Home > Consumer Reviews > Kyocera Finecam S5 Digital Camera [5MP 3xOptical]

This is my 1st digital camera, and i opted for this one after seeing it in a shop, it is beutifully made from brushed alloy, not plastic, and is smaller than my aps camera.Kyocera claim that it is the smallest 5 million megapixel camera in the world and i wouldnt disagree after seeing it next to many others, it is very small.
The kyocera has many features, such as the option to take pictures in black and white, or sepia. You can also view your pictures by plugging the camera directly into your tv, thereby getting 32" shots of the kids!!
Setting up the camera and learning to use the menus takes minutes with the help of the excellent manual, you are offered a wide range of choices, from simple point-and-shoot shots to the ability to alter shutter speed, iso settings, exposure etc, which makes it ideal for everyone from the happy snapper to the amatuer photographer. Picture quality is excellent as you would expect from a 5 million megapixel camera.
I did have a slight problem with the driver for the camera when installing onto my pc, but this was easily solved with the help of the tech support line.
The camera comes supplied with a battery, charger, all leads and software plus a 16mb memory card. I would definately recommend this camera to others.

If size and quality are important to you and you want a small camera with high pixel count then this is the camera for you. The features are excellent and provide just enough manual control for you to feel you are still in control (if you want full manual operation look else where) while still making it very easy to point and click. The quality of the photos are excellent and I am very happy with my decision to go with the Kyocera. The camera looks and feels like the Canon IXUS 400 but you get 1 MegaPixel more. One of my most common editing functions is cropping and pixel count helps a lot to maintain the quality of the picture.

I was initially worried about the speed of taking pictures but if you play around with the controls and use manual focus, do not use the red eye reduction and pre select the film speed then it becomes fast enough at capturing the action.

My recommendation is a very strong buy.

This is my 2cnd digital camera and I looked long and hard before deciding to splash out on the Finecam S5. I have had it for about 3 weeks now and taken over 500 shots and found that if you stick to the basic principles such as waiting for the auto focus to lock on as well as holding the camera as still as possible then the results will astonish you. Sure, if you pay more money you could probably find something better, but if you use the rules mentioned and set to auto mode for simple point and shoot photo's you will not be displeased. I have tried and tested the macro and the different lghting settings in conjunction with the auto mode and the results have been fantastic. One of the best aspects of this camera is it's size, it is so small you can take it anywhere and the build quality is robust in a brushed metal finish. One last word, I have found that if you set the camera to 1600x1200 on fine then you get loads of photo's for your memory and the pictures are just as good as the highest setting. I use a 256 meg sd card.

Ì recently bought the finecam s5 from Jessops as it was on offer but find it is currently the same price here. It was on offer in Jessops as it is becoming an obsolete model, to be replaced by the S5R. I have found it to be a great camera, it is small, metal case, 3X optical zoom and most importantly has 5Megapixels at this amazing price. The pictures are of good quality and operation is easy. The only downside I've really come across is that it is slow to take pictures and this can result in camera shake. As mentioned in another review this can be avoided by messing with the settings and also by focusing and then shooting(ie half press the button to focus and then all the way to shoot) but this is complicated when giving it to someone else to take a pic! The new S5R has a special chip which eliminates this problem and can take 3 pics per second, it's about £50 more but probably worth it for an excellent camera.

After a bit of research on the web, and advice from a couple of camera shops, I decided on the Finecam S5. The deciding factors were the 5 mega pixel resolution, the metal case, the 3x optical zoom and the small size.

The camera gives excellent results, good colour rendition, sharp focus, is relativly fast to power up, and once focussed gives instant shutter release.

The disadvantges are that it sometimes does not focus / I have camera shake (on a 1/250th shutter) resulting in fuzzy photos, and the time taken to reset for the next photo. The latter I guess is down to the time to store the image to the card, and my comparrison of 3mp cameras.

The battery lasts for 60+ photos with the LCD on, and half of those with flash. Getting hold of a spare battery at a good price is difficult, and a separate charger even more so.

Given the choice, I would buy the Finecam S5 again.