A few months ago I decided I wanted to sell my old camera and get a new one. I had been with my Canon 400D since 2008 and it was getting on a bit.

I was in two minds when I decided to sell it, mainly because it was my first ever DSLR and we had been on many journeys together from experiencing Cornwall for the first time to the countless amount of football matches I attended with my dad. But it got to a stage where I noticed images weren't coming out as sharp as they used to, and I was feeling less enthusiastic about having to fetch it out of its bulky camera time and time again when I wanted to take a quick snap.

Then I had a dilemma. Do I go for a complete upgrade and buy a newer, fancier DSLR when I'm hardly going out and making pictures for £300+ or shall I see what's out there in terms of a bridge camera? I used to be one of those people who swore by a DSLR and refused to even consider buying a bridge camera until I came across the Fujifilm Finepix S8600.



I was scrolling through various computer and electrical sites that are popular among consumers in the UK and I noticed a suggestion for the S8600. At first I was like 'neh, I'd rather stick to a DSLR.' I had had my eye on another Canon camera for a couple of weeks at the time and I had really wanted it, but then I started comparing the Canon with the Fujifilm. For about quarter of the price, I could do just as much with the Fujifilm as I could with the DSLR. Not to mention it is a 16MP camera, it has the ability to record in HD and it's got a 36x optical zoom lens equivalent to a range of 25-900m. It even has some nice options in Advanced Filter settings. Something I still have to get to grips with but still. . . Pretty awesome huh?



Admittedly, I was disappointed that the camera isn't fully manual focus and nor could you change the lens. I was in a pickle! Which one should I go for, I asked myself and everyone. I even used to deliberate it for hours on end with my fiancé over Skype calls and I think I drove him nuts in the end.

Then Christmas time came and I had made a decision. I wanted the Fujifilm. It was more portable and as someone with quite small palms but very long fingers, I found most DSLRs uncomfortable and painful to hold after a certain while.

Whilst my fiancé was visiting for his second Christmas over from The Netherlands, we took a family trip to Truro. He had said he still had a present or so to get when he got to England. Completely unaware, he had decided that the camera I had been going on about for weeks would be one of my Christmas presents.

Come Christmas Eve, we're usually allowed to open one present when it strikes midnight. It's one of our family traditions and Davy, my fiancé, wanted me to open this big bulky box that sat underneath our small Christmas tree. So I did. And I was completely gobshocked. There was the Fujifilm!

I've had the S8600 for a few weeks now and I've yet to fully test all of its capabilities but from what I've seen, it's a nifty little thing. We played around with it during Christmas, as you do on Christmas Day and was pleasantly surprised with how some of the pictures came out. The only disappointing thing about the camera is that it runs on 3 AA batteries so you're constantly going to need a pack of them or some recharged ones on you when you take this little guy out with you. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with it and I'm excited to take it out in the wild and use it more often!