Fujifilm FinePix F770EXR Digital Camera - White (16MP EXR CMOS Sensor, 20x Optical Zoom) 3 inch LCD Screen

I am really impressed with the image quality of this camera. The EXR auto mode does a great job of producing well exposed images. I am particularly impressed with the indoor, low light photos I have taken - this was one of the main reasons I chose this camera was for its claim to produce low light pictures with reduced noise. The day I tried out the zoom capabilities, it was a very windy day - but the image stabilizer worked brilliantly and again I was more than pleased with the results.
There are still a lot of features I haven't had chance to use yet - still haven't got the hang of the GPS, and need more practice finding my way around the different menu settings.

However, after 2 days of use, my camera has developed a fault - a couple of times after zooming the lens would not retract or focus and I had to switch the camera off and back on again. Then the lens stayed out and will not go back in even when switched off and back on. I have used Amazons return service and asked for a replacement camera, as I am hoping this is just a one off.

My last camera was a Fujifilm F70EXR, which has had daily use and proved to be a very robust camera - I am hoping F770EXR will be of the same high standard of robustness. Although I take care of my cameras I do expect them to live up to everyday handling.

*** I would just like to say how impressed I am with Amazon's returns policy. I reported my damaged camera online on Monday evening and printed of the returns labels. Later that evening I had an email to say a replacement had been dispatched, which I received on Weds Morning!

THANK YOU AMAZON for providing such a good service.

I bought this camera as a less expensive replacement for my Canon S90 which was killed when someone spilled a glass of water over it. Shame, as it was a great little camera.

Few camera on the market gave me the various features I wanted - wide angle through to good telephoto zoom, RAW format as well as jpeg, various control options including aperture, speed, exposure compensation and several others. I used the dpreview camera features search tool to narrow down the few that met my requirements.

I had this camera for just a few weeks, and returned it because of what I assume is a fault with the battery. Even when the battery had been fully charged, with the camera switched off, one or two days later, I was unable to turn the camera on - the battery had completely drained to empty. This happened three times, the first two I thought I might have been mistaken about the battery being fully charged, this was definitely not the case the last time. I had already turned off the various GPS locator features as soon as I got the camera, as I don't need these and knew they'd be battery hungry.

Battery issue aside, the camera was OK but somewhat less user-friendly than most new cameras I've purchased, including similarly high-featured point and shoots as well as DSLRs. The menu navigation in particular was quite confusing.

I was also surprised by the high ISO the camera would select in bright light conditions, when left to auto ISO. Often it would choose 1600 or 3200 in such bright light I'd expected 200 or 400 at the most.

The images produced weren't bad, and I particularly liked the panorama function, which I found easy to use and effective.

Lastly, this camera was shipped with European pin charger unit. Amazon customer service were very helpful and applied a refund discount against my order, which way more than covered the cost of an adaptor plug. The user documentation manuals were also European, with no English language versions included. Again, customer service found and sent me a link to download the digital version of the manual from the manufacturer's site, but the tiny printed physical ones are more convenient to carry around when learning.

The returns process seems straightforward, and my score is not based on the battery fault (which I assume is just a one off) but on how I found the camera otherwise.

I got this in the week so have been playing around with it for the first time today(5th may). So here's some initial reactions.

Very compact, fits easily in my hand and pocket. But it does mean that some of the physical buttons/catches are a bit fiddly. I have small hands so I can live with it. Will be interesting to see how robust the catches etc are.

It is complex but the exr mode does seem to be intelligent enough work as good as my judgement in my trials so far. I am quite good at reading manuals but the complexity is a bit overwhelming. So I'm hoping I can stay with the exr mode.
Was initially disappointed that there only 3 f-stops in aperture mode (3.5, 7.1, 10). But then realised that previous cameras I've only really used these on the highest and lowest settings.

The advanced mode looks like it could be fun to play with (especially with the way it combines pictures in low light to remove noise). And there's all the face recognition stuff which I haven't played with yet, however I noticed that it has sometimes thought other objects (eg my foot) were faces!

Loving the GPS, this is going to save me a lot of time organizing and naming the photos. I use windows live gallery and irfanview photo editor and both link the image to mapping websites. It's accurate in my house to about 30m so that's ok.

Picture quality (noise, resolution) is much better than my 5 year old camera (of course).

20x zoom, is what really sold me on this and it works smoothly. However what i didn't realise was that it's starting from a wider angle lens than my old (12xzoom) camera so that the final max focal length is not that much different from my old camera. (There is an intelligent digital zoom, which might be useful but not tested that yet)

There's one other issue which I don't know if it is a returnable thing or not. When I power off one of the lens covers does not always close until I twist the camera and allow gravity to pull it closed.

Overall I'm very happy so far with the camera, will be interested to see if it can last 5 years like my old one.