Me and my wife both decided that it was time for a new digital camera as our old canon finally gave up the ghost. We went out to chose a new camera and decided that the Fuji S5700 fitted the bill down to a tee as we had used her fathers on a few occasions and were very impressed. We contacted her father and to our surprise he had recently upgraded his camera so let us have his which came with all the manuals and accessories as well as many he had bought to go with it.
The camera is very solid to hold and feels like it would take a whack and still work not that I would like to find out, this was important to us and many cameras we had looked at felt far to light and plasticy which is something we don’t like. As for size the camera is best operated with two hands for steady pictures and is very comfortable to hold. The lens to the camera sticks out unlike many flat cameras feeling like a really professional piece of equipment and when combined with the tripod stand and various other accessories really makes for a good photographic experience.
The picture quality is fantastic with a 7MP capture that allows for great enlarged photos keeping the quality where many lesser cameras lose out when enlarging your captured images. There are 12 different settings from landscape photos to portraits which are easily selected through the on screen menu and the switch above the camera, these settings are ideal especially when you want to capture live sport or the kids running around having fun on holiday as we found out just last month. With our old camera if you tried to take an action shot it would just come out as a blur but with this one you get a sharp and clear image with the speed to take pictures step by step to create a brilliant series of action shots.
Digital zoom is available on most digital cameras nowadays but with the 10 x digital zoom you really do get great up close images and it even has an auto zoom which seems to nearly always get the zoom you want when taking a picture. The zoom function worked brilliant when I was taking pictures in Malta of the statue out to sea making the picture seem as if I was right in front of the statue.
As with all digital cameras you have a really clear LCD screen to view photos you have taken straight away and you have the choice to take photos whilst viewing the LCD screen or use the viewfinder which I stick to as this gives a much better feel when selecting a scene to photograph. The LCD screen is 2.5 inches making it plenty big enough to view on and access the menu for changing the camera settings. There is a built in flash which can be set to manual or automatic function this pops up and is then pushed down when the image is captured. The flash is great at night and you also have settings to catch background images even in the dark altering the power of the flash accordingly.
There are 5 resolution settings allowing you to take photos with clarity dependant on the size of print you will want to reproduce on photo paper, the higher the setting the more space on the XD or SD cards that you can use with the camera. I was fortunate enough to be given a 2GB memory card with it meaning I can take as many photos as I want and I never seem to fill the card before emptying onto my computer via the supplied USB cable for transfer; however my printer also has slots for various cards to be plugged in directly.
The camera can also be connected directly to a monitor or TV for viewing the photos directly for this you have to buy and additional cable but it is well worth it especially when you have a large LCD or Plasma TV to view them back on.
The camera takes 4x AA batteries but if you use a good quality rechargeable or normal battery you get a good 2-3 hours of operation time, I have however found that if you turn the camera on and off all the time the batteries seem to die much quicker. I have read quite a few bad reviews on this camera which I find very strange as I have had nothing but praise for it and would highly recommend it to anybody looking to buy a new camera and at £129.00 it really is a bargain quality camera two words that you can’t normally put in the same sentence.
Thank you for taking the time to read my review and I hope it has been helpful, if however you have further questions please feel free to comment and I will get back to you as soon as possible.
More details
Durability
Good
Reliability
Good
Size
Average
Weight
Average
Instruction Manual
Excellent
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