Pleeeeease help!

[chasingfirefly]

Hi. Is the FujiFilm FinePix S700 any good?
Cause I may buy it tomorrow. I have looked at reviews online and they seem pretty good.
omg please comment asap though because as I said, I might buy it tomorrow.
Let me know! Please!

Comments

Sorry,

[anonymous]

I missed your reply.

Here's some photos taken with a Fuji F30. Some are from my work trip to the UK and some are inside candids of the kids. The indoor shots are at ISO 400 and if you look at full resolution there's very little noise. 5x7 prints look excellent.

Re: Sorry,

[anonymous]

Oh, and I don't mean to be snobby, but the Sony mentioned above is not a "digital SLR". The manual settings mentioned and being described as "SLR" are two different things. A digital SLR has interchangable lenses and more specifically the viewfinder image is actually looking through the lens, hence the definition of "Single Lens Reflex". The Sony is also a "point and shoot" although a little more advanced. It has full manual control as well. The Fuji I have does not have full manual control (allowing you to set both aperature and shutter speed) but does allow both aperature-priority and shutter-priority shooting. Namely you can set one and the camera will choose the other. Since you say you don't know much about cameras, manual features should not be a deal breaker for you.

A big zoom like that Sony is great for outdoors, but really gives up the quality on indoor shooting. In order to have enough glass for the zoom without being monstrous, the sensor is very small. For example, the Sony H series use a 1/2.5" sensor while the F30 uses a 1/1.7" sensor. (http://www.dpreview.com/learn/?/key=sensor%20sizes) So the bigger camera actually uses a smaller sensor. See the link for actual size of those funny numbers.

My point is to consider what kind of shooting you will do most. I take a lot of indoor candids and therefore high iso quality, fast focus and overall speed are my highest priorities. If you are taking mostly outdoor, bright sunlight and long distance shots, a big zoom like the Sony H7 is pretty good. Just make sure there is some type of "Optical image stabilization" like the H7 has or your long zoom photos will be out of focus. Also, don't let the camera go out of ISO 100 or the noise will be horrible. Personally, I've found that cropping my 6 MP shots from the F30 give me some pretty usable "zoomed" photos when I need it.

PS If you want to know a little about what I mean with small sensors needed for the compact big zoom cameras, consider this http://www.dpreview.com/news/0608/06082414canon70-200f4lens.asp It is a 200mm zoom lens for use on a Canon Digital SLR (see the sensor size link to compare a true SLR sensor with a compact camera sensor). This lens only is bigger, heavier and 3x the price of the entire Sony H7 camera and 485mm equivalent lens together.

Re: Sorry,

[anonymous]

Oh, and one last thing. I agree with the comments about rechargable AA batteries. They can be a pain. I use a 1GB card with the F30 which is about 580 photos at 6MP, std quality. We have yet to run out of battery before filling the card. In fact I can only recall the battery level dipping below "full" two or three times. I am very happy with the battery life.

There's only two things I don't like 1. the computer cable is not a standard Type B mini USB. It's a special Fuji cable. So if you lose or forget it, you won't be able to just pick one up anywhere, you'll need to find a way to get the Fuji one. Or simply buy another memory card 2. it takes XD cards. They're a little more expensive ($10) and less readily available than SD cards.