Viewfinder (5.0)
Though the FinePix S5200's 0.33-inch viewfinder sits behind a nice, large window and has a good magnifier, and offers 100% frame coverage, the display is disappointing. With only 115,000 pixels, it does not offer enough resolution to properly evaluate sharpness for manual focus. In playback mode, there's not enough magnification to evaluate the sharpness of saved images, either. All the shooting information is superimposed on the live image, though various display modes can suppress it.
The FinePix S5200 boosts the gain on the viewfinder and LCD in dark conditions, making the image noisy, though it also makes it easier to make out objects for framing a shot.
LCD Screen (5.0)
The FinePix S5200's LCD screen is 1.8 inches diagonally, and, like the viewfinder display, has only 115,000 pixels. Again, that's not enough to confirm focus in manual mode, or to check focus – even of magnified images – in playback. The color rendition and contrast are pleasing; most users would be delighted to get such good tonal response on their computer displays or prints.
The LCD display performance deteriorates quickly as it's tilted up or down, darkening and solarizing significantly. The range of good views is wider from left to right, which is useful when the user looks at images with another viewer.
Flash (7.0)
The flash on the FinePix S5200 is good out to 13.1 feet, according to Fuji. That figure is a little conservative. With the ISO setting on Auto, the FinePix S5200 shot out to 15 or 16 feet in a room with a white, nine-foot ceiling. The S5200 set the ISO to 400 to get the image. The flash could not reach that far at ISO 100, but would logically be able to reach further at ISO 800 or 1600. Outdoors, or anywhere without a low, white ceiling, the ranges will be shorter.
The flash is mounted directly above the lens, which is good, because it means that the subjects will cast their shadows directly behind themselves, and they won't affect up the backgrounds of pictures taken from straight on. However, the FinePix S5200 does not have a hot shoe or PC connector for an external flash.
The internal flash offers the following modes: Auto, Red-eye Reduction, Forced Flash, Suppressed Flash, Slow Synchro, and Red-eye Reduction + Slow Synchro.
Lens (8.25)
The FinePix S5200 sports a 6.3-63mm Fujinon zoom lens, composed of 11 elements in 8 groups, with 2 aspherical elements and 2 anomalous dispersion elements. In 35mm equivalency, the zoom is 38–380 mm, or a slight wide angle to a long telephoto. At the wide angle end, users will still have to tell large groups to squeeze together to get everyone in. Users can purchase two optional wide conversion lenses to get around this problem, if they wish. At the telephoto end, users at the sidelines of a soccer field will be able to pull in pretty close shots of plays all the way across the pitch.
The optical zoom is 10x, and the digital zoom, 5.7x. If you’ve read our reviews before, you know that we advise users to disregard digital zoom, as it vastly degrades image quality.
Check out our testing section for sharpness data. We can say here however that as we handled the camera in the office, the lens delivered sharp images with little color fringing.
