Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have been a loyal Canon shooter since the days of film SLRs over 20 years ago. In the past decade I have bought two Canon 'super zoom' cameras: the original PowerShot S1 in 2004 and the PowerShot S5 in 2008. Lately I'm itchy to get another super-zoom camera to replace the S5, because its 12x zoom no longer considered 'super' by today's standard. Naturally my first choice is another Canon PowerShot camera, either the PowerShot SX50 or the PowerShot SX500. After comparison, however, I decided to 'jump ship' and go with this Fujifilm FinePix S8200 instead. Here are my reasons why: - The Fujifilm S8200 is powered by four AA batteries. I prefer this design because I can use a set of Sanyo eneloop Pre-Charged Rechargeable Batteries in it, and keep another set as backup. In case of emergency, I can even use disposable alkaline batteries to power the camera. Early models in the Canon PowerShot Pro series (S1 to S10) were all powered by AA batteries. But latest models are using proprietary lithium-ion rechargeable battery packs. That means I have to buy another battery pack as backup, and also need to bring yet another dedicated battery charger for my trips. - The Canon SX500 (which is priced similarly) has a big disadvantage in that it is missing the EVF (electronic view finder). Using EVF on the S8200 makes it easier to shoot under bright sunlight, and it helps to hold the camera steady when shooting at super zoom. - The Canon SX50 has an EVF and offers a longer zoom range (50X vs. 40x). But it is also priced 50% more than the Fujifilm S8200. After playing with the S8200 for a few days, I'm very happy with my choice. For shooting under daylight, the image quality is good enough for most situations. Of course, the image quality at low-light cannot compare to that of a digital SLR camera, such as my Canon EOS Rebel T1i. This is to be expected given the tiny image sensor used in a camera this size (It's the law of physics: smaller sensor pixel area means worse signal-to-noise ratio). For low-light situation, I prefer to fix the ISO at 1600, and save in 'Small' (4MP) image size. Some other observations: - The zoom lens of the S8200 is physically much longer than that of the S5. See the pictures I uploaded to 'Customer Images' section for size comparison. - The S8200's lens makes louder noise than the S5 while zooming (the latter advertises "UltraSonic" on the lens) - The focusing is NOT maintained while zooming. This is the same problem I have with S5. In contrast, my Canon EF-S 17-85mm Image Stabilized USM SLR Lens does maintain focusing while zooming, but that lens is 2x the price of this camera. - The image stabilization mechanism works quite well. Note that both Canon and Fujifilm cameras use optical image stabilization which works equally well across zoom range. Other cameras (such as the Olympus SP-800UZ) that use 'sensor-shift' mechanism do not work well at high zoom. I have no problems migrating from my old Canon S5 to the new Fujifilm S8200. Most of the controls are either identical, or very simple to figure out. Basically I just pick up the new camera, set it to 'P' (programmed auto) and started shooting. On the other hand, there are still a lot of new features on the S8200 that I have yet to take advantage of. For examples: - Rapid shot of 10 frames in one second - Automatically capture 360-degree panorama - Shoot video in high-speed to playback in slow-motion, and so on. So maybe one of these days, I'll actually get around to reading the user manual...