Olympus SuperZoom 160G
There aren’t that many film point and shoots that tried to achieve this level of zoom. At 38-160mm the 4.2X zoom lens required 10 elements in 8 groups with an Extra low dispersion element in addition to aspherical and hybrid elements (as per Olympus). The result of that reach though is an anemic f5.7 to f12.3 aperture across its zoom range. That final one is a speed that is more than 3 times slower than f4. To put that in perspective if you had an SLR with a 200mm f4 lens (a somewhat relative comparison) and were able to take a picture at a shutter speed of 1/250 second then the SuperZoom 160 would use what amounts to a shaky shutter speed under 1/30 of a second. Right there is one reason so many people had so much trouble getting good results with these long zoom point and shoots. The manufacturers kept increasing the zoom because that’s what sold but the photographic results did not improve. With care, use of a tripod and a self timer, you can get decent results. Although it defeats the purpose of a point and shoot and doesn’t seem worth the effort.
