Product Reviews

FujiFilm's S5600 is an SLR-styled camera. The viewfinder is a low-resolution LCD rather than a direct view through the lens, but the design is more about comfortable handling than style.

The design also means there's room for a 10x optical zoom lens. There's no image stabilisation, though. There's also room for plenty of physical controls including dedicated buttons for exposure compensation, continuous modes (limited to three shots at top resolution) and an auto/manual

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focus switch. Manual focus isn't so useful, as the screen on the back of the camera and the one seen through the viewfinder don't show enough detail for accurate adjustment. There's also no numerical readout.

The other manual functions include shutter priority, aperture priority and full manual exposure, plus auto-bracketing, metering modes and white-balance presets. ISO settings range from 64 to 1600, an extraordinarily high figure for a compact digital camera. Pictures at this setting are noisy but not disastrously so, and ISO 800 is great for low-light photography without a tripod.

We found it difficult to get a bad photograph out of the S5600. It coped superbly in all sorts of lighting conditions, and we rarely had to deviate from the Auto mode. Skin tones were warm but natural; other shots were vibrant. One complaint is a slightly painted effect to pictures taken in low light when viewed at high magnification. This keeps the S5600 from scoring full marks. But it's a great performer that will satisfy those on a tight budget.