Olympus SP-800UZ

In camera terms a long lens means one that zooms from wide-angle to close-up and covers all points in-between so it’s useful for everything from portraits to panoramas.

A good example is the Olympus SP-800UZ which has a 30x optical zoom lens, equivalent to a 28-840mm lens on an old 35mm film camera.

What the camera has in lens scope is offset by a larger camera body: it is too bulky to fit into a trouser pocket and weighs 416g.

It is, however, a third smaller than the nearest competitor that has a 30x zoom lens, which is Fujifilm’s HS10, and it’s more compact than nearly all models that have 20x lenses. To achieve this, physical controls are few and there’s no viewfinder.

That means pictures must be composed and viewed on the 3in rear screen, and this is also where the camera’s functions are controlled, most of which have been hidden within the menus. Luckily pressing the button marked ‘?’ brings up an on-screen help guide that explains key features for beginners and allows you to jump straight to them.

The SP-800UZ powered up quickly in just over a second, with another three for the lens to move through its entire range. Unfortunately, there’s a very low mechanical buzz as it does so, which means you must switch off either the zoom or the sound when recording video.

Despite that, the video-recording mode (it records in the 720p high-definition resolution) is given prominence courtesy of a useful one-touch red record button, and the wide-format screen helps. When shooting normal photos, black bands appear on the left and right of the screen.

More positively, a whopping 2GB internal memory is included so there’s no need to use a memory card, though it accepts SD and SDHC cards in the same area as the rechargeable battery, inside the hard grip.

Pictures were sharp and clear in the main, though we did experience the odd soft shot due to camera shake, with colours naturalistic rather than warm.

The SP-800UZ is not up to the standard of a digital SLR but it’s a cheaper and more compact than the equivalent SLR camera and lens.