PC makeover with Best Buy $1,199.99
CNET editors' review
-
CNET editors' rating:
stars
Good
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 10/13/2003
- Released on: 08/15/2003
 |  A full range of exposure modes, exposure compensation, continuous shooting, and autobracketing are accessible via camera-top controls. |
| |
Styled like a mini SLR, the Fujifilm FinePix S5000 has an SLR's stable and secure feel in your hands. The camera isn't tiny, but it is reasonably compact for a megazoom model and, at 15 ounces with batteries and media installed, also fairly light. Overall, the black-plastic body feels solid if not especially impressive.
Controls distributed around the body do a good job of providing fast access to many frequently used features. But the multipurpose four-way pad on the back of the camera is a little too small and feels mushy. You also have to use it in conjunction with a button on the top right to adjust exposure compensation, set aperture in manual exposure mode, and manually focus the lens. The feat requires a finger-torturing stretch.
 You select shooting or playback with the power switch, which encircles the shutter release. |  This control lets you choose between continuous autofocus and manual focus. |
In an apparent effort to help you quickly get to the most important settings, Fujifilm split the menus between two activation keys. This design takes some getting used to but generally works as intended, and the menu system overall is relatively well labeled and easy to use. We do wish that you could switch RAW capture on and off without delving deep into the Setup menu. That option should be available alongside the conveniently located JPEG-resolution selections.
 Controls below the zoom toggle let you change flash and macro settings, adjust exposure, navigate the menu system, and activate the LCD's grid overlay for composition. |  The F button calls up a menu for selecting resolution, ISO, and color settings. |
|  The FinePix S5000 stores photos on an xD-Picture Card. |
| |
A fairly advanced feature set makes the Fujifilm FinePix S5000 more than just a megazoom junkie's delight, and the 10X zoom lens certainly gets top billing. It covers a focal-length range of 37mm to 370mm (the 35mm-film equivalent); opens to a very respectable maximum aperture of f/2.8 to f/3.2; and accepts wide-angle and telephoto supplemental lenses, as well as filters, via an included adapter ring.
Exposure modes include fully automatic, programmed auto, aperture priority, shutter priority, and four scene presets. In programmed auto, exposure shift lets you vary your aperture/shutter speed combination. The highly functional manual exposure mode offers a useful metering display. Three light-metering systems--multi, average, and spot--are augmented by exposure compensation and autoexposure bracketing. The FinePix S5000's one serious features flaw is its lack of custom white balance.
Because of the peculiar mathematics of Fujifilm's Super CCD sensor and processing system, the FinePix S5000 generates 6-megapixel pictures from its 3-megapixel sensor, but you can also save JPEG photos at three lower resolutions. Only one compression level is available. You can capture stills in the RAW format, which is not compressed and produces files 60 to 70 percent smaller than you'd get using TIFF at a similar resolution. Raw File Converter, the very rudimentary RAW-conversion application bundled with the camera, makes TIFF images from your RAW shots. The FinePix S5000 can also capture 320x240-pixel video clips with sound at an unusually high 30 frames per second in segments as long as your card's capacity will allow.
|  The FinePix S5000 runs on four AA batteries. In an impressive performance, the camera shot more than 150 photos involving heavy LCD use before exhausting a set of alkalines, and you'll get even longer life out of rechargeable nickel-metal-hydride cells. |
| |
While not class-leading, the Fujifilm FinePix S5000's performance gave us no real cause for complaint. Start-up takes a slightly sluggish 5 seconds or so. Shutter delay, including autofocus time, is a bit shorter than a second, a respectable figure that can drop below half a second if you prefocus or use the continuous-autofocus mode. The autofocus system itself is fairly quick and decisive, and an assist lamp helps it work well in dim conditions. Shot-to-shot time for JPEG pictures is about 1.5 seconds, and we could not make the buffer stall in single-shot mode. With RAW files, the pause between photos is more variable but averages about 2 to 3 seconds.
We clocked the FinePix S5000's continuous-shooting mode at nearly 4 frames per second, which is quite competitive. After a 5-frame burst, the camera spends 5 to 6 seconds clearing the buffer. When you hold down the shutter-release button in the very useful Final 5-Frame mode, you take up to 40 shots at about 4fps and save the 5 frames captured right before you lifted your finger. If you want to record a lengthy sequence, you can use the Long Period mode to save up to 40 shots at 1,280x960 resolution.
Like most megazoom digital cameras, the FinePix S5000 has an electronic rather than optical viewfinder. It's grainy and fuzzy. The 1.5-inch LCD is better, offering a fairly sharp image and decent visibility in bright outdoor light. Like the EVF, the LCD shows only about 88 to 90 percent of the actual scene, which is somewhat disappointing.
The camera's lens zooms smoothly, quickly, and quietly, and you can control its position with reasonable precision. The manual focus system, on the other hand, is very slow. Judging proper focus was hard on the LCD and harder still on the EVF.
Fujifilm lists the range of the built-in flash as 16.4 feet at ISO 400, equivalent to about 8.5 feet at ISO 100.
The FinePix S5000 uses Fujifilm's fourth-generation Super CCD HR. Excellent photos from earlier Super CCDs had raised our expectations for this latest version, and the FinePix S5000's mediocre pictures surprised and disappointed us. Our test photos were well exposed, with vivid and generally accurate colors, but the rest of the story is less pleasing.
The camera's photos are well exposed and pleasingly saturated.
Sharpness and detail were nothing special, and we saw no significant difference between the 3- and 6-megapixel resolutions. Noise levels were higher than usual even at the FinePix S5000's minimum sensitivity of ISO 200. In some photos, aggressive noise-suppression processing was obvious: fine, low-contrast details disappeared in splotchy smears. Also worse than average were JPEG-compression artifacts and lateral chromatic aberration, magenta and green fringes around off-center objects caused by a lens defect. Shooting CCD-RAW images eliminated the compression artifacts and slightly reduced noise. We were tempted to shoot in RAW all the time, even though it slowed the workflow.
Even at the best sensitivity setting, ISO 200, you can see a lot of noise.
Our flash shots were well exposed, but skin tones were sometimes reddish, and they were particularly ugly when we activated the flash in auto mode, which can create noise by setting the sensitivity as high as ISO 400. At ISO 800, the FinePix S5000's resolution is limited to 1,280x960, but noise, while evident, isn't heavy enough to spoil the picture.
Compression artifacts plague the JPEG photos, and there's also some distracting purple fringing.
All told, the FinePix S5000's problems don't completely ruin its photo quality, but they do mean you can't enlarge the camera's photos as well as those of many 3-megapixel competitors.
Most helpful user reviews
- Average user rating: 4.0 stars out of 78 reviews
- My rating: 0 stars Write review
-
Showing 3 of 78 user reviews
-
1 out of 1 people found this helpful
"Best deal you'll get for the money, quality, and features."
-
1 out of 1 people found this helpful
-
1 out of 1 people found this helpful
- See all 78 user reviews Write review
Submit your review
