Kyocera Finecam S5 review

A small flash is built into the body, providing the usual auto, on, off, red-eye reduction, fill-in and slow sync modes. Five white balance presets are programmed in too, and there's even a manual option. Other options include a movie mode, which allows you to take up to 120 seconds of video, depending on the size of the memory card.

A small lithium ion battery supplies the power and we found this to give reasonable performance under normal shooting conditions. However, we did notice that it became slightly warm after a while, although not uncomfortably so.

In terms of performance, the 3x optical zoom covers 7.3-21.9mm, which equates to 35-105mm in 35mm terms. The lens has reasonable resolution, but images showed some moire artefacts and a little noise. Red tones were also particularly vibrant, which could be a problem. That said, with a 5-megapixel output, we still obtained some decent A4 prints from a photo inkjet, although overall performance rates as average.

With distinctly run-of-the-mill performance, the Finecam S5's best feature is its size. The jump to five megapixels is also welcome, but unless extreme portability is your main concern you'd be better served by the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P71 (see Labs, issue 98).

Author: John Clements