Olympus has launched the new SP-550 UZ digital camera, boasting an impressive 18x wide-angle, ultra-zoom lens with a 35mm-format equivalent range of 28-504mm. The camera is an all-in-one, allowing the user to shoot telephoto, wide-angle and macro as close as 1cm. Designed to be compact, it offers full manual exposure control and automatic built-in help guides.

With unique features including the near-D-SLR performance, combining sensor-shift image stabilization and digital image stabilization, the camera ensures crisp and blur-free photos. It also comes equipped with high-speed sequential shooting, up to 15 frames per second, and a pre-capture feature of five frames. The super macro mode captures detail from as close as 1 cm, and the dual image stabilization feature ensures clear photographs.

The f/2.8-4.5 lens uses a combination of high-refractive, aspherical and extra-dispersion lens elements for clarity. The camera boasts 30 shooting modes, including TV-quality video with sound (640 x 480/30fps), manual, aperture priority and shutter priority modes.

The 7.1-megapixel CCD image sensor allows for consistency, and the high-resolution, 2.5-inch, 230,000-pixel LCD makes scrolling through photos easy and convenient. The SP-550 UZ comes with an electronic viewfinder with diop- tic correction and records in both JPEG and RAW file formats. Olympus designed the camera to allow for photo viewing in low light with its Bright Capture technology, and it offers the highest ISO sensitivity of any ultra zoom (ISO 5000).

Some additional features include in-camera editing, TruePic turbo for high-speed response, an underwater housing (PT-037) and accessory lenses for expanded capabilities. The WCON-07 wide angle conversion lens (for 19.6mm) and the TCON-17 telephoto conversion lens (for more than 30x optical zoom) are both compatible lenses.

Olympus' SP-550 UZ digital camera sells for $499.