Fujifilm FinePix S8000fd Super Zoom - Design
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Design
This Fujifilm camera offers up a relatively compact design while still managing to include a gigantic lens and decent-sized LCD display. The lens is an 18x optical zoom f/2.8-4.5 with an equivalent coverage of 27-486mm, which provides the camera with good wide-angled shots as well as telephoto capabilities. The 2.7 inch display works very well in most conditions. And it features a refresh rate of 60 fps, which is higher than a lot of cameras' 30 fps speed.
The overall look of the 8000fd is quite nice. The body features a matte black, silver, and chrome finish. The nice-sized grip is coated with a non-slip rubber material. The experts at TrustedReviews raved about the 8000fd's design, saying that "The shape of the body fits the hand beautifully, and all the controls fall neatly under the fingers. As an exercise in ergonomic camera design it deserves some sort of award." The overall dimensions of this camera are 4.4 x 3.1 x 3.1 inches, and it weighs about 1 pound. The weight is very well balanced and helps add to the comfortable feel of the camera.
Looking around the exterior of the camera, you will notice that it accepts 4 AA batteries, which can be good and bad. Using AA batteries instead of a rechargeable battery pack does make it easier to get fresh power, but cameras that use batteries instead of a battery pack usually only get about half the life out of the batteries. So, it's really just up to the user.
Fujifilm has equipped this camera to accept two different types of memory media, including the unpopular xD cards and the more well-known SD/SDHC memory cards. SD cards are cheaper and faster than xD cards, so this is an improvement over previous Fujifilm cameras.
On the back of the camera, you'll notice the electronic viewfinder just above the LCD display. This viewfinder is small (.24 inches), but it offers the same high resolution as the LCD display (230,000 pixels). Also, the viewfinder is adjustable to better fit users who wear glasses.
Flash is provided by a pop-up flash on top of the camera. This flash has an effective range of about 26 feet at wide-angle and 15 feet at the tele-end of the zoom.
The controls are laid out very nicely on the 8000fd and are very similar to other Fujifilm cameras. The top of the camera sports the mode dial, shutter release with zoom controls, and dedicated buttons for face detection and image stabilization. These two dedicated buttons are very handy. It's nice to not have to dig inside the menu system to use these features. The remaining controls are on the back of the camera and are pretty much self-explanatory. The "F" button is very useful. This button leads directly to a menu that allows the user to adjust ISO, image quality/size, and color mode settings.
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