Olympus SP-800UZ: Video and Image Quality

Video Quality
The SP-800UZ takes adequate HD videos at 1280x720 resolution at 30 frames per second, with monaural sound. The reason the colors seem faded is that the video was taken at long range.

Image Quality
The images produced by the SP-800UZ have good, realistic color at shorter range and when shooting in macro or super-macro mode, where it can focus as close a 1cm.

However, colors tend to fade the more zoom is used. Colors are not as saturated as they are in some cameras but you can increase or decrease the saturation of an existing image in playback mode.

Auto white balance was accurate, both indoors and out. The camera gives you optional presets of daylight, overcast, tungsten, daylight fluorescent, neutral fluorescent and office fluorescent.

Auto White Balance, 5500k fluorescent light

Photos taken in bright sunshine are often affected by overexposure, which unfortunately is the case with most cameras with small sensors. Flash photos turned out well.

As shown below, the SP-800UZ does best at the lowest ISO levels. Noise starts to intrude at 100 ISO and becomes more evident at 200 ISO. Noise levels and softening from noise reduction increase at 400 ISO through 1600 ISO. Color seems to be fairly consistent throughout the ISO range.

ISO 50	ISO 50, 100% crop
ISO 100	ISO 100, 100% crop
ISO 200	ISO 200, 100% crop
ISO 400	ISO 400, 100% crop
ISO 800	ISO 800, 100% crop
ISO 1600	ISO 1600, 100% crop

Additional Sample Images