Fuji Finepix S5500 4.2mp Digital Camera Review

Fuji Finepix S5500 4.2mp Digital Camera

Digital Camera Review

The FinePix S5500 Zoom features a 4 million effective pixel sensor with a 10x optical zoom lens, all housed in a neat and tidy SLR-styled body. Thanks to its ergonomic design and easy-to-use controls, the FinePix S5500 Zoom is ideal for the enthusiast who wants to work closely with the camera.

The FinePix S5500 zoom is amazing - 10x can make anything seem close! The picture quality is brilliant - 4.2megapixels is more than you\'ll ever need. There are tons of different modes - portrait, movie mode, outdoor, night time... You can even use it as a webcam!

You'll need to replace the 16mb card that come with FinePix S5500, because it's too small. Also, if you want to use it properly as a webcam, you should buy the special power cable for it. I'd also recommend buying some rechargeable batteries, even though its battery life is excellent.

Overall, the fuji FinePix S5500 camera has exceeded all of my pretty high expectations! Buy it!

Your Comments/Opinions

I just bought the S5500 (otherwise known as the S5100) and I agree with everything said in this review. It works well at both a point and shoot and as a manual everything (zoom, focus, apature, etc). If you're still new to photography, but want to work wi

Courtnay Murphy

I have had my S 5500 for about 4 months. It has been hard to fault. The best option I have found that most cameras in the price range cant do is the abilty to take photos in CCD raw mode. In short, this means you can take photos without jpeg compression, later converting to lossless tiff files. The images are stunning.

Matt O'Brien

So just how do you get it to actually work as a web Cam? I cannot find instructions anywhere or drivers or software. I have XP Pro.

Lost and Confused

i got mine to work easy as web cam. I just loaded the software from the cd supplied. You have to go into the camera setup too, where it saysusb mode and change the setting to web and it works well. Only complaint i have is it is a bit dark. see page 81 of your manual and it gives the description of each part. Enjoy. ken. bomberl@hotmail.com

ken

Great camera, except for a somewhat annoying problem, you cannot operate the zoom while in movie capture mode. Came as a bit of a surprise considering the overall quality of the camera.

Steve Vladimir

personally i think the camera is crap loads of fancy features but it can't even take a photo without blury pictures resulting when in auto mode.i mean who has time on holiday to start futtering about with settings ? by the time you get it set up the subject is half a mile away

paul

i cant enable the ccd-raw option on my finepix s5500 fuju camera. it seems to be desabled. can anyone help me?

daryl

does anyone know what is the difference between s5500 and s5100?

Vladimir

S5500 and S5100 are the same cameras with two different names

onder

Bought a new S5500 and I am so hacked off with the fact that it will not function as an ordinary webcam due to the lack of a proper driver on the install cd. Windows xp recognises it as a webcam but refuses to install .. It trys to search over the web but there is no chuffing software to make it work . Pure crass someone at fuji must be braindead.

Hacked off

I think Steve Vladimir's camera must be faulty, if he has trouble with auto focus then just change the focus types to one that suits him. I have some trouble with low light focus, but so do most cameras. I have expensive digital cameras in my studio & bought this as a small point & shoot for my holiday, then found it is just as good as cameras four times the price!! Buy this camera it's great, you can even buy filter & lenses for it from ebay!! to make it a twenty times zoom! it focuses fast, it stores & recalls images fast, it's easy to use, I love the way that in manual modes you can choose just to overright one setting & leave the rest on auto!! Superb. Comes with the best flash I have ever seen for it's size. This camera is superb, one of the best!

Mike Davies

I cannot use this as a web cam for some reason (no drivers out there) but it's a great camera. The raw feature is burried in the setup menu... and unless you use raw, the pictures are noisy. I'm also a little disappointed that a lot of features cannot be used in raw mode.

Phil

Not so clear how to use it like webcam.Drivers are installed but...

Dimitri

s5100 and s5500 is NOT the same camera, s5500 is the updated and new version of the s5100, with some more functions, when s5500 came on the marked the production of s5100 stopped.

Morten Flyvholm

Hi, I had trouble with making it work as a webcam but go into the setup thing on your camera itself and where it says USB right click onto webcam hook it up via USB and it will detect straight away

Simon

'daryl, go in2 the menu and in2 set up, go acros 2 the 3rd list (im pretty sure is the 3rd 1...) and at the bottom (definatly at the bottom of 1 of the lists!!) it says CCD-Raw..... Off when you have gone down 2 ccd-raw, press left and it should say ccd-raw... on press the ok button and ur away!! now, can any1 help me with using the s550 as a web came, everyting on the cd is installed but it still wont work (and yes, web cam mode is selected in the camera's menu)...... it wants drivers??? cheers'

helpful,_but_needs_h

'What Dimitri says is wrong. Fiji S5500 is for Asia and America while S5100 is for Europe.Both models were released simultaneously. It is a great camera for its price. I am using it as a web Camera.All settings and zooming are to be done before attaching it to USB.Preferably you should use Wide angle and ISO 400 speed.You need a continuous light to illuminate the person.'

dawar

'Bought fuji s5500 on ebay, no manual. Has anyone got a manual, book or disc that i can have, buy or copy? How do you manual focus? nothing turns manually? Any help would be appreciated, thanks '

toby

'Found a PDF of the 5500 manual here: http://www.fujifilm.co.uk/technical/download/FinePix%20S5500%20user%20manual.pdf hope this helps you'

jeanette

I want to use the camera for virtual tours and am having trouble changing focus setting from "central" to "area" in AF MODE. Any one got any ideas or had same problem?

Sarah

*****PLEASE HELP***** my fuji s5500 wont power up even with brand new batteries, camera has not been dropped and was working on holiday untill went dead which i thought was empty battery however at the time was concerned as didnt remember seeing the low battery icon and generally when battery runs out you can still get it to power up a few times untill completely dead. fuji say it will cost £100 to fix and will extend warranty by 12 months!! big help

JAKE

I am also getting blurred pictures when snapping in 'auto' mode with 'SAF' lock on. I thought it might be my hand shaking so I put it on a tripod and still got blurred pictures of my children who were moving slightly. Any suggestions?

Gary

WEBCAM USE IN FUJI???CAN ANYBODY PLEASE GUIDE ME HOW TO USE IT??I DUNNO IF IT NEEDS DRIVERS.I CAN CAHNGE THE SETUP OF CAMERA TO WEB CAM.BUT APART FROM THAT I DUNNO HOW TO USE THE WEBCAM FUNCTION.SHALL APPRECITE IF SOMEBODY CAN POST ON HOW TO USE IT.. Thanks!!!

Sagar

I had no problems using my s5100 as a webcam on a PC (i'm a mac user), I then decided to f=reinstall windows on the PC I have (its quite old and slow)... It now runs much better, but I cannot use it as a webcam anymore... It didn't need any drivers the first time around, but just in case I downlaoded all of the fuji oftware, still to no avail... oh well.... to the person who said s5500 wa Americas-- not true. I believe the s5100 was the predessesor to s5500, they are not the same. I bought an s5100 in the US...

caleb

why an earth would anyone want to use the camera as a webcam,go out and use it as a camera, webcams are two and a penny.get off the sofa and visit a pc store!