Fuji FinePix F700 Zoom review

Fuji's S5000 picked up a Best Buy award in our January issue, thanks to its exceptional image quality, a 10x zoom lens, comprehensive manual controls and an SLR-styled design that makes it look and feel far more expensive than its £260 street price.

Its only real drawback is that it's too bulky to slip into a pocket.

This is where the F700 excels. Built around the same CCD sensor, it uses the same manual controls - and consequently offers many of the benefits of the S5000 in a more compact package. The level of control on offer is way beyond that of most compact cameras, and includes shutter priority, aperture priority and full manual exposure settings, along with a wide range of white balance and focus options.

The F700 also has some great extras for keen photographers, such as automatic bracketing: when you press the shutter the camera takes three pictures - one using what the camera thinks are the optimum settings, the other two being slightly brighter and slightly darker. This is a good way of hedging your bets in difficult lighting situations, as you can choose the best shot when you get home. There are inevitable trade-offs for all this flexibility - the lens offers only a 3x zoom, and it's not such a snug fit in the hand. Still, these specs merely put the F700 on a par with other compact cameras at this price.

Fuji makes two special claims for its latest CCD. One is that the hexagonal (rather than square) layout of the individual sensors means the camera can accurately capture a 6-megapixel image from its 3-megapixel sensor. Fuji has been claiming this of its cameras for years, and we're still not convinced. Six-megapixel images captured by the F700 are smoother than 3-megapixel shots, but don't appear to offer any more detail. You can smooth out 3-megapixel photos just as effectively by enlarging them on the PC, letting you fit a greater number of smaller pictures in your camera's memory.

More intriguing is that each sensor is actually made up of two elements - one for bright subjects and another for dark. The theory is that this enables the F700 to retain detail in high-contrast shots, rather than bleaching out bright areas or making dark areas black. This is a great idea, but alas, the benefit wasn't particularly striking in practice. The layout of the camera's buttons and the cryptic icons on its LCD screen are a little confusing until you get used to them.

Fortunately, the F700 is so good in every other respect that the shortcomings of its special features don't really matter. Pictures nearly always look fantastic. Skin tones are natural, the flash isn't too harsh and dimly lit shots taken without the flash are well exposed and suffer from less speckling (known as digital 'noise') than those of other compact cameras. Landscape photography is the real highlight, capturing magnificent colours even in overcast conditions. The camera is quick to take a photo from startup, and just as quick between shots. Its video mode is above average, capturing 30 frames per second at 640x480 resolution - as good as a decent webcam.

With decent life from its lithium ion battery, a stylish design and a USB charging cradle included, there's so much to love about the F700. It isn't as compact as the Pentax and Konica cameras reviewed last month, but its image quality is miles ahead. The F700 delivers quality, control and compactness at an unbeatable price.