Review: Fujifilm Finepix F50fd digital camera

The F50fd ('fd' standing for face detection), comes in at the top of Fujifilm's compact range and succeeds the F31fd. With a 12-megapixel CCD, it's a huge step up from its six-megapixel predecessor.

Its metal-bodied case houses a 2.7in LCD and a 3x optical zoom lens. It feels very well-built yet is extremely light and compact. In general operation, the F50fd is both fast and responsive, and it's quick to focus and take shots.

The main shooting modes are selected via a traditional mode dial, which is repeated on the LCD via an animated overlay making it easy to operate in low light where the printed legends would be difficult to read.

Fujifilm cameras are well known for their high-ISO modes and the F50fd is no exception. With ISO 1600 available at full resolution and as high as ISO 6400 if you step down to three megapixels, itís a great camera for those who like to use natural light rather than flash.

Combining this with image stabilisation makes the F50fd an excellent performer in low light, although the camera does have a tendency to pick rather high ISO modes by default unless you switch to manual mode, which also gives you full creative control over exposure.

Overall, the results are good and you'll end up with fewer unusable images than on many competing cameras, but when compared to the F31fd the advantages of the extra resolution are not always obvious as the increase in pixels seems to have brought with it a noticeable increase in image noise.

Browsing your photos is also very quick and easy, thanks to a 'micro-thumbnail' view which allows you to browse through 100 images on screen at a time.

The recommended price of £229.99 is much higher than you're likely to find it in the shops. We've seen it available for as little as £168.75 - and at that price it's a steal.