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Product Reviews:
Great features and price,
November 29, 2004
Reviewer: Nylo
This is my 2nd digital camera, and it replaced my Olympus 4000, which was
excellent, but I wanted more zoom, an electronic viewfinder, and longer
shutter times. The 5100 has certainly delivered, with a couply of
relatively small compromises. The Olympus 4000 menus and controls are a
tough act to follow. However, it seems that Olympus and Fuji share some
technology, icons, and ideas.
The physical handling of the 5100 is excellent, with a very
secure-feeling, molded grip for your right hand. I found all the control
buttons well-placed and easy to manipulate.
When you sort through all the cameras out there, looking for 10x optical
zoom, extended grip, and the ability to use AA batteries, the list quickly
narrows! I use sets of 2500 mAh nickel-metal AA batteries, and an
inexpensive charger.
Another great feature is the included lens tube adapter, lens cap, and
cap-keeper. Just screw on a 55mm UV or skylight filter, and you can
completely enclose and protect the lens assembly. At the fully wide
position, you will see a small amount of vignetting (shadowing) at the
corners if you have more than one filter screwed on.
I found the electronic viewfinder to be more helpful than an optical
viewfinder, and still visible outdoors in sunlight. You can also read and
manipulate the settings without taking your eye from the viewfinder.
I purchased a couple of 512 MB XD cards with the camera. You will really
need the extra memory when you take movies. Movie mode, at a full 30
frames/sec, was surprisingly good, even if you can't change the zoom or
focus once you start a movie. Startup, and writing pics and movies to the
XD card is nice and fast.
The self-timer includes an extra 2-second setting, which is useful for
activating the shutter without shaking the camera, such as for long
exposures or telephoto shots on a tripod.
The adjustable white balance works quite well. The slickest way to make
the most of this feature and to set exposures in manual, is to use a
photographic gray card. The one I bought was 8x10 inches. I cut out a
smaller rectangle, about 4x6 inches, that fits in my photo bag. One side
is pure white, and the other is a special shade of gray. To set the white
balance, place the card with the white side toward you, in the same light
as the subject, zoom in on it, and activate the manual white balance
function in the menu. This assures you of near perfect color no matter
what the lighting is.
The manual exposure mode of the camera allows you to set the shutter and
aperture quickly, and there is an exposure meter in the display that shows
you how your settings compare with the automatic metering. The slick way
to set exposure is to use the gray side of the gray card, place it in the
same light as the subject, zoom in on it, and set your shutter and
aperture until the exposure meter is centered. Once, done, you can just
concentrate on zooming and framing to compose your shots, as long as the
lighting is the same.
I tested the S5100 with a remote flash unit and a slave trigger adapter,
which allow you to create professional, portrait-type lighting quite
easily. Unlike my previous digital, the S5100's flash synch and metering
seems to be compatible with this technique. You set your external flash to
automatic, which is calibrated for a specific ISO film speed and aperture.
It's easy to use the aperture priority mode in the S5100 to match these
settings. Then using an inexpensive slave trigger device that clips onto
the hot shoe of the external flash unit, you can place the external
flash/trigger assembly on a mini tripod off to the side and up high,
perhaps on a bookshelf, aimed at your subject. The S5100's pop-up flash
illuminates the subject from the front, and the slave trigger fires the
external flash at the same time, providing the main light from above and
to the side.
The power saving function of the S5100 worked just fine as set from the
factory. It blanks the LCD/viewfinder after 2 minutes, to save power, and
will shut the camera off if you don't press any buttons after that.
A neat feature that is not apparent in the specifications is the ability
to record a 30 second (or less) voice memo with each picture. You can
record these any time after the pic is taken and stored on the card. When
you play back a pic, you can hit a button to play back the corresponding
voice memo, which is stored as a separate audio file. You can also hit
another button to display all the technical exposure information for each
pic, which is automatically stored in each pic file.
So far, I have just a couple of complaints. When playing back pics or
movies to a TV using the included video cable, I have yet to find a way to
rotate images taken in portrait orientation. Turning your head sideways to
watch is not very comfortable! If you know a way to do this, please post
it here! As mentioned in other reviews, the manual focus mode doesn't have
a distance meter to help you: you have to carefully study the display
while adjusting to judge the best focus. This is particularly hard to do
in low light.
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flimsy, December 29, 2005
Reviewer: Marc Garfinkle
I bought this item for my Wife for her birthday in March 2005, the camera
responds slowly and 3 months after we bought it the only movable item
which is the right in front with the little silver push button on it Fell
out. This made the camera virually unusable and sitting on my desk until
we found out that to get this part fixed and installed would be another
100 dollars. Getting a receipt from my credit card company took 2 weeks
and any response from Amazon and JR music world was fruitless.
I am now waiting for 3 different companies to respond so that i can get
this thing fixed under warranty.
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