Fujifilm FinePix S8000FD > Reviews

Advantages: Resolution, great zoom, easy to handle
Disadvantages: bulky awkward design

On the whole the camera is a bit bulky, however all your misgivings vanish once you switch it on. From the seemingly infinite zoom to the amazing 8 MPix resolution you can almost feel the surfaces of objects in the viewfinder, surface glare is reduced so that your shots don't get "whiteout" and the colours are vivid and very true to life. Amazingly easy to use, manual-phobics needn't fear this cam as it is really quite easy to operate once you accept ... Read review

This new camera is my 3rd Fuji in 8 years. It follows a similar format to my others and despite the vaste range of features it really was easy to get started. The software hooks into windows XP proffessional easily and the printed results on my epsom R360 are the best ever. All the extra features show promise and it really has the feel and performance of a traditional SLR. The lens with optical zoom is most impressive and good for all situations - point and shoot or enthusiastic amateur.

The S8000fd places a smaller sensor behind a much longer-range zoom lens in a less SLR-like body. Going head to head with the Panasonic FZ18 and Olympus SP560UZ the S8000fd is Fuji's most ambitious zoom compact to date. It is also the first long-zoom camera from Fuji to offer image stabilization (in this case a CCD-shake system), which is offered by most competing brands and is pretty much essential with a zoom this long. The S8000fd packs an awful lot into its compact body, and seems to be trying pretty hard to be all things to all people, with manual exposure controls sitting alongside point-and-shoot convenience features such as face detection. There is a high-speed shooting mode (at reduced resolution), and some extremely high sensitivity modes (again at lower resolution), for shooting in low light.

Advantages: Build quality, decent optics, settings
Disadvantages: Not the most compact of compacts

If you're looking for a cut above your normal point and shoot compact then this is probably for you. I had one for six months and never regretted owning it. A bit bigger than the average compact it lets you decide how creative you want to be, plenty of settings for you to play with if thats your thing or just let the camera decide for you. With 8MP's on tap your photos do look good even up to A4 size which is plenty big enough. This feels like ... Read review