Now that Ive tried a few cheaper pockets I learnt to enjoy the Fuji S7000 for what it is

Worked in camera store when younger, enjoyed photography for 20 years and bought myself the S7000 as other SLR's at the time were over priced. The S7000 has fulfilled my needs and surpasssed them in a lot of ways. As many have mentioned Macro photography is wonderful, it very user friendly and I loved the fact it was a Auto, Semi Auto AP/SP and Manual camera and I have used these modes to my benefit. The first thing I did was turn to manual focus to remove all the delay on the shutter release, it takes a little getting used to pressing the Manual Focus button with your left hand but well worth the effort as you dont miss that crucial moment. What I noticed in the pocket digicams was a colour separation around the edged and I have never had that happen on my Fuji. I take a lot of stills that I point crop hence I zoom in on the paint package and get a very close look at quality. The ONLY real negative issue I have with the S7000 is the granularity and now that RAM cards are cheap I am exploring the RAW options I have. I found that reducing the sharpness in RAW mode did help a lot. Overall, it's a great camera and my wife loves it too, low light shooting under flouro is excellent at 800ASA and it takes AA's which was a bonus for me as I have 2 kids and rechargables by the dozens. Oh.... I almost forgot the multishot, it's been a savior for action photos and the VIDEO mode is more than acceptable, the audio mic really is impressive too!