Fujifilm FinePix HS10

The Fujifilm FinePix HS10 is one of the first ultra-zoom cameras to tout a 30x zoom lens -- "the pinnacle of the zoom totem pole," says Mike Perlman at InfoSyncWorld.com. Yet unlike the rival Olympus SP-800UZ, the HS10 has a manually operated zoom for more control, manual exposure settings and RAW (uncompressed image file) support. Experts praise the sturdy SLR-like design, and with its loaded feature set. Mark Goldstein at PhotographyBlog.com deems the HS10 a "Swiss Army Knife camera." There's a 3-inch tilting LCD and an electronic viewfinder (EVF) with a proximity sensor that automatically switches from LCD to EVF when you put it to your eye. The HS10 also has full 1080p HD video with slow-motion and a "copious amount of manual controls," says Perlman.

Despite its high-end appearances, the HS10 comes up short on quality. The LCD, which lacks the swivel range of the Canon PowerShot G12, has a "pedestrian" 230,000-dot resolution, says CNET's Joshua Goldman, and an EVF is "no match" for even the cheapest optical viewfinder, says Goldstein. Several experts say Sony's Sweep Panorama mode is superior, and Perlman says the HS10's Motion Remover mode, which is supposed to help you remove unwanted objects from a photo "left the object intact or butchered it into a mosaic of convoluted pixels." Critics say performance and image quality are mediocre. A user at Amazon.com says his older Fuji camera is "so far ahead of the HS10 it's not worth mentioning," and the Nikon Coolpix P100 (Discontinued) "smote the HS10 in every degree" for HD video in Perlman's tests.

CNET, CNET Asia, InfoSyncWorld.com and PhotographyBlog.com provide rigorous test-based evaluations with comparison to market rivals such as the Olympus SP800-UZ and the Nikon Coolpix P100. Enough users have weighed in at Amazon.com to establish a consensus that helps confirm expert findings.