Fujifilm Finepix F70 EXR

At first look the F70 is curvaceous and sleek with its glossy metal-finished plastic body. It's not overcrowded with buttons with just the power and shutter release with a nice little zoom ring on the top and the basic navigation and mode selection dial at the back. The 2.7-inch screen is bright and visible outdoors, though I did notice a bit of lag while shooting at lower light conditions. There isn't much in the F70's design that makes it stand out of the crowd, but compared to many other compact digicams in its range, it is one of the better looking ones.

At 99 x 59 x 23 mm the camera is adequately sized for a compact, but the weight tends to be a bit on the higher side at 205g, which tends to make the camera droop a bit from shirt pockets. But the reason for the weight is completely justified with its excellent zoom lens.

Along with a 10 megapixel resolution, the F70 sports 10x optical zoom with the widest angle being at 27mm (usually 32mm in other cameras) and the full zoom goes all the way up to 270mm. High zoom is pretty hard to find in compact cameras, and 10x optical zoom puts it pretty much in the same category as starter-level superzoom cameras.

The scene modes are quite unique in the F70. Besides the regular modes like portrait, landscape, sport, etc. there are also modes like Pro-low light, that give better night performance. We obviously had to give that a test.