Cons: JPEGs are slightly oversharpened, slow low-light focusing, uses xD media
The Bottom Line: The Olympus SP-310 is a very good camera at a very attractive price. Keep in mind that it uses expensive xD memory however. The SP-310 has...
dkozin's Full Review: Olympus SP-310 Digital Camera
The Olympus SP-310 is a 7.1-Megapixel digital camera with 3x optical zoom, large 2.5-inch LCD screen and manual control. I got mine for $260 - a low price for its resolution and features.
What is Olympus SP-310?
The Olympus SP-310 is an 7.1-Megapixel digital camera with 3x optical zoom (38-114 mm equivalent), a large 2.5-inch LCD screen, a zooming optical viewfinder, and a built-in flash.
The camera has full manual controls with aperture range of f/2.8-8.0 at wide angle, f/4.9-8.0 at telephoto, adjustable in 1/3 EV steps. The shutter speed range is 1/2,000-15 sec. (up to 8 minutes in Bulb mode). The ISO presets are Auto, 64, 100, 200 and 400. The camera can store images in RAW or JPEG format in its internal memory (24 MB) or xD-Picture memory cards.
The camera is powered by two AA batteries or one CR-V3 battery. It has an A/V out as well as a USB 2.0 Full-Speed out. The supplied battery, according to Olympus, lasts 510 shots.
Getting Started
I used my own rechargeable NiMH batteries. The battery compartment lid is made of sturdy plastic and has a secure locking mechanism. It does not require too much effort to close either. After I inserted the batteries, I was ready to shoot using the built-in memory of the camera.
The Camera
Overall, the camera is well-made and uses high-quality materials. The fit and finish are excellent. The SP-310 looks stylish and its controls have a good tactile feel. The top deck has a mode selection wheel and a zoom control with a shutter release button in the middle.
The front of the camera houses the extendable lens with an automatically-opening lens lid, the focus assist light, the flash, the microphone and the viewfinder window. The back houses a large 2.5-inch LCD screen, an optical viewfinder, power button and control buttons, including the menu control buttons that are separate (which I like).
The bottom houses the speaker, the plastic tripod mount and the battery compartment door. The side of the camera features a rigid plastic lid for the memory card compartment and a rubberized lid for the DC power jack, A/V out and the USB 2.0 jack.
In Operation
The camera is powered on by pushing and holding the Power button on the rear panel. The lens extends and the lens lid opens. The camera is turned off in the similar manner. The SP-310 is very easy to use, especially in its automatic mode (marked Auto on the mode selection wheel). You just have to point and shoot; the camera takes care of the rest. You push the shutter release button halfway to focus and then push it all the way to take a picture. In other words, you use it just like any other digital camera.
In addition to its automatic mode, the camera has numerous scene modes to tweak the shooting parameters to the type of scene you are shooting without having to think too much about the specifics (Portrait, Indoor, etc.) It also has manual exposure control (Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority and Manual mode) for those who need it. And you can adjust the aperture and shutter speed in steps of 1/3 EV, which gives you fine control over the exposure.
The camera makes its parameters easy to control. For example, in aperture priority mode, you use the up and down buttons to change the aperture and the left and right buttons for exposure compensation. The flash mode is selected by its own dedicated button. Also, do not forget that you can select RAW mode that lets you correct slight mistakes with exposure and set white balance afterwards, in the image editing software.
The camera has zooming, which has good speed, but is slightly noisy with scratching sounds. The 3x optical zoom range is sufficient for most situations and the 7.1-Megapixel resolution lets you crop extensively before printing. There is also digital zoom, but I personally keep it disabled since I do not want any sacrifice in resolution.
You can even see the histogram at a push of a button.
Ergonomics and Easy of Use
The SP-310 is easy to use and its menus are intuitive. Although they are not as well-designed as menus of Panasonic cameras, they are definitely better than menus of Fuji cameras. They are legible and colorful as well and the large screen helps too. You can even see the descriptions of what each scene mode does.
LCD and Viewfinder
The SP-310 has a large 2.5-inch LCD screen. The screen is fluid and works well in all lighting conditions. It gains-up (increases brightness in the dark) and has decent resolution with 100% coverage. The viewfinder works reasonably well too.
Flexibility
The SP-310 lets you adjust numerous parameters, if you wish: white balance, metering mode (multi-pattern, spot, center-weighted), ISO (Auto, 64, 100, 200, 400), image quality, contrast, saturation, sharpness, JPEG/RAW format and more.
Performance
It takes the camera about 2 seconds to power on or off. The zooming from full wide angle to full telephoto or back also takes about two seconds. It is a little noisy but works well.
The focusing takes less than a second in good light. But in dim light, the camera takes up to 2 seconds to focus at wide angle or up to 3 seconds at telephoto (even with use of its focus-assist light). Not the best performance, but is acceptable.
When pre-focused, the shutter lag is virtually non-existent. I was able to take pictures at a rate of about one every 1.5-2 seconds (including full auto focus), which is pretty good. With flash, the pictures can be taken at intervals of about 5-7 seconds (depending if you use the red-eye reduction mode or not).
The camera also has a burst mode (JPEG only), in which it can take two pictures in less than a second. In normal-speed burst/continuous mode, the camera takes up to 15 pictures in HQ mode at 1.2 frames per second or 4 pictures at 1.7 fps in SHQ mode.
Image Quality
The camera produces excellent photos with vivid color. The sky and clouds have pleasing appearance with typical pleasing Olympus colors. The automatic exposure worked well most of the time. The automatic white balance worked well outdoors only requiring adjustments indoors with incandescent light.
The objects are sharp and look sharp when printed as well. Maybe even a little too sharp (JPEG). You can see that the camera applies agressive sharpening to the pictures bu default. If you look at the images the camera produces in JPEG mode at 1x1 (pixel per pixel) resolution on the computer screen, you can see the halos around edges of objects. Works pretty well to make things appear sharper, especially at smaller print sizes.
You can shoot RAW and process your files later to make sure they are sharpened to your taste and the print size you want.
The camera produces photos that are sharp corner-to-corner with only the very corners of the frame having a very small amount of softening. There is not much chromatic aberration (purple fringing) in the areas of high contrast either. Overall, the image quality is very good.
The camera produces noise levels that are pretty typical for a consumer-level digital camera. The ISO 64-100 is rather good with no to low noise and print sizes up to 13x19 inches. The ISO 200 has more noise and the ISO 400 is only good for small prints as it has higher noise levels. ISO 400 is good up to 5x7 inches.
Battery Life
Although I have not tested the battery life, I was able to take about 70 photos using my 1600 mAh NiMH batteries without seeing the low battery warning.
Flash
The camera has a built-in flash that works well up to 10-11 feet.
USB
The camera can be connected to your computer using a USB 2.0 connection. Once I connected it to my Windows 2000 computer, the camera powered itself on automatically and appeared as a removable drive on my computer with no need to install any software. So far, Olympus cameras are the only ones I have seen that power themselves on automatically when connected to the computer.
Bottom Line
The Olympus SP-310 is a very good camera at a very attractive price. Keep in mind that it uses expensive xD memory however. The SP-310 has excellent features and performs well too, aside from slightly slow focusing in dim light. I highly recommend it if you need a 7.1-Megapixel camera with manual control and RAW format recording.
Large 2.5" LCD Viewscreen, 30 shooting modes including 24 scene modes including fireworks and sports, PictBridge print ready, 256MB onboard memory plu...More at eCOST.com
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