Fujifilm FinePix S4500

The Fujifilm FinePix S4500 is a superzoom camera with an impressive 24-720mm fiocal length, but features a slow lens (f/3.1-5.9). The camera fits well, handles well, but somehow, ends up feeling a little plastic. The use od CCD sensor makes us a little skeptical of the camera's low light performance, but we love the landscape shots from this camera.

• Impressive 24-720mm focal length
• Decent image quality
• Runs on AA batteries
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Features

The Fujifilm FinePix S4500 houses a 14 megapixel CCD sensor measuring a standard 1/2.3 inches in size. Now with the advancement imaging technology has gone in the last decade, CCD sensors are pretty old. Long ago, Nikon was famous for using CCD sensors in their DSLRs due to their ability to give higher shutter speeds and sync speeds with flash. However, the downside was that they required massive amounts of power to drive them and they had a tendency to generate noise a lot quicker than their CMOS counterpart. These days, even CMOS sensors have evolved into Back-Side Illuminated CMOS sensors, giving even better noise performance. So Fujifilm’s decision to stick with a CCD sensor baffles us.

A plus for the S4500 is the electronic viewfinder, which has a decent resolution of 200,000 dots, which is more than enough for the small screen. The viewfinder is quite versatile in its functionality, capable of performing every task that the rear 3 inch 230K dot screen can. So if its bright day light, the viewfinder can be used for image playback or browsing through the menu.