slightly overexposed too.  I adjusted both photos to match more closely but did nothing with sharpening on either camera.  I had no problems focusing on the SP-550 at the full 504mm with this subject.  The SP-550 was at the full 504mm, the Sony combo was at the full 300mm or 450mm equivalent.  Before you go crazy with complaints about the 54mm deficit on the Sony, keep in mind the Sony resolution is 3872 pixels wide, the SP-550 is 3072 pixels wide, the aspect ratios are different, but that doesn't matter here. That's 26% wider for Sony, the focal length difference is 12% more for the Olympus, Overall, it looks like the Sony has about a 5% advantage at 100%.  Of course to me, the Sony picture is better looking, but I think the little SP-550 does a very good job at the full 504mm.  Also bear in mind the Sony 75-300mm lens is soft at the full 300mm, which keeps the comparison interesting.  check out that review here. Olympus SP-550 UZ @504mm ISO 50 Sony A 100 with 75-300mm lens @ 450mm equiv. ISO 100 Let's look at the sharpness of the big lens over it's entire length. Approximately (35mm equiv)           F/2.8        F/3.7-4.5        F/5.6          F/8 (28mm) (70mm)   (120mm)    (200mm)    (300mm)    (400mm)    (504mm)   The above are 100% crops (lower left corner) from the famous transverse Mercator projection map of the Tucson AZ area.  The 28mm crops are pretty sharp, all things considered.  You'll see some soft corners but overall, it's good.  Things look equally good up to around 200mm or so.  Near 300mm and above, the whole frame softens and the dreaded purple fringing appears, though not too bad yet.  By 400mm, the image is very soft, and purple fringing is even more noticeable and by the time we get to the 504mm mark, things are pretty ugly, this is the area you'll want to avoid as much as possible.  Keep in mind you'll want the apertures as big as you can get, and the camera will do most of the work for you as it knows where the sharpest settings are.  In fact, I think you would have a hard time trying to get the camera to automatically come up with an f/8 at any setting, unless you point it at the sun.  DSLR lenses sharpen up (for the most part) between F/5.6 and F/8.  The fixed lens cameras are generally sharper wide open, and this camera is no exception.  If you compare the above images with others in my lens reviews, please note on some reviews I've increased the contrast and or saturation on the crops.  I'm no longer going to do that so don't judge the quality by that appearance.  This is something I can't replicate reliably so I stopped doing it.  To sum up the corner softness, I'd say it's not too bad 'till you get near 300mm, then things go bad quickly. We'll look now at the center of the frames, all shot at the maximum apertures for each focal length, which is by far the sharpest---you don't want to see the F/8 shots!  Equiv. (28mm) Equiv. (70mm) Equiv. (120mm) Equiv. (200mm) Equiv. (300mm) Equiv. (400mm) Equiv. (504mm) I think the crops speak for themselves.  Check out that 504mm shot at the bottom, what a mess, though that's not saying much for the Sony 75-300 lens I compared it to farther up the review. Conclusion. The camera is small enough to put in a little waist-case, the Lowepro Z30 works great, and you can store an extra set of AA batteries in the outer pocket---you'll need these as the battery indicator is near worthless.  Buy one for about $15 or $20 bucks.  Overall, the performance is good, but not great.  Focusing is good at wide angle and mid-range but so-so to poor at telephoto past 300mm or so.  Shot to shot speeds are good, but not great.  The 15fps gimmick is useful only as a last resort--read crappy picture quality--step up to the 7fps, a much better option.  These options are buried in the menu, so most people won't end up using them anyways.  I used an Olympus brand xD memory card, 1GB H type for all testing.  The movie mode works good with the 640x480 30fps setting.  Here you'll need the H type card for movies longer than about 15 seconds.  Image stabilization works very well, I even hand held most of the 504mm shots with very few blurry shots. The printed manual that comes with the SP-550 UZ is barely OK.  You should read it over fully before doing much with the camera, this way you'll know where to look when you're having trouble finding out about something.    Image quality is quite good, all things considered.  I printed out a picture (cactus back-lit at sunset) at 13x19" and it really looks good!  Even the sky was pretty clean.  It's not DSLR like quality but it's not far behind, keep ISO at 50!  Do note the lens aperture begs to be used as wide open as possible; where you'll get the sharpest shots.  The camera processor knows this too as it's pretty hard to get an F/8 shot unless you point it directly at the sun.  It's also soft in the corners but that's normal for a big zoom lens.  Purple fringing is strong on the long end of the zoom, anywhere after 300mm or so.  The colors are a little muted straight from the camera, I jacked 'em up a bit to +3 for contrast and +3 for saturation, that helps a bunch.  At 400mm through 504mm, the lens is soft, but not too bad.  Vignetting or dark corners is no problem, a pleasant surprise.  Macro quality is pretty good.  Beware of a tendency to overexpose sometimes.  I'd keep the exposure compensation to -1/3 or -2/3 when outdoors, just to be safe.  Lastly, ISO, good to 200 or maybe 400 in broad daylight, but stay away from 800 on up----bad!!  Do not use the 1600 through 5000 unless you're going to display a small picture on a website. Overall, I'd say the little SP-550 UZ is a very useful camera. It takes very good pictures in normal situations.  It's small and lightweight and has a great zoom range of 28mm-504mm.  I find the 28mm range the most useful, (unlike most fixed lens cameras that start around 35mm) and this is where the camera performs very well.  Bottom line: keep the camera between 28mm and 300mm, ISO 50 and you will really enjoy this camera--nice clean images and good focusing.   Points to ponder. Very clean images at ISO 50. Very useful 28mm wide angle. Very long telephoto, 504mm. So-so shooting performance. Not so good focusing above 300mm. Good movie mode with "H" type xD card. Very useful CCD shift image stabilization. Very good battery life, but useless battery life meter.  Carry spares. Printed manual not very good at all. LCD blows out with purple cast in bright light. Well built camera. Full manual controls. Lots of scene modes for beginners. Handy in camera help system.