Best 12x Zoom Digital Cameras - Autofocus Focus Type, Atleast 500 images

'Shutter-lag is a bit disappointing at about 0.1 second when pre-focused and 0.5 seconds including focusing time.'

'Image quality not up to par with competition; Weak flash; Poor HD video results; Excessive noise above ISO 400 makes the higher options almost useless; Tiny EVF eye piece; LCD is reflective; Sporadic white balance results when using Auto setting; Lack of Aperture value control in the specified A position on the mode dial makes it difficult to control DOF (either wide open or closed down, nothing in between). '

'merely OK photos and shooting performance'

'Small traces of chromatic aberrations (aka CA or purple fringing) were present in most of our outdoor samples.'

'those with very small hands often complain that some controls are out of reach.'

'At ISO 1,600 detail completely falls apart, with heavy chroma noise, very bright noise pixels and other visible noise reduction artifacts.'

'I left out the ISO 3200 and 6400 samples from this comparison since they're so utterly bad.'

'As with most compact digital cameras, higher ISOs tend to suffer from noise and image detail loss.'

'When powered down, the Olympus SP-550UZ is a squat, bulky looking camera, with an appearance very similar to competing Canon and Sony models.'