Over the weekend, a bridal shower was held for my sister, Julie Aiello, who will be married to Robert Howson in April. I “made an appearance” in order to help setup the party room, entertain the groom-to-be while the shower was taking place, take photos at the end, and probably most importantly, help with post-shower gift logistics.
During the picture taking part of the shower, my sister’s bridesmaid, Marijo Yates showed me her FujiFilm FinePix S5000, a 3.1-megapixel digital camera with a rather unique design that includes a 10X optical zoom. This is a very substantial feeling camera which feels surprisingly more like a film-based 35mm SLR camera or a
Canon EOS Digital Rebel the more compact designs typical of this price range. However, I liked the way it felt in my hands and I could see shooting a lot of pictures with it.
I really liked the fact that it had both a 1.5-inch LCD display on the back of the camera body and a 0.33-inch electronic viewfinder. However, the button to switch between the two seemed slightly counter-intuitive to me when I first picked up the camera. That’s probably because I expected the viewfinder to be a traditional through-the-lens type, like the one on my old standby Nikon N50 35mm SLR.
Some of the reviews I’ve seen of the FinePix S5000 are somewhat critical of FujiFilm’s choice of JPEG compression methods because this camera will shoot a 6.1 megapixel raw image (2,816 x 2,120 pixels) but typically stores images in JPEG format at a 3.1 megapixel effective resolution (2,048 x 1,536 pixels). In my opinion, you can look at this from two different perspectives. Most regular folks are going to find the 3.1 megapixel JPEGs that this camera produces fine for most applications, including traditional 8 x 10 inch photo prints to frame and hang on the wall.
Camera enthusiasts may look at this camera as an economical way to shoot good to very good quality 6.1 megapixel raw images. Compare the price of the S5000 to higher-end cameras like the soon-to-be-released
Fujifilm FinePix S7000 or the current prosumer digital camera gold standard, the
Canon EOS Digital Rebel. I think you’ll agree that the S5000 represents a substantial savings, if you know how to get the most out of it or can pick up advanced digital camera shooting techniques.
I’m not that familar with the storage media that the S5000 uses, XD Picture Cards, nor the economics of it relative to CompactFlash or Secure Digital cards. I’ll have to familiarize myself with the storage format and do a little comparison shopping to see whether this was a good choice for FujiFilm to make.
I was really impressed with the fact that my sister’s friend Marijo had a FujiFilm FinePix S5000. This is not your see-one-everyday, fits-easily-in-your-pocket digital cameras, and it shows that she and her husband have done some careful shopping in order to make this choice. I think it’s a very good camera for the money, and I know that a lot of Operation Gadget readers could get a lot out of it.