I bought the Kyocera Finecam S4 in November 2003. It was my first digital camera and being my son was due to be born soon I thought it should be a good quality one.
After looking around to see what I could get for around £250, I found the Finecam S4 on offer. I liked the look of it so decided ... Read review
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Advantages: Good image quality, small and light. Disadvantages: Battery life, pop up flash, shutter lag and memory card size.
I bought the Kyocera Finecam S4 in November 2003. It was my first digital camera and being my son was due to be born soon I thought it should be a good quality one.
After looking around to see what I could get for around £250, I found the Finecam S4 on offer. I liked the look of it so decided that I would give it a try after being told that it took very good quality pictures. So what do you get in the box:
The 4 Megapixel ... ...I sent it off to kyocera to see if it could be repaired (took four weeks before I heard back) and was told that a lens was out of alignment. They could repair it but it'll cost £90. I can buy a new camera for that!
Quick word on the ImageMixer software, never installed it so can't say anything about it, did all my editing in Photoshop. The good thing though is that you don't need to install any drivers as it detects the camera as a ... more
I bought the Kyocera Finecam S4 in November 2003. It was my first digital camera and being my son was due to be born soon I thought it should be a good quality one.
After looking around to see what I could get for around £250, I found the Finecam S4 on offer. I liked the look of it so decided that I would give it a try after being told that it took very good quality pictures. So what do you get in the box:
The 4 Megapixel Finecam S4 Camera 16MB Panasonic Secure Digital (SD) Card BP-900S Li-ion rechargeable battery AC Adapter / Charger USB and Video cables Wrist strap Pixela ImageMixer software Manual and Quick start guide
The camera itself falls into the category of 'micro camera'. It measures just 3.8 x 2.2 x 1.2 inches and sits very easily in your hand. And if that wasn't enough it weighs in at a measly 175g. It is rectangular in shape so not the most attractive out there, and it fails to have 'solid feel' to it. Black with silver trimmings gave it some style. It comes with a built in lens cover, which is very handy and a pop up flash, something that does get in the way on a small camera. Even when you don't need it, unfortunately you have no choice, as it can't be hidden.
On the back it has a small 1.5inch LCD screen of very good quality and brightness. The buttons used to operate it are very easy to use, labelled and well laid out. A switch on the back allows you to select which mode you want: Camera, Browser or Set-up. The flash mode and zoom button are self explanatory along with the menu button. You navigate thought the menus and image browser by using the circle of arrowed buttons. The Power On switch is located on the top and a little small, but that could be a good thing on a micro camera as it stops you from accidentally turning it off. The camera has a 3x optical zoom lens with a focal range of 7.3mm - 21.9mm.
I found the Finecam S4 took some really nice photos at high quality (2272x1704 resolution in Super Fine). However the auto focus is very disappointing as it is rather fussy and takes so long to get it right. Not a camera for anyone who wants to take lots of action shots, especially as the shutter lag is quite long. You can take three different types of photo: Super Fine, Fine and Normal, which moves me on to the next problem. The 16Mb SD card you get with it is just not big enough. Even on normal quality (1280x960) you can only store around 45 images on it something, which drops rapidly in Fine (15 images) and Super Fine (6 images) mode. I will just quickly mention the 'Movie Mode'. The camera allows you to record movies that last for 15 seconds. You can get three; 15-second movies on the 16Mb card easily. They are saved in AVI mode and at a 320x240 resolution, which is not brilliant but you can used the zoom while recording.
Although the battery life was never brilliant (Kyocera claimed it would last for 50 minutes per charge), the recharge time was even worse; it took around 5 hours for a full charge!! Now, the biggest let down this camera had, was something I didn't find out about until about 9 months later. I would say that I used the camera no more than the average person. But after about 9 months I noticed that the amount of usage I got from a full charge seemed to be getting smaller. This went on to the point where it was telling me the battery was dead after just ten minutes!! I spoke to a camera specialist and was told that the battery in it was a 'memory battery', one that remembered its charge levels…something along those lines anyway, can't quite remember now. The solution: A new battery, which didn't 'remember'. The cost…£50!
Unfortunately the camera no longer works. My girlfriend dropped it onto the table from a grand height of…6 inches and it stopped working. I now get a blue screen and an error message when you turn it on. I sent it off to kyocera to see if it could be repaired (took four weeks before I heard back) and was told that a lens was out of alignment. They could repair it but it'll cost £90. I can buy a new camera for that!
Quick word on the ImageMixer software, never installed it so can't say anything about it, did all my editing in Photoshop. The good thing though is that you don't need to install any drivers as it detects the camera as a 'removable drive'. This allows you to simply copy and paste the images to your PC.
Overall I liked the camera but it was nothing special. You got very good picture quality from it and it was small and had a point and shoot feel about it. The image browser was also very impressive with instant shuffling between images, no delay at all. I just feel that the negative points start to outweigh the positives. The battery life, pop up flash, shutter lag, auto focus and memory card size are just too big to give this a good rating. For the money I paid at the time, I now feel I could have got a better camera. Not something I would recommend to anyone.
Advantages: Features, size, style - almost everything! Disadvantages: List price POTENTIALLY prohibitive
...this camera.
Being made by Kyocera (owned by Yashica, more well known for their professional standard camera equipment) this model is packed with all the features you could expect from a camera (see list below) and is small, light and very stylish to boot. The great thing about the camera in my opinion, though, is that while it has lots of special features, it is very easy to use if you just want to "point and click" - user-friendliness is excellent.
... ...extras when buying!
The Kyocera Finecam S4 is by far the best digital camera I have used (having used others by Olympus and Panasonic in the course of my work), and I would say that this model is faultless IF you can find a good deal.
Technical stuff:
4 megapixels (enough to produce detailed A4 sized photos!)
3.0x optical zoom ("traditional" zoom)
2.0x digital zoom (how close in to an image you can get without losing resolution)
Size: 91(w)x57(h)x31.5(d)mm ...
Alex6655321 17.05.2003
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Kyocera Finecam S4
Advantages: Small, compact and robust. Good battery life when new. Disadvantages: Slow to write images to disk, short battery life after prolonged use
We bought the Kyocera S4 about 3 years ago after doing a lot of research into camera. Not being keen photographers, we wanted a camera that was easy to use but that took good quality photos.
At first we were very pleased with the S4. The picture quality is great and at 4 mp the files are reasonable sized. The 16mb card that came with the camera had to be replaced as at "fine" quality we could fit about 10 photo's on there. We bought a 256mb and ... ...a rechargeable one and this is one of the reasons to buy the camera. We had previously bought a Pentax camera and were very disappointed at how quickly we were going through AA batteries. The S4 had a quick recharge time and long life, enabling you to fill the memory card before needing a recharge, however 3 years on and the battery last for about 5 photos before it needs recharging. The cost of a new battery is about £50. Might as well get a new ...
arsyteee 14.01.2006
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of Kyocera Finecam S4
In digital photography quality is the key word. For those looking for image quality that approaches that of "pro-sumer" digital cameras, but in a package they can afford, with style to be envied, there is the Kyocera Finecam S4. This stylish camera includes a 3X optical zoom lens and a 2X digital zoom lens, giving the user a total of 5X zoom for getting up close and personal in any situation. This translates to the 35mm equivalent of a 35-105mm lens. A pop-up flash, new to the Finecam series, means that every picture has the right exposure, daytime or night, making the S4 perfect for any kind of photography and with dimensions of 3-3/8" by 2-3/16" by 1-3/16", this 4 megapixel digital camera takes images that can be blown up to 11" by 17" without any loss of quality while its body is barely bigger than a deck of cards. With a dark finish reminiscent of a Pierre Cardin tuxedo, this elegant digital camera is at home at the finest parties while the stainless steel body means that the Finecam S4 is sturdy enough to go just about anywhere. The Finecam S4 features Epson's revolutionary PRINT Image Matching (PIM) technology, enabling it to work perfectly with the newest generation of EPSON Stylus Photo printers. With PRINT Image Matching, critical image specific parameters for printing are recorded by the camera and saved in each image data file. PRINT Image Matching-enabled Epson Stylus Photo printers use this information to ensure that they accurately reproduce the image created by the camera. This Finecam digital camera also has an AVI movie mode, allowing users to make movies of up to 15 seconds. The AVI file format can be played back on the camera itself or on a PC, using Quick Time 4 or above. The Finecam series offers an array of shooting and flash modes, including: macro, which allows shooting approximately 9 cm from the lens surface when in wide angle; infinity Mode; manual focusing; 4 Flash modes (Auto, Red-eye reduction, Fill-in or Flash Off); color modes (Color, Sepia or Black & White); white Balance (Auto, Daylight, Tungsten Lamp, Cloudy, Fluorescent Lamp, Manual); exposure compensation (+ - 2EV, 1/3 EV steps). The camera is built with a durable metal cover that provides not only a smooth feeling for the user but long-lasting protection for the camera itself. Protecting the lens is a built-in auto lens barrier, which allows for usage without fear of losing or forgetting to remove the lens cap.
compact, stylish, easy to use, many features, metal body, accessories, connectivity, 
