Thanks everyone for your previous suggestions and advice. All of you have made very good points. When I first asked for advice I had pretty much narrowed my choice between the Canon S5 IS and the Olympus SP560. Two weeks, many hours & more than 20 camera evaluations later amazingly I’m back to the same two cameras!
I’m even more of a novice photographer (other than people pictures) than with identifying birds. Learning more about both seem to me to go together. Maybe by explaining my conflicting choices I can get more help making this decision.
I own an Olympus FE180 and it’s a very good camera for the price. Great pictures of grandkids, not so great ones of birds. And as with Birdseye’s Olympus it’s slow on startup and with the recovery time between shots.
My goal is closer, clearer pictures especially in low light. I won’t be making prints over 8x10 and few of those.
The Olympus SP560 has an 18x optical zoom, the Canon S5 IS has 12x, both 8 resolution. Power-on, shutter lag & shot to shot time is much better with the Canon; the Olympus is better with continuous speed. The cost of the Olympus is about $40 more.
Both cameras take great pictures to 400 ISO, with the Canon picking up a little noise by 400. After 400 the Canon loses the race in leaps & bounds. Before 400 ISO Canon appears to have more vibrant, sharper pictures. The Olympus is slightly sharper in sunlight with more detail in anything white. The Olympus also is tremendously better in Macro, but I do have my Olympus for that.
Anyone have any recommendations between the two cameras to reach my photo quality goal?
Vicki Conklin
