Labs

Those in the market for a digital camera have never had it so good. There are some spectacular models around for less than £100, but don't be swayed by the headline statistics - lots of megapixels and a big TFT don't necessarily a good camera make. We've tested five models from the top manufacturers, assessing everything from image quality to how they handle. Can you get away with a bargain, or is it always worth paying more?

If awards were given for looks alone, the Fujifilm would be strutting off with the prize. The slim design and metallic finish befit the kind of camera a catwalk model would be pulling out of an equally slight handbag, and if you want your Christmas presents to be received with a look of awe, this is the one to get.

In our image-quality tests, things were a little less impressive. Image quality, as with all

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the cameras here, is good enough to pass muster for the average photo album, but you wouldn't want to print any of the Z10fd's shots at much more than 10 x 7in. Details such as distant textures were handled well, but we ran into serious problems when it came to chromatic aberrations - virtually all of our test images exhibited some level of purple fringing. In most cases it could just about be dismissed, but in any case where either the Nikon or Canon were marginal, the Z10fd wandered off into full-blown unacceptability. It means you need to keep a very close eye on which aperture the FinePix chooses; but there are only three stops available (f/3.7, f/4.9 and f/8), and no way of setting them manually. There are lots of scene modes, though, so the Z10fd is fine for casual snappers who'll simply match their surroundings to a preset.

The Z10fd also features face detection, which means it will attempt to locate the faces in the frame and expose specifically for them, rather than simply metering from a spot. It also saves the locations of the faces and allows you to crop into them in-camera. It works reasonably well, although tended towards over-enthusiasm: at one point, it insisted the top of a jar of Marmite had to be a face. There's plenty to like about the Z10fd, but the Nikon offers a similar form factor and markedly better image quality for a price that's far too competitive to allow the Fujifilm to be much of a contender.