Thursday, June 26, 2008
Olympus SP570-UZ Product Review
Olympus SP570-UZ is an upgraded model from SP560-UZ introduced roughly half a year ago. It retains all attractive functions and features of its predecessor while boasting a super-versatile 20X 26 to 520mm zoom Lens, 10 million effective pixels CCD, hot-shoe for external flash unit, a newly-added manual zoom ring and so on.
Establishing itself as a high-end SP model, SP570-UZ provides a wide range of choice for photographic control, say, aperture-priority, shutter-speed priority or manual exposure mode and useful white-balance adjustment. To cater to the need of beginners, Auto, Scene and Guide would be equally useful in enhancing photographic pleasure. It seems that Olympus is so ambitious as to embrace user of all kind by a SLR-like super-zoom DC.
The plastic cover of the housing gives your a touch of security and comfort. While the grip ergonomic grip maintains an overall good balances for shooting.
But as for those who have a large hand, the little finger of the right hand may find no place to rest. The EVF is useful but it takes quite a long time to shift from LCD mode to EVF mode so it would be highly recommended to stick to using the LCD which is large and bright.
The powerful 26-520mm zoom lens is currently the longest zoom available for a compact DC.
Though unique in its optics, the pictorial quality is just mediocre. Slow focusing speed is one of its fatal weaknesses and it is unbelievable it takes nearly 2 seconds for the camera for data processing before being ready to take another picture. Shooting with flash is much more disastrous, as you have to wait for about 5second for taking another picture. It is quite a strange design as to fix the ISO at 400 for continuous shooting while the picture quality would be downgraded to 5MP or even 3MP, depending on what fps you choose.
Maybe this is a compromise that one has to succumb to when 20 x zoom optics is packed into such a compact DC.
Establishing itself as a high-end SP model, SP570-UZ provides a wide range of choice for photographic control, say, aperture-priority, shutter-speed priority or manual exposure mode and useful white-balance adjustment. To cater to the need of beginners, Auto, Scene and Guide would be equally useful in enhancing photographic pleasure. It seems that Olympus is so ambitious as to embrace user of all kind by a SLR-like super-zoom DC.
The plastic cover of the housing gives your a touch of security and comfort. While the grip ergonomic grip maintains an overall good balances for shooting.
But as for those who have a large hand, the little finger of the right hand may find no place to rest. The EVF is useful but it takes quite a long time to shift from LCD mode to EVF mode so it would be highly recommended to stick to using the LCD which is large and bright.
The powerful 26-520mm zoom lens is currently the longest zoom available for a compact DC.
Though unique in its optics, the pictorial quality is just mediocre. Slow focusing speed is one of its fatal weaknesses and it is unbelievable it takes nearly 2 seconds for the camera for data processing before being ready to take another picture. Shooting with flash is much more disastrous, as you have to wait for about 5second for taking another picture. It is quite a strange design as to fix the ISO at 400 for continuous shooting while the picture quality would be downgraded to 5MP or even 3MP, depending on what fps you choose.
Maybe this is a compromise that one has to succumb to when 20 x zoom optics is packed into such a compact DC.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
An attractive solid phone LG KF750 Secret
It is an attractive solid phone! Tempered glass, toughened plastic, carbon fiber and a few flashes of chrome combined to make up this tough body phone.This was what I felt at my first sight of the LG KF750 Secret. Same as all previous Black Label models (Chocolate and Shine), LG always maintain its fashionable position in the market. So she’s got the look, then does it work as good? Let’s try it out.
The package comes with a Battery, a Charger, a USB cable, in-ear earphones headsets, a small metal plate type screen cleaner that can hang onto the phone,a CD and Manual. The unit that I tested comes with a 1GB TF card.
The phone has the heavy and strong build to make you feel the high end quality.In contrast, the Secret is also slim enough for you to carry around in your pocket. It is extremely portable.
The Secret is a slider phone. I have to say I am totally sold to the very nice egant design of it. The screen large 2.2 inches LCD screen is sharp and clear.
Keypad close up. You can see a raised mechanical “OK” key surrounded by 6 touch-sensitive blue keys. At the bottom of the slide, we also have 3 mechanical keys for send a call, end a call, and cancel key. The touch sensitive keys have haptic feedback. However the sensitivity is quite slow that makes the navigation with it a little bit difficult.
Keypad close up.
At the back of the Secret, we have got a large piece of charcoal grey checker patterned Carbon Fiber back cover.
The phone has got a 5 mega pixel auto focus camera with flash.
Remove the cover of it.You can insert the 1G MicroSD card. You do not have to remove the battery to switch the card.
And here’s the stereo handsfree of the Secret. Not bad at all.
Let’s try the camera.
The shutter speed is quick. It has face detection and the shots appear clear,even indoors. But we have concern about the touch-sensitive controls, which are a little bit insensitive while navigating settings. For example, you have touched once to go back and then it has got no response. And then you do a couple of touches more, suddenly all three touches will bring you backed three times. Where am I?
Actual photo image taken by the 5 mega pixels camera in an indoor environment.The image looks sharper than the other LG phone. Another shot with no flash light enabled.
With the LED flash on. Of course the flash is neither Xenon nor Photoflash. Just regular LED flash light.
When we try to play back the pictures horizontally, we found that the picture will rotate with the position of the phone as well. It is nice to view picture horizontally.
Move on to the game then.
It has a movement sensor or an accelerometer, which allows you to control what you see on the phone’s display by moving the handset rather than pressing the keys. It works particularly well with the phone’s games, like Maze shown below.
On the side of the phone, it has a shortcut key for Touch Media Option that allows you to launch a “touch screen” interface to click on the applications. However, only with limited applications in a fixed layout with, Music, Photo,M-Toy, Documents, and FM Radio. Really not sure why would I need that.
Finally, if I have to whine about this LG Black Label phone, it will be the touch sensitive keys. The responses are slow that will need sometime for me to adjust how to navigate the phone with them. Using the mechanical keys will have no problem at all. So if you use this phone, you will need to be patience and only touch once and wait for the result. May be the phone is meant to be for gentle elegant people but not someone like me.
The package comes with a Battery, a Charger, a USB cable, in-ear earphones headsets, a small metal plate type screen cleaner that can hang onto the phone,a CD and Manual. The unit that I tested comes with a 1GB TF card.
The phone has the heavy and strong build to make you feel the high end quality.In contrast, the Secret is also slim enough for you to carry around in your pocket. It is extremely portable.
The Secret is a slider phone. I have to say I am totally sold to the very nice egant design of it. The screen large 2.2 inches LCD screen is sharp and clear.
Keypad close up. You can see a raised mechanical “OK” key surrounded by 6 touch-sensitive blue keys. At the bottom of the slide, we also have 3 mechanical keys for send a call, end a call, and cancel key. The touch sensitive keys have haptic feedback. However the sensitivity is quite slow that makes the navigation with it a little bit difficult.
Keypad close up.
At the back of the Secret, we have got a large piece of charcoal grey checker patterned Carbon Fiber back cover.
The phone has got a 5 mega pixel auto focus camera with flash.
Remove the cover of it.You can insert the 1G MicroSD card. You do not have to remove the battery to switch the card.
And here’s the stereo handsfree of the Secret. Not bad at all.
Let’s try the camera.
The shutter speed is quick. It has face detection and the shots appear clear,even indoors. But we have concern about the touch-sensitive controls, which are a little bit insensitive while navigating settings. For example, you have touched once to go back and then it has got no response. And then you do a couple of touches more, suddenly all three touches will bring you backed three times. Where am I?
Actual photo image taken by the 5 mega pixels camera in an indoor environment.The image looks sharper than the other LG phone. Another shot with no flash light enabled.
With the LED flash on. Of course the flash is neither Xenon nor Photoflash. Just regular LED flash light.
When we try to play back the pictures horizontally, we found that the picture will rotate with the position of the phone as well. It is nice to view picture horizontally.
Move on to the game then.
It has a movement sensor or an accelerometer, which allows you to control what you see on the phone’s display by moving the handset rather than pressing the keys. It works particularly well with the phone’s games, like Maze shown below.
On the side of the phone, it has a shortcut key for Touch Media Option that allows you to launch a “touch screen” interface to click on the applications. However, only with limited applications in a fixed layout with, Music, Photo,M-Toy, Documents, and FM Radio. Really not sure why would I need that.
Finally, if I have to whine about this LG Black Label phone, it will be the touch sensitive keys. The responses are slow that will need sometime for me to adjust how to navigate the phone with them. Using the mechanical keys will have no problem at all. So if you use this phone, you will need to be patience and only touch once and wait for the result. May be the phone is meant to be for gentle elegant people but not someone like me.
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