Kyocera Finecam S5R > Reviews > Light camera can take great shots but has flaws

Author's product rating:   

Picture Quality	Good
Range & Quality of Features	Average
Ease of Use	Very Easy
Overall Look & Design	Good
Value for Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Light and small, exceptional video mode, fully featured
Disadvantages:	Poor lighting means poor images, minor physical flaws

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

The Kyocera Finecam S5R is a fantastic little bundle. It is a small, light, robust and fully featured SLR digital camera designed to be useful for everyone, from the casual snap-shot taker to someone interested in artistic photography. It has only a few flaws that set it behind other models, but this is entirely compensated for the fantastic low price of the camera. A great deal for anyone.

When originally marketed, the Finecam was the world's smallest and lightest digital camera. The camera's lens retracts into the main body when it is off so that the object remains as small as possible, but when in photo-shooting mode the lens smoothly extends. Likewise the flash only pops up when it is to be used, otherwise remaining tucked into the main shell. It is definitely light, but perhaps no longer the smallest; nevertheless it fits snugly into one hand. Usefully it comes with a cord - you should wrap this around your arm in case the camera slips from your grip!

The camera does take very good pictures, in sizes up to 5.0 megapixels and in a good high quality. Even better, the camera comes with a full video mode - it takes videos at about 0.5 megapixels (which is perfectly acceptable unless you want HD) and in 30 frames per second. The 30fps rate is quite rare for this type of camera so it's a definite plus. Of course, the video can also record sound. Unfortunately at high detail the camera can only film for about 30 seconds at a time. In lowest quality it manages about 5 minutes.

The major fall for the quality of images is that the camera seems to require sunlight to maintain crispness. Images taken without sunlight (e.g. using interior lighting) are always grainy and inferior. Furthermore images taken in dimness are usually atrocious. Videos suffer most from this: sunlit videos are fine, but any dimness or artificial light leads to grainy, scan-lined, flickery videos. Although the camera offers night-time compensation modes, these are largely useless.

The camera allows an exposure shift of between -2 and +2, which is very handy. In bright light it is often good to set the exposure down to -0.7 as this avoids a washed out image. Likewise in darkness increasing the exposure will capture shadowed details. However increasing the exposure nearly always results in blurry pictures as this causes the lens to stay open for longer and there appears to be no compensation for this. Thus the exposure increase functions are useless unless you have a tripod. It should be noted that the above flaws noted regarding poor lighting are not made better by increasing or decreasing exposure - it is the constancy and diffusion of sunlight that creates crisp images, not the brightness. In general, although the exposure functions are useful for most shots, they can be quite temperamental and you will often get unexpected results.

Accompanying the exposure functions are White Balancing, Metering and Focus options - all the standard ones you'd expect on a digital camera - which can all be accessed via a simple menu interface. The menu system is quite strong in general, offering easy navigation via the used of a joystick; this allows you to change all the options with just the flick of a single thumb, making it quick to customise on the spot. There is also a scene-change button that quickly prepares the camera for special shots, such as landscapes or Macro Mode (i.e. close-ups).

The shutter button is responsive and makes a tactile click when pressed. It has a good function whereby you can press it down half-way to capture a focusing level and then alter the frame of the shot. This can be useful if you want to focus on something that isn't directly in the centre of the photo. The camera also comes with an adequate optical zoom and flash, both of which function as expected.

The Finecam accepts SD cards up to any size, and has a Lithium Ion battery, meaning it can last for a very long time and recharge indefinitely. However, watch out: overcharging the battery will break it. I discovered this when I left the camera to charge overnight. This charged it for several hours more than it needed, and doing this repeatedly has now lowered my battery life to about 30 minutes. Usually it would be several hours. Another similar flaw is that after some years of use, the flash doesn't popup anymore without being prised up manually.

Overall the Finecam S5R is small, cheap and lightweight, with all the standard features of a digital SLR, an exceptional video mode, but some poor setbacks: bad images out of sunlight, and slight flakiness. Despite this the camera genuinely is capable of taking some extremely good photos.