While we just adore the Canon 350D digital camera (whaddya mean that's old hat? It's still a great camera!), there are sometimes when you want a great camera in a compact body. The new Fujifilm FinePix Z10fd aims to have you shooting fantastic pictures without weighing you down.

While the all-plastic construction may have some worried that the thing would break in a slight breeze, those fears are unfounded, it can take normal use quite well. Not only that this has to be one of the best looking compact cameras that has graced us in many a year. We had in for review a red model and it looked marvellous. You wouldn't need to feel unfashionable when you bought this out to take holiday snaps.

Looks aside, the camera comes with 25MB of internal memory (which means that it can take only a few hi-res pictures before becoming full) or alternatively you can shove in a 1GB xD of SD card card to take up to 300 high-resolution pictures. As the camera supports SDHC, you should be able to put in 8GB or even 16GB cards into the empty slot.

On the camera are USB and infrared ports for transferring pictures to a PC (sadly no Bluetooth - but that's not a deal breaker). Also included in the box is a wrist strap, battery charger, manual, and CD.

As said earlier, the looks of the thing are great if the construction feels a little lacking, when compared to rivals on the top end of the budget market. On the back of the unit is a 2.5-inch, 150,000-pixel LCD. this is almost colour perfect although we felt the sharpness was a little wanting. We tested the camera on bright sunny days in Tuscany and sometimes the sunlight meant that viewing the display was difficult. That's when a normal viewfinder would be a welcome addition.

However, the light construction does mean that it thin and light enough to slip the thing in your pocket, which means that you really can take it anywhere without feeling that you are weighed down. The camera is quite small, so if you have big hands then it is not such an ideal camera, but the flip side of this is that those of us with small, delicate, ladylike hands will love its petit nature.

The layout of the buttons seems to be well thought out as everything appears to be to hand for taking impromptu snapshots. The menu gives access to the camera's funtions very easily.

The FinePix Z10fd has five modes; Auto, Manual, Scene, Playback and Movie. Auto and Manual are simple enough to figure out. While Scene gives the user 15 pre-set picture settings, such as landscape, portrait, night shot as well as Natural Light and Flash mode which takes two consecutive shots, one with the ISO increased to use all available light and one with the flash, saving users the bother of adjusting the settings themselves.

Movie mode predictably shoots video footage at either 640x480 and 320x240 resolution, both at 30 fps with mono sound.

However, it is pictures that really attest whether the camera stands or falls. The 7.2-megapixel camera sports face detection technology as well as the now-standard red eye removal.

High-speed shooting was a tad disappointing managing around seven pictures in 10 seconds. But in normal mode the picture quality was reasonable, well reasonable for a camera that costs under £100. Colour was good and saturation was vibrant and smooth. At higher ISO settings (800 and 1600) there was appreciable noise on pictures, but below that it was acceptable.

While the pictures are good enough, the looks will be the features that bring the punters in. It does stand out compared the its rivals and in these celeb-obsessed days sometimes looks are all that matters.

Rating: 8/10

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