The S5700 is an upgrade to last year's best-selling long zoom camera, the S5600, which was voted by the EISA* as the 'European Zoom camera of 2006-07'. The S5700 is improved in many respects, and is likely to take the long zoom ‘crown' once again this year.
*The EISA (European Imaging & Sound Association) Awards are chosen annually by a panel of 50 leading enthusiast magazines.

First up is the lens, which, unsurprisingly, makes or breaks a camera in this category.
This specially-designed Fujinon optic gives you a zoom range of 38 mm to 380 mm, or 10 times magnification, meaning its perfect for candid shots of friends at distance, or shots of the kids playing football.

The lens is tuned to give great macro results with a closest focussing range of 1 cm. It's ideal for close-up shots of flowers, insects, coins, jewellery, or anything that needs that extra bit of magnification.

One of problems of long zoom cameras is blur because of the poor sensitivity of the sensor and lack of light down the lens tube. The S5700 solves this with Fuji's Picture Stabilisation mode, which increases the ISO automatically up to 1600, giving crisp, sharp results every time by automatically increasing the shutter speed when light is scarce.

Last year's star camera was 5 million pixels. The S5700 delivers even higher resolution with a 7.1m pixel sensor, giving you files of 3072 x 2304 pixels that can be printed at A4 or much larger.

Fuji is one of the few camera manufacturers to make sensors, and is designed to get the very best of all the essential components working in tandem. The S5700 is fitted with Fuji's Real Photo Processor to deliver first-rate colour reproduction, image sharpness, low noise and excellent tonal response.

One of Fuji's great strengths is high quality images in low light. The S5700's sensor can shoot up to 1600 ISO with minimal noise, excellent colour, and crisp sharpness, even at maximum telephoto range.

The S5700 is an enthusiasts' camera, which means it's packed with a number of shooting of versatile program modes and scene positions choices to ensure optimum results whatever the challenge. One of the most popular, unique to Fuji, is 'Natural Light with Flash', where the camera takes one shot with flash and another with natural ambient light, and leaves you to choose the favourite.

Most cameras have a very basic flash mode. Either it's 'off', making the picture dark and blurry, or 'on' at full strength, giving pictures that bright, washed out, 'black-and-white' look. What you really want are photos which convey the warmth and feeling of the scene, with subtle lighting and gentle tones.
The S5700, which has been fitted with Fuji's latest Intelligent Flash Technology, has solved this problem. The camera reads a scene in milliseconds and cleverly balances foreground and background light to give beautifully exposed, balanced shots. Pictures of people in low light work particularly well, with faces that look natural, not ghoulish!!

Probably the biggest improvement of the S5700 on previous models is the LCD, which is a sizeable 2.5" and an excellent resolution of 230,000 pixels, meaning you can playback your images to your friends in gloriously detailed Fujicolor.
It's also fitted with the unique wide-view filter, meaning the LCD can be viewed from side-on, rather than just front-on.

The S5700 offers an excellent recording resolution of 640 x 480 at 30 frames per second, meaning it can act as a first-class camcorder as well as a camera.
Refinements of the S5700 on previous models mean that it can zoom, expose and focus as you shoot, giving you up to 35 minutes movie on a 2 GB card - at almost indistinguishable quality from expensive digital camcorders.
The S5700 is also fitted with an Electronic Image Stabiliser, which gives stable movie clips even at long zoom telephoto.

The S5700 features an xD/SD compatible slot, allowing the use of either xD or SD cards.
This will give you the flexibility to buy the card you want, use cards from previous cameras, or choose the media that fits with your other desktop devices like laptops, PDAs or card readers.
A 2 GB card will give you 568 shots at the highest quality setting and lowest compression.
The camera comes with built-in 27 MB of memory

Specifications
Number of effective pixels 7.1 million pixels
CCD sensor 1/ 2.5-inch CCD

Storage media Internal memory (approx. 27MB) /xD-Picture Card TM ( 16MB - 2 GB ) / SD card (512MB, 1GB, 2GB)

File format Still image : JPEG (Exif Ver 2.2 )
Movie : AVI (Motion JPEG ) with sound
Audio: WAVE format, Monaural sound
(Design rule for Camera File system compliant / DPOF-compatible)

Number of recorded pixels
Still image: 3,072 x 2,304 / 3,072 x 2,048 (3:2 format) / 2,304 x 1,728 /1,600 x 1,200 / 640 X 480 pixels
Movie: 640 x 480 pixels (30 frames/sec.), 320 x 240 pixels (30 frames/sec.) with monaural sound

Lens
Fujinon 10x optical zoom lens, F3.5 - F3.7
Lens focal length f=6.33mm - 63.3mm, Equivalent to 38-380mm on a 35mm camera
Aperture F3.5- F13.6, 7 steps in 1/3 EV increment
Digital zoom Approx 4.8x
Focus distance Normal : Wide angle : Approx. 30cm/1.0 ft to infinity
Telephoto : Approx. 1m/3.3 ft to infinity
Macro: Wide Angle: Approx. 4cm/1.6 in to 3m/9.8
Telephoto: Approx. 60cm/2.0. To 3m/9.8ft
Super Macro: Approx 1cm /0.4 in. to 1m /3.3 ft.

Sensitivity Auto / Auto(800)/ Auto(400)/ Equivalent to 64/100/200/400/800/1600 (Standard Output Sensitivity)

Exposure control TTL 256-zones metering
Exposure mode Programmed AE, Aperture Priority AE, Shutter Priority AE, Manual

Shooting modes Mode dial : Auto, PS(Anti0Blur), Natural Light, Natural Light & with Flash, SP1, SP2, P, A, S, M, Movie
SP1/SP2 : Portrait, Landscape, Sport, Night, Fireworks, Sunset, Snow, Beach, Museum, Party, Flower, Text
Shutter speed 4 sec. to 1/1000 sec. (depend on Shooting mode)
Continuous shooting Top-3 (max 1.4 frames/ sec), Long-period (max.0.6 frames/ sec)

Focus
Auto focus (Area, Multi, Centre)/ Continuous AF/ Manual focus
AF assist illuminator available

White balance Automatic scene recognition
Preset (Fine, Shade, Fluorescent light (Daylight), Fluorescent light (Warm White), Fluorescent light (Cool White), Incandescent light), Custom

Self-timer Approx. 10 sec./2 sec. delay

Flash Auto flash (Auto pop up)
Effective range: (ISO AUTO(800)): approx. 0.5 - 6.2m /1.6 - 20.3 ft
Macro: approx. 0.3m Ð 3m / 1.0 ft - 9.8 ft
Red-eye Reduction + Slow Synchro

Electronic Viewfinder 0.24-inch, approx.230,000 pixels colour LCD monitor, approx. 97% coverage, 60fps
LCD monitor 2.5-inch , approx.230,000 pixels, low-temperature polysilicon TFT colour LCD monitor, approx. 97% coverage, 60fps

Movie recording
640 x 480 pixels, 30 frames/sec.
320 x 240 pixels, 30 frames/sec.
With monaural sound, with Electronic Image Stabilisation

Photography functions
High speed shooting, Best framing, Post shot assist windows, Frame No. memory, Automatic playback
Playback functions
Slide show, Trimming, Single frame, Multi-frame playback , Sorting by date, Image rotate, Voice memo

Video output NTSC / PAL selectable
Digital input/output USB Full-speed

Power supply
4x AA type alkaline batteries (included)/ 4xAA type Ni-MH rechargeable batteries (optional) or AC power adapter AC-5VH (optional)

Dimensions 106.1(W) x 75.7(H) x 80.7(D) mm/4.2(W) x 3.0(H) x 3.2(D) in. (excluding accessories and attachments)
Weight Approx. 306 g/10.8 oz.(excluding accessories, batteries and memory card)

Accessories included
4xAA type Alkaline batteries, Shoulder strap, Lens cap, Lens cap cord, USB cable, A / V cable, CD-ROM FinePixViewer, Owner's Manual