Compact camera well-balanced and lovable

By RICHARD WOOD

The Fujifilm Finepix S5000 is a compact camera to fall in love with, despite having some niggling issues that may annoy the experts.

The balance of the camera is superb, with the standard AA batteries providing weight within the hand-grip and the 10x optical zoom lens extending just 65mm from the body.

For the right-eyed photographer, one-handed operation of zoom and shutter is practical with the camera rested on the side of the nose.

Left-eyed shooters like me need both hands.

The plastic case is rubber-coated round the midriff, with a sculptured grip. For those with large hands, the arrangement means their thumb is too high on the zoom buttons.

When switching on I often had the lens cap on, which resulted in a "zoom error" because the lens could not expand.

I had to switch it off and on again with the lens cap off, and if switched on too rapidly, that did not work.

This problem does not arise if the adaptor ring is on because the lens can expand within it. But that makes the camera bulkier.

A small but high-quality LCD panel displays the picture and settings, including the number of pictures you can take. The pictures cover a larger rectangle than that shown in the LCD and electronic viewfinder, which may annoy some experts.

The controls are mostly accessible from the right thumb, except for the focus selector and the button for megapixel, ISO and colour selections.

Regular settings are available from the Menu/OK button and Macro mode and flash options work from the navigation button surrounding it.

Photography modes, including the auto point-and-shoot, aperture priority and shutter priority, are selectable from the dial.

What a joy to see a manual control option allowing specific aperture and shutter speed settings, albeit limited to a two-second minimum shutter speed.

But my favorite feature is the burst function.

As well as the usual bracketing and a burst mode of up to five in a row, you can do a continuous burst up to 40 shots at 0.2-second intervals and then retain just the last five pictures.

This allowed me to start taking the pics and then tell the kids to look over at me, capturing them before their silliness took over.

Using the point-and-shoot auto mode, a continuous burst of photos is possible at a rate of one every 0.6 seconds.

These are limited to 1-megapixel quality.

The delete function lets down the camera because of the need to enter play mode to get to it.

Another glitch is the inaccessibility of the pre-programmed modes for portraits, landscape, sports and night scenes. These must be selected on the LCD rather than the dial.

Like many manufacturers, Fuji multiplies its optical and digital zoom capabilities to claim a larger figure, in this case 22x. Ignore the digital zoom figure because, unlike optical zoom, it doesn't add resolution to the photo and degrades the picture quality.

Also confusing is the stated 6-megapixel capability.

The box says it is a 3.1-megapixel camera, but you can set it to 6 megapixels and get a better picture at twice the size.

This is all to do with the octagonal arrangement Fuji uses in its internal sensor, which it claims makes better use of the light that reaches it.

The 16MB xD memory card supplied holds two pictures at the 6-megapixel native setting, 10 pictures at 6M Jpeg, 19 at 3M Jpeg, 25 at 2M Jpeg, and 33 at 1M Jpeg.

I used four standard alkaline AA batteries and they worked for three days in the mode that focuses when you half-press the shutter button. Using continuous auto-focus, I went though a set of batteries in less than a day.

The ISO "sensitivity" settings are limited to 200, 400 or 800.

The last is allowed only when taking 1-megapixel pictures, and 200 is disabled when the auto point-and-shoot mode is selected.

The S5000 has a movie mode at a low resolution of 320 by 240 pixels and 30 frames a second. Up to 30 seconds of audio can be added to photos.

Like all cameras in this category, the S5000 has room for improvement, but the overall feature set is strong, and its resolution and zoom are more than adequate.

Fujifilm Finepix S5000

Hanimex NZ

$1299

Pros: Style, 10x zoom, manual control

Cons: Some setting limitations

Rating: 8/10