Fujifilm Finepix S8000fd Review

Having recently taken its long zoom cameras into ever more DSLR-like territory, Fuji's S8000fd is something of a departure. The S8000fd places a smaller sensor behind a much longer-range zoom lens in a less SLR-like body. Going head to head with the Panasonic FZ18 and Olympus SP560UZ the S8000fd is Fuji's most ambitious zoom compact to date. It is also the first long-zoom camera from Fuji to offer image stabilization (in this case a CCD-shake system), which is offered by most competing brands and is pretty much essential with a zoom this long.



The S8000fd packs an awful lot into its compact body, and seems to be trying pretty hard to be all things to all people, with manual exposure controls sitting alongside point-and-shoot convenience features such as face detection. There is a high-speed shooting mode (at reduced resolution), and some extremely high sensitivity modes (again at lower resolution), for shooting in low light. What compromises this all-encompassing approach brings, we shall see.

Headline features
18X optical zoom, giving a 27mm-486mm equiv. range
Dual IS, combining sensor shift technology with high ISO settings
8.0 million pixel sensor
ISO 6400 at 4MP
ISO 1600 at full resolution
Face detection (up to 10 faces per shot)
Face detection-combined In-camera red-eye reduction
High-speed focus mode
Rapid continuous shooting (up to 15fps at 2MP)
60 fps LCD refresh rate
Accepts both xD and SD cards, including SDHC



In stark contrast to the SLR-like S6500fd and S9100, the S8000fd shows signs of having dipped its feet in a different gene pool, and it is obviously more closely related to the S5700 (S700) and its predecessors (the basic styling is very similar). Its frankly enormous zoom range means that there is a lot of lens to build the rest of the camera around. The result is that the form owes as much to its function as it does to any traditional SLR styling cues.

In your hand




The S8000fd is a very reasonably sized camera, considering the length of its zoom. The use of AA batteries adds both weight and size but they've been incorporated in such a way as to give the camera a large, comfortable grip, which it vital because a lens this long needs to be kept as steady as possible. It has a rubberized back with a lip at the top right corner to accommodate your thumb, though that does position you directly over the 'F ' button, making it easy to inadvertently bring menus up when you're trying to shoot. Generally it's all fairly well thought out, and handling surprisingly good; well balanced and stable.

Another thing that is immediately apparent is the similarity between the lens on the S8000fd and that on the Olympus SP560UZ (it has to be said the design of cameras themselves is also quite similar). Both have focal lengths of 4.7-84.3mm and maximum apertures of f/2.8-4.5. This, combined with the very obvious visual similarities makes us suspect they share a lens. There are other noticeable similarities in the two cameras' specifications, too, with both offering slightly unusual features such as a 15fps 2MP high-speed shooting rate.