FujiFilm’s FinePix S8000fd is an appealing “Ultra-Zoom” digicam. This is a very capable consumer model, with some very nice features (8M, 18x Wide Zoom, Face Detection, etc.), good overall performance, and plenty of shooting modes for every member of your household.
Image quality is up to par with it competitors (Canon S5 IS, Panasonic DMC-FZ18, Olympus SP-560 UZ) and with a street price of US $350 or less (US$399 MSRP), it offers a terrific value for a camera in this class. The only other issue I had with the camera that’s not mentioned above, was the fact that the camera will allow you to snap a photo while you are waiting for the flash to recharge. In most cases, this just produces a blurry photo that is unusable. That said, I still feel the Finepix S8000fd will make a great choice for any consumer in the market for a camera with these specs, and it’s sure to be a popular model this holiday season.
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The Fujifilm FinePix S8000fd was a pleasure to shoot with. And that’s not easy for an ultra long zoom to do. Unfortunately, the printed results from the Fujifilm S8000fd were disappointing above ISO 400, and really not that great at 400, so we can’t give this digital camera the ringing endorsement we’d hoped. If you can remain content not shooting above ISO 800, and ignore the camera’s ISO 1,600, 3,200, and 6,400 the Fujifilm S8000fd is a pretty good long zoom digital camera. But if high ISO is important to you, look at the cameras we’ve tested below that deliver better low light performance.
While we think the Fujifilm S8000fd is a pretty good camera for daylight shooting, with a great zoom and cool features, it just misses a Dave’s Pick due to its high ISO performance.
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Image quality could also have been better and ends up about on par with the Olympus. While colors look accurate and the camera’s automatic white balance does a fine job of serving up neutral colors in all sorts of lighting conditions, images are not as sharp as we would have liked.
We saw very little colored fringing and even then only under the most extreme circumstances. In some cases, the camera tended to underexpose a little when using the Average metering mode, which uses the entire scene to determine exposure.
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I prefer the image quality the Fujifilm FinePix S8000fd produces in a 18x wide-angle optical zoom camera. You won’t be wowed by the average shooting and AF performance, though. Some features important for the advanced photographers are missing: longer shutter speeds and RAW file format. I don’t do RAW that much so it’s presence and absence is not a deciding factor for me personally.
What I foresee many will like is the S8000fd’s metering which seems to be cleverly calibrated to retain detail in the highlights so you’ll get less, if any, blown highlights without having to dial in a negative exposure compensation.
The FinePix S8000fd is an impressive package and should meet most advanced photographers’ requirements. If you like the Fujifilm’s images (see the S8000fd photo gallery), then be sure to check out the Fujifilm FinePix S8000fd. I enjoyed using it very much and loved the pictures it captured.
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You would have to purchase and carry at least a couple of lenses to cover the same distance with a DSLR camera. Thankfully Fujifilm have at last seen sense and included an image stabilization system, an essential feature given the massive zoom range on offer, and one that works very well in practice. This also means that Fujifilm can finally compete on a level playing field with their main super-zoom competitors, most notably the 18x models from Panasonic and Olympus.
We haven’t reviewed the Panasonic FZ18 yet, but we much preferred the Fujifilm FinePix S8000fd to the Olympus SP-550 UZ, which offers a less usable interface and much poorer image quality. The Fujifilm Finepix S8000fd is therefore both our current ultra-zoom camera of choice, and a viable alternative to a DSLR camera.
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