Fujifilm Finepix S100FS

This full-bodied snapper has more Xs to it than a naughty girl show in Las Vegas

Forget triple X or even quadruple X, this bad boy has no less than 14 X zoom to its name, thanks to its eye-popping super-zoom lens. With a twist of your wrist, you can zip the FS100's generous optics from a landscape-spanning 28mm wideangle setting to a paparazzi-impressing 400mm telephoto. Basically, it lets you frame almost any scene perfectly, without waiting for a whiny motorised lens to zoom in or having to swap for more powerful glassware.

But this is no digital SLR: you can't swap the lens out and the viewfinder shows only a flickery electronic image instead of the bright view you get with a real SLR. So what do you get for half a grand? Behind the crisp (and optically stablised) lens lives a respectable 11MP sensor that can pump out vivid images, smartface detection and red-eye removal technology, plus colour tweaks that aim to copy Fujifilm's old Velvia and Provia 35mm films.

The detailed 2.5-inch screen can fold out to help framing, and there are manual features, burst modes and sharp VGA movie clips. But it's also much slower and heavier (a kilo!) than today's nippy SLRs -- unless you really need to pack all that optical power in one punch, a twin lens SLR kit will save you money, time and weight.

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