Canon S3 with Teleconverter or Olympus 550 UZ?

[Setter Dog]

I also posted this thread on Steve's Canon forum so please bear with me if it seems familiar. I don't think both forums necessarily have the same readers.


I'm in the process of vacillating between the Canon S3 and the upcoming Olympus 550 UZ. My main goal is to have as much zoom as possible in a camera that takes very good videos also.

A compromise has occurred to me and I wonder if I'm missing something. If I buy the Canon S3 with 12x (36-432) zoom and add a 1.5X teleconverter, it looks like I would have more zoom than the Olympus 550UZ with the 18x (28-504) zoom.

I also am guessing that I could attach the TC for my trips to Yellowstone and just leave it attached. I've never used or seen a TC but am guessing the camera can be adjusted so the AF etc works normally.

Since videos are very important to me, the S3 with the TC would seem to get the nod unless there's something I'm missing. There are probably limitations to the TC thing that I haven't considered. All advice gratefully accepted.
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[Sintares]

Well the Olympus is an unknown at this time, but that 28mm wide angle is nice.

While a S3 + x1.5 tcon will outzoom the Oly taking you to 648mm (vs 504mm), you will need to start partway into the zoom to negate the tunnel effect of having the tcon on.

So in other words, you will be starting around x5 or x6 into the zoom and lose any kind of wide angle till the tcon is removed.

Of course the S3 still has the better video and the tcon can be removed fairly quickly and the S3 is still a lot brighter than the Oly at zoom.

I will be interested to see how the Oly copes with a x1.7 tcon ... 856.8mm !