Fuji S700

[Claff]

Saw this in BJs for $200 and it sounds too good to be true. 7 MP, 10x optical zoom, full manual mode? Does it suck?

I love my Nikons but I'd also like to have something relatively cheap to keep in the car and take along for long walks on the beach and stuff like that where the big camera would look all kinds of out of place, especially since I think I broke the Canon listed in my sig.

 

[Don Simon]

My parents just bought one for themselves (without asking me what to buy - I am offended ) and for the price it doesn't suck, though I personally wouldn't buy one.

It works ok and the image quality is decent... but obviously you don't want to go near 1600 ISO. Also it's good to have a proper manual more and I believe that may still be fairly rare in this price range. One thing I like is that it takes either the proprietary XD cards, or SD cards. On the downside, build quality is not great (it's a $200 compact), the image quality is not as good as a higher-end compact or a dSLR (again, $200), and the lens could benefit from a larger max aperture.

If you want something cheap for the car and other uses you describe, it would be fine, as long as you don't expect too much of it... it doesn't suck, but it isn't anything special either.