fuji

Issue #44

Last Update March 2, 2006

Reviews Fuji Fine Pix S5000 by Dave Sear My new Fuji Fine Pix S5000 review camera arrived, nicely packaged, early on a Monday morning and within a very short time, following the clearly written instructions, I loaded four alkaline AA batteries, a flash card and using the settings set by the factory was out shooting pictures of my favorite subject, my three year old grand daughter, trying to get a shot to use for a Christmas card.

I’ve been a serious photographer for about half a century and started using top of the line equipment about that long ago. Then the Lica M3, with the f2 Sumicron lens, and the Nikon SP were the cameras of the day. Sharp resolution and good color saturation have always been key requirements for the cameras I have used. Later on a good quality high-powered zoom lens was added to my requirements so that I could crop the picture as I was taking it.

When I began my research to find a digital camera that would fill the above-mentioned requirements at a reasonable price, I thought the Fuji Fine Pix S5000 would fit the bill. I always begin my search at the New York Photo Show and when I held that camera in my hands it felt good and was easy to operate. The picture that has just been taken pops into the viewfinder so that you can see the results instantly. This is only one of the advantages of digital photography. The first pictures that I took were at the factory setting of one megapixel and even at this low resolution I was able to make excellent grainless eight by ten prints.

The camera produces sharp pictures with excellent color and has an incredible ten times optical zoom lens, equivalent to 37 – 370mm on a 35mm camera. This enables me to crop my picture before I take it and do wild life photography with an extremely light camera weighing only 11.9oz. Using the AA alkaline cells, which came with the camera, I was, able to shoot forty to fifty pictures, many with flash. The battery life will be far greater with rechargeable batteries making over all battery life very good. Charger and rechargeable batteries do not come with the camera so you will have to figure the additional cost as part of the price. After extensive research I bought what I concede to be state of the art equipment at a good price from Thomas Distributing http://www.thomasdistributing.com/mhc401fs_buy.htm They offer a very good package price on charger and batteries and they even throw in a tester. You will also have to figure in the cost of a memory card because most of the digital cameras come with only a sixteen 16MB card, which will not store many pictures. I would recommend a 256MB card. Shop around. I noticed Price Club has good buys on these cards. With respect to the camera itself the Internet will probably give you the best buys.

The Fuji S5000 using its own brain takes excellent, sharp, in focus, well exposed pictures in automatic mode. It has just about every other programmed mode that any photographer could possibly want and manual mode, which gives you total flexibility for creativity in any shooting situation. For full specs and features on the camera go to Fujifilm.com and surf around until you find the camera or go directly to: http://fujifilm.com/JSP/fuji/epartners/digitalS5000Overview.jsp?item=I616756&dbi d=616756&urltype=overview. Other sites that offer excellent specs on the camera are: http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/S5000/S50DAT.HTM and dpreview.com. Two outstanding digital camera review sites are: Steves Digicams (http://www.steves-digicams.com/) and Digital Camera Resource http://www.dcresource.com which will let you compare three cameras side by side.

There are a few negatives to this other wise fine camera and excellent buy. The most serious problem is the electronic viewfinder which projects the image on a small, shallow, grainy screen making it difficult to view the subject in bright light. This may be a generic problem with high-powered digital cameras. When loading the software into the computer to view and work with the pictures, there is a pesky screen that partially covers the screens giving information as the loading process continues, making it necessary to move the screens around to view the software. One of the programs did not fully load but it remains to be seen if this will create a problem down the road. It has not.

The quick start sheet was excellent getting me off and running very quickly but the brochure is another story. It’s printed on a low grade of dull paper, like newsprint, with small print and low contrast and is hard to read. It has no index, therefore finding what you’re looking for is difficult.

The brochure could be improved but if Fuji is scrimping here to give its customers a superior camera with incredible features at a reasonable price I can live with the brochure and highly recommend this camera.

Other cameras in this category worth looking into are the Olympus C-750 and a new Panasonic Lumix FZ10 offering twelve times optical zoom and a stabilized Lica lens. I hope to review these cameras in the near future.

Happy shooting.