Camera Replacement Help

[muddyfox470]

My Dear Camera (Olympus C760 Ultra Zoom recently broke)

Don't know why or how [I had lent it to a friend shortly before] but it is 3+ years old so I can live with it, it cost around £100 but was my trusty and I always appreciated the large zoom and manual controls.

So now I need to look for another camera, before my trip to Hong Kong (1st June) , I have about the same amount of money to spend ~ £120 but don't know what to get.

Something digital and a large optical zoom ~ 8x are the key things, some manual settings for long exposures and certain shots would be a welcome addition.
I loved my C760 because it was fairly compact and light, used proprietary batteries that lasted ages (rather than 4x AA) a large, reasonable lense and had a pop up flash

I've had a quick peruse and have found the following:

Fuji S5800 : £80 (Refurb with 6 months warranty)
Fuji S6500fd : £120 (as above) This is quite attractive due to it's higher spec CCD and manual zoom so it should be lighter on the batteries I'm guessing?

^^ only really looked at the fuji's because i've known about their refurb store.

I haven't really looked at any other cameras, I'd love a Panasonic with a Leica lense but it's way out of my price range, so any other ideas would be welcomed.


Any comments much appreciated

PS. Megapixels aren't a great deal for me as I won't print anything above A4, and my screen res is only 1680x1050; my 3MP always was big enough

[Virtual Monkey]

I can personally vouch for the Fuji s5800 as a brilliant camera - excellent quality for most things and a very good zoom range. It is fairly bulky: more-so than a regular compact but still much more portable than a dslr. Great macro mode too

EDIT: have a look at the camera finder on Flickr: people have got some very professional looking results with it.

http://www.flickr.com/cameras/fujifilm/finepix_s5700/

[muddyfox470]

Well Fuji seem to have some nice cameras

I like the S6500fd, but the lack of SD slot and AA batteries put me off (they all have AA though), also its a little bigger so less portable i guess.

Other than that are the:

S5700: £70
S8000fd: £100 which are smaller bodied as well...

I've heard the S5700 is bad with purple fringing and high contrast skies...

[Andy3536]

I have an s5800, it's a very good camera. Got some very good prints A4 size.