Olympus SP-350 review

When you buy a budget digital camera, you usually have to choose either a model with lots of features and controls, or one that lets you point, click and take a photo.

The Olympus SP-350 is designed to fill this gap in the market - it has an 8-megapixel image sensor, bags of manual controls and a fully automatic point-and-click mode.

The first thing most people will probably notice about the SP-350 is its 8-megapixel resolution. In fact, the level of detail this camera resolves isn't much different to that of some 5-megapixel models we've seen, for instance the Nikon S1. Having said that, image quality is what we'd expect for a camera of around £200. Pictures are well exposed, colours are lively and natural, and details resolved sharply enough for home photography. The camera has a 3x optical zoom, which is acceptable, but not great.

The area in which this camera really excels is in the number and precision of the manual controls it offers. You have full control over aperture and shutter settings, white balance and light metering. There are also semi-automatic modes for aperture and shutter settings. So, for instance if you choose a particular shutter speed, the camera itself will automatically set the correct aperture. Keen night-time photographers will be pleased with the inclusion of a 'bulb' setting. This allows you to make a long, timed exposure of up to eight minutes, which is highly unusual for a compact. Images are impressive, smoother with less noise than similarly priced cameras, especially if you keep the ISO setting locked at 50. The camera also has an impressive macro setting that allows focusing as close as 2cm. Auto-focusing this close is problematic, but there's also a manual focus that will let you define a particular focus point.

If you want creative control over your photos but you don't have the confidence to mess around with manual settings, you can use the camera's preset modes. These include modes with optimised settings for taking portraits, landscape shots and shots behind glass.

There's also a fully automatic point-and-click mode for when you want photos in a hurry. Results in fully automatic mode were generally good - the exception being when a scene was lit from several light sources. Better results were obtained with the custom white balance but it's not a major gripe.

Like most digital cameras the SP-350 saves pictures as JPEGs. This means that they're compressed to fit more on the memory card. The SP-350 offers a variety of JPEG compression settings. Unusually for a compact it will also shoot in RAW mode. RAW image files aren't compressed, so you get the maximum level of detail. It's not something you'll use every day, but it's useful for special photos, and it's great to get this option.

Finally, it's fitted with a hot shoe - allowing you to connect a flash gun to the camera. This is almost unheard of in a relatively budget compact.

If you're used to older film cameras and miss the level of manual control they offered, then you'll love the SP-350. It offers lots of the features you'd expect to get in a £500 digital SLR, but at half the price.