Olympus's 2006 enthusiast compact — 7.1MP CCD, 38-114mm f/2.8-4.9, full PASM control and raw, AA power.
The SP-320 was announced in January 2006 as part of Olympus's SP series of enthusiast-leaning compacts, sitting alongside the ultra-zoom SP-500 UZ but with a conventional 3x lens. It offered a rare combination for its class: full manual exposure control and raw capture in a fairly compact AA-powered body, originally selling for around £230 in the UK.
It carries a 7.1-megapixel CCD behind a 3x zoom equivalent to 38-114mm with a bright f/2.8-4.9 maximum aperture. Exposure options span Programme, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority and full Manual, plus 25 scene modes, with sensitivity to ISO 800 and a live histogram. Both JPEG and raw recording are available, framing uses a 2.5-inch LCD or a separate optical viewfinder, video records at VGA 30fps, storage is xD-Picture Card plus 25MB internal memory, and power comes from two AA batteries.
The SP-320 suits students and hobbyists who want to learn exposure control on a cheap CCD compact, since the PASM dial and raw files give genuine room to experiment. The optical viewfinder is a bonus in bright light, though raw write times are slow by modern standards and the 3x range is modest.
AA power makes this an easy used buy with nothing proprietary to fail, but the xD-Picture Card format is discontinued, so a bundled card is worth having. Check the mode dial clicks positively into each position, the optical finder is clear of haze, and the LCD is free of bleed. Mid-2000s CCD compacts like this are increasingly bought for their colour rendering, so a clean sensor matters.