With so many digital cameras on the market, it's especially bewildering for the first-time buyer to decide where to start and how to get to grips with all the digital technology, when so many cameras seem to be bristling with buttons, attachments and complicated menu systems. It's for this reason that Fujifilm has designed a camera that keeps the accent on simplicity without making major concessions on quality.

The FinePix A170 is a stylish camera as well: the silver model we were sent has a double-coated, high-gloss veneer finish which will look chic when slipped out of a shoulder bag, plus it's slim at 21.9mm thick and won't weigh you down more than 120g. It feels comfortable in the hand and keeps the controls down to a necessary minimum; just the usual D-pad, playback and display buttons plus a zoom rocker on the back, with shutter and power on the top.

The LCD is the fairly standard 2.7-inch size with 230,000 pixels, having sharp colours that can be further brightened instantly via the D-pad controller (very handy in changeable conditions). We were also pleased to see the tripod adaptor centrally positioned at the bottom, something many of its more expensive competitors keep neglecting.

The 1/2.3-inch CCD sensor ensures this 10.2-megapixel camera produces detailed results even though you only have a modest 3x optical zoom (however, a supplementary 5.7x digital zoom can be enabled). As well as the expected Auto setting, you have Scene Recognition Auto which will detect the most common shooting modes like Portrait, Landscape, Night and Macro.

There's also a rudimentary Manual setting which will allow you to vary ISO settings and White Balance, or you can plump for one of 17 designated scene modes. For the first time at this price range, Fujifilm has included a Panorama setting which will let you stitch three shots together.

Thrown into the mix are Face Recognition, Image Stabilisation and two movie settings - 640 x 480 pixels and 320 x 240 pixels at 30fps - as well as a Micro Thumbnail playback feature which allows you to view up to 100 frames simultaneously.

On the other hand, the Macro distance only starts at 10cm, images beyond ISO 400 start to suffer noticeably from noise issues and the SR Auto mode sometimes struggles to make its mind up about what scene you're looking at. But at least you can use the digital zoom when making movies and storage can be via both SD and SDHC memory cards.

So for less than £80 (and online prices can be even lower), the A170 is hard to better as a first introduction to digital photography.

Verdict
For anxious and technophobe newcomers to the digital photography revolution, the FinePix A170 is an ideal introduction as it manages to combine ease of use, good quality images and stylish design for an extremely affordable price.

Company: FujiFilm

Contact: 0870 084 1310

Tags: fujifilm fujifilm finepix liquid crystal display camera image stabilization charge-coupled device facial recognition system international organization for standardization