Performance
The S8100 takes just a whisker too long to start up, but once it's powered on, the autofocus is fast and reliable. Face detection is also quick and capable, tracking subjects around the frame and dealing well with profiles.
Images are crisp with no trace at all of barrel distortion. We had to work hard to manufacture purple fringing by taking high contrast images, but it wasn't noticable and didn't ruin our shots.
Noise is also handled well. Although images take on a visibly gritty texture from around ISO 400, the noise reduction system seems to keep the red and blue speckles in line -- and without sacrificing too much fine detail.
Full resolution burst mode fires a very short burst. Three shots are captured in 1 second, which is decently fast, but means you have to get your timing spot-on to capture your photo. A continuous mode doesn't so much burst as limp at 0.3 frames per second. It keeps going for at least four minutes, but you may miss that split second shot. We'd have liked a compromise between these two.
We're ambivalent about AA batteries. While they're convenient to buy in emergencies, that doesn't mean we want to spend all our time buying them. A lack of onscreen battery indicator in normal shooting mode was frustrating and we burnt through the supplied batteries in just a few days light use.
Conclusion
With crisp images, lots of features and accessible controls, the Fujifilm FinePix S8100fd ticks all the boxes. If you want the long zoom but would like something more pocketable, you'd have to go a long way to beat the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5, while the Olympus SP-560 UZ is another 18x superzoom with a plethora of features. But we think the S8100fd is more stylish than most superzooms and in fact has very little to count against it.
Edited by Shannon Doubleday
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