Who needs 8MP when you can have 12 (Fujifilm Finepix S7000)

Member Name: r123

Product:	Fujifilm Finepix S7000
Date:	03/11/04 (541 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Quality pics, Dual storage slots, Ability to use external devices

Disadvantages: Large, Heavy

Ok so it's only 6.3 megapixels interpolated to 12 but at around £350 compared to the £700 you could pay for an 8 megapixel model who would complain.

The camera is quite large and heavy and, therefore, may not be suitable for small hands but the build quality is very good and the camera certainly feels very solid to hold.

You view the image through the lens using the electronic viewfinder although the camera also has the usual LCD colour screen on the back (1.8 inches in size).

The camera also has the advantage of a cable release socket in the shutter button as well as a hotshoe on the top of the camera.

Auto focusing is very good and there's a super macro mode to allow the camera to focus from a distance of just 1 cm.

In the auto focus mode you can use the ring on the front of the lens to move the zoom back and forth although this operation is not as quick as on proper SLRs. This camera is described as SLR-like. In the manual focus mode this rings serves as the focusing ring.

The camera has 2 auto focus modes - continuous where the camera is continually focusing without you needing to press the shutter button half way and single auto focus where the camera will focus once when you press the shutter release button half way down.

The autio focus is a hybrid system using both a passive auto focus system as found on SLRs where focusing is done through the lens and an infra red focusing system used on some compacts where the camera uses infra red beams to calculate the correct focusing distance. The Infra red system is used to assits the passive system in low light conditions.

The built in flash has modes such as auto flash, fill-in, slow syncro and red-eye reduction. The flash does not pop up automatically, however. You pop it up by pressing a button on the side of the flash unit.

The camera has dual storage slots to use both xd picture cards and the cheaper compact flash cards.

The photos themselves are of excellent quality. I would recommend this camera to anyone who can afford it.

Summary: