Battery life, pop up flash, shutter lag and memory card size .
Recommend to potential buyers:
no
Full review
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.
More details
Durability
Good
Reliability
Satisfactory
Size
Small
Weight
Very Light
Instruction Manual
Good
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