- Average user rating: 4.0 stars out of 44 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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11 out of 11 people found this review helpful
4.0 stars
"Great "bang for the buck" mega-zoom camera"
Pros: Nice body, extensive feature set, RAW format, responsive, great picture quality
Cons: Difficult manual focus, fuzzy EVF, doesn't accept the more common SD or CF format cards
Summary: For the price paid(<$300), I am extremely satisfied with my S5100. It is a feature-rich 4MP camera, with a smooth and responsive 10x optical zoom, and a feature/menu system that will satisfy both beginners and photo enthusiasts.
The body is a mini-SLR style, in a very sexy textured black plastic finish. Despite being rather lightweight, it feels quite solid & well built. It fits my medium/average size hand very comfortably, and all controls are quite easy to reach.
I find the features on the S5100 to be quite strong for a camera in this price range - it runs the gamut from full auto to manual, allows adjustable frame bracketing, as well as several rapid-fire shooting options. 640x480 VGA video with sound is a nice bonus. Auto-focus speed & accuracy is right up there, and allows for continuous AF to keep up with faster moving shots. Picture quality is excellent, color rendition is very accurate, and I was not noticing the red push or barrel distortion some others have reported - if it was there, it was very minimal. Flash is adjustable, and recycle time is fast. The LCD screen is smallish at 1.5", but it is crisp adn bright. Start-up time is fast, and battery life is quite good (using NiMH batteries).
What I am not thrilled with is the so called manual focus - there is no actual focus ring, instead you must simultaneously press 2 buttons, which isn't always practical. There is no image stabilizer, which could be handy for long shots; but at this price, I wasn't really expecting one, and for the most part, hasn't really been a problem. Compression settings for lower resolution shots are fixed (can only adjust it for the highest 4MP res settings), and while this camera supports RAW format, you have to play around too much in the menus to activate it. The EVF is quite grainy, and not too bright, so don't expect it to be equal to an SLR-TTL type viewfinder. It would have been nice if Fuji allowed for CF or SD cards (thay you may already have)to work with this camera - it only accepts XD, which are more costly that their widely used counterparts.
All in all, I can comfortably recommend this camera. It has a strong price/quality/feature ratio, the 10x zoom is amazing, and with all the settings available, you'll be taking quite awesome shots. The pros easily overcome the cons.
- 1 reply to this review
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Am I correct in saying that this cameras 10 x zoom does not operate above ISO 200.Any confirmation would be much appreciated.
