Labs

The S9500 looks like a DSLR camera, as its flash is in a raised extension above the lens. With lens rings for zoom and focus and ISO speeds up to 1,600, it tries hard to behave like one, too.

Manual focus benefits from a zoomed picture-in-picture that's activated at the user's discretion. But even with the high-resolution electronic viewfinder, accurate focusing is fiddly. The auto-focus often takes around

ADVERTISEMENT

a second in normal conditions and as long as five seconds at extreme telephoto settings. Sometimes it gives up trying and takes an out-of-focus picture. The camera can take a shot within a second of startup and at one-second intervals, but this levels off to a shot every 11/2 seconds when using xD cards and every two seconds with CompactFlash.

The S9500 produced its best image quality in a still-life composition under studio lighting. At other times, images appeared slightly softer than from many of the 8-megapixel cameras. We noticed some blooming in high-contrast pictures, where bright parts of the image bled into darker parts. Image noise was minimal at ISO 400, but aggressive noise reduction was evident at ISO 800, and ISO 1,600 pictures were a mess.

Despite its faults, the S9500 is a feature-packed camera that's capable of great results. Ultimately, though, it tries too hard to imitate the talents of a DSLR and neglects the areas in which a fixed-lens super-zoom camera can excel