This camera is a great fixed lens camera, the focus is fast and sharp, the glass is an amazine 28-300 fujinon zoom lens that produces great shots at any focus range, the macro funtion is also producing amazine ultra close up shots, it a little slow to buffer RAW files but it is worth the wait, over all if you are looking for a first time DSLR camera this fixed lens Fuji S 9100 will do any thing you want and at a great price for all the features you will receive.

This is a great camera if you grew up with a 35mmSLR, like me. The controls are intuitive, and it's great to get back to a manual zoom. The 10X optical zoom is fantastic, especially witht he built in acro mode. It'll take years to learn all the features, but a couple days will have you taking pictures like a pro.

Like a previous reviewer I had a s90009not s9100) for 12 days before it died. Beach Camera iniyially refused to have me return it to them, and sent me to Fuji for a warranty repair...AFTER 12 DAYS ?!!! Fuji 'repaired it' and returned it to me. It was DoA !!! Beach have sent me an RMA but with the camera at Fuji a second time for the same issue...I am at a loss. BE WARNED !!!!

This is by far the best camera i've ever owned. After price and feature comparing for several months, and major --- kissing my wife, I mean sweet talking, this camera is still wowing me with every use. As an amerature photographer the manual settings this camera offers will keep me occupied for years learning. The auto settings do very well for me also. No regrets here.

only had camera 4 weeks and camera DIED. Total
power loss. Had to send back to have repaired.

1. DO NOT buy this camera if you want a point and shoot camera. It is a horrible point and shoot camera.
2. DO NOT buy this camera if you want a camera that can shoot in lower or low light situations.
3. DO NOT buy this camera if you ever want to manually shoot faster than ISO 200.

This camera is very noisy. Images shot faster than ISO 400 are noisier than a $10 junk kids digital camera. I read all the reviews about how if you wanted to shoot good pictures you needed to do everything manually, so I spent the three months reading the manual again and again and kept trying to get better lower light or faster pictures. It just isn't going to happen.

I am now finding many more reviews to support what I have found out the hard way. If you are shooting ISO 80 or 100 your going to have some pretty good pictures. ISO 200 is still not too bad. ISO 400 is as noisy as some other cameras ISO 1600 shots. ISO 800 shots are unacceptably noisy and anything shot at 1600 is completely useless and unusable.

This camera uses a faster shot instead of image stabilization and while that in itself is not such a bad thing the noise present in those faster shots is not acceptable. One of the big reasons this cameras auto mode is useless is that it will often use ISO 400 or faster which makes the auto mode useless if you want a good picture.

One of the main reasons I bought this camera was that it had a manual focus option to use in my low light situations. The manual focus is still direct linked to the auto focus and is not a true manual. If you run it out to infinity in hopes of getting focused on those far shots your in for a cruel surprise. The manual focus at infinity goes past infinity and back out of focus. Even when you back up a bit your at the mercy of the autofocus motor to start and stop moving when it wants as it lags behind your actual moving of the manual focus ring.

Macro modes do not focus well up close at all where they should, and forget manual focus for macros because the auto focus will take over and take the picture back out of focus even on manual mode when clicking the shutter.

The video quality is not too bad on this camera but the auto focusing while in video mode is very bad. It focuses too slow and has to keep trying to refocus. The auto focus does not work well in many cases. Some times it will show a good focus lock and after you look at the pictures you will often find that it was not in focus at all.

This camera has got plenty of bells and whistles and had a great potential but things like the manual focus which is a great idea fails because it was poorly implemented.

The bottom line is that this type of camera is supposed to make it easy to take good pictures while allowing you the options to go manual and change things but it should not be so hard to get 10 out of 1000 pictures to be worth keeping.

This camera is not worth this kind of money to get a few good shots. The camera looks good and has plenty of features but in the end it's about what kind of pictures it takes on on that note it fails miserably

This camera is easier for someone who has used a fully manual camera. Knowing how to set the f stops, shutter speed and the ISO is the only way to make this camera work more than a $100.00 point and shoot camera.
I think it gets a bad review by most people until you learn how to fly and first you must learn how to fall, if a may borrow a line from Paul Simon.
It just needs some fine tuning for your desired results.

If you are like me, You want to be able to take pictures like a professional by using NOTHING but the auto focus RIGHT! Well...................
do a little more research. I picked this camera
because I read good reviews and thought with a little luck and reading the book that comes with it I could tackle just about anything and come out with a great picture. Not so fast, I have gone on several "photo shoots" and some of the pictures were really blurry!!! I mean like, shakey blurry I thought.. "man I must really be bad at this" Then I let some one else try it and the same thing happened. The whole time it was set on auto focus. Now to be fair, some of my pictures did turn out crisp and clear but, learn how to use the other settings! If I had known this I would have bought something else. I may try the Cannon D40 I hear SouthCarolina had good results.

I am an amateur photographer and have until recently used traditional point and shoot digital cameras. I have owned Sony Cybershots (2 of them) and have really enjoyed them. I have 3 kids and both cameras have made it through alot, even being sunk in 4 feet of water after a canoe accident! But this review isn't for Sony Cybershots, it's for this Fuji S9100 (S9600 if you're overseas). Thinking that my Cybershot was ruined after the unfortunate canoe incident, I finally pulled the trigger on a more expensive DSLR and after tedious research chose the Fujifilm S9100. If you buy it, go ahead and get at least a 1G xd Memory card, as 512mb doesn't hold as many pictures at 9 megapixels each. This camera truly gives me what I expected and more from a DSLR. The auto setting takes beautiful pictures and the other wheel settings are well adjusted for their specific uses. The pictures are clear, and even the video mode is above average on playback. I take this camera everywhere with me and have used the macro and super macro modes extensively and have truly been amazed at the color and clarity this camera produces. If you are looking for a DSLR, whether you've had one in the past and are looking for more mega pixels, or whether you're doing what I did, and are upgrading from your beginning point and shoot, it is truly a top of the line camera. Again, I have compared it to many other similar DSLRs including Pentax, Nikon and Canon and this camera is as good, if not better than the others. I highly recommend this camera for anyone. Good luck in your search!

This camera almost has it all. The S9100 has lots of pro's and I'll list them first:
1) High quality 28-300 mm manual-zoom lens
2) Excellent build-quality and control layout, has an almost professional feel
3) Bright and clear 235,000 pixel EVF with undetectable lag when set to 60 fps
4) 235,000 pixel multi-angle LCD
5) External-flash hot shoe
6) Fast operation, fast auto-focus
7) Lots of options and a full set of manual controls including focus
8) Uses both Compact Flash and xD cards
9) Cable-release socket built in!
10) DSLR-like picture quality, with very low noise up to ISO 800
11) Incredible Macro modes
12) Uses easily available AA batteries, very good battery life with 2500 mAh NIMH batteries.

If Fuji would fix the following problems, the S9100 would be perfect:
1) Focus ring should be mechanical instead of electronic
2) No focus distance-scale in viewfinder
3) There should be 2 command dials for adjusting shutter speed and aperture in Manual mode
4) No quick-review or delete buttons
5) Flash compensation buried in menus, should have dedicated button
6) RAW mode is interpolated to 4864 x 3648, making for huge, almost unworkable files. Why??
7) Useless HyperUtility software
8) Non-dedicated hot shoe, no TTL external flash capability

That's all, folks! Don't let my list of admittedly minor niggles stop you from buying the S9100. Compared to other cameras in it's price range, it really is in a field of it's own. Great camera!

Twenty years ago I had a 35MM manual with several interchangeable lenses. Since then I have had several different point&shoot digital cameras and have enjoyed them for what they were. This camera takes me back to the joy and creativity of that old 35mm. I can set it to be a point&shoot or I can be as creative as I want. It gets my creative juices flowing. I keep this camera with me and take pictures everyday and I have taken over 2000 pictures since I got it. Don't buy this camera if you don't want to read the manual.

Unlike the previous reviewer,I've had no problems with my S9100's auto-focus at all. Focus is very fast and accurate even with the lens zoomed out, something I can't say for my 'old' S5200. The only time I've needed to use manual focus is for very close macro shots with narrow DOF. So far,I've found the S9100 to be an excellent camera with loads of features and options, and an excellent, almost professional feel and build quality. The S9100 comes with a very good 28-300mm low-distortion lens; equivalent glass for a DSLR would probably cost more than the camera body! It's shutter button is threaded to accept a cable release, an important feature missing from every other camera in this class, and from most entry-level DSLRs too. The only negative is the lack of TTL capability for an external flash, otherwise I wouldn't change a thing.

I'd like to rate this as an excellent camera but cannot as Autofocus is not good & probably shouldn't be used. It doesn't have Image Stabilization but the poor Autofocus is the real culprit in taking otherwise great pictures. This camera should have come w/ AC-5VX adapter to help in saving battery life which is poor. That said; I love this camera for its solid build & many available features. Use a tripod (IS replacement) when necessary & manually focus for great pictures